We were even at the stage of starting to think about people we could call to get in touch with him. She and I had been working with each other for a while when she started talking about wanting to reconcile with her estranged father. Jeanette in fact had been through a slew of traumatic experiences she grew up in an impoverished neighborhood, witnessed countless acts of violence, was abused herself, and most of her family members, including her father, were addicted to drugs. The outer most part of her brain was shutting down as her mind/body was shifting into a traumatic response that made it difficult for her to use the function of language. She couldn’t speak because her brain was down regulating. “I mean I don’t know, I just, I don’t, I can’t…” and she stopped again. Jeanette*, a 17 year-old high school student, found herself in my office trying to describe the shock of losing her father:
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