Michaela Huber

Those who have not come to terms with their own horrific experiences pass them on directly or indirectly to the next generation. Traumatised mothers, for example, are often unable to take good care of their children; how do they fare when they face the truth - and how do the children fare? Psychotraumatologist Michaela Huber interviewed colleagues and people affected by violence to find answers to the following questions, among others: How can you learn to understand what was really done to you and how do you manage to detach yourself from traumatising attachment figures? What helps in the outer and inner exit from destructive attachments? How can survivors come to terms with their inner different "souls in their chests", and what is the point?

Those who are stressed tend to use external means to manipulate themselves until body and mind are in the desired mode. A fact that Michaela Huber knows all too well, because she has been working with people suffering from stress for decades. They often have a great longing, on the one hand for security, and on the other hand to finally find more inner peace.
The author has developed her own exercises or modified existing ones in order to be able to convey an idea of protection and security to people internally. She is particularly concerned with those who did not experience this security as children but have a great longing for it.
The six exercises contained in the book are also found - spoken by Michaela Huber herself - on the enclosed CD.

Each generation passes on emotional experiences to the next in different ways - both positive and negative. Even traumatic experiences from war and other contexts of violence are far from over with the generation directly experiencing them.
At its annual conference in Bad Mergentheim in 2011, the German Society for Trauma and Dissociation (DGTD) dealt with the topic of "Transgenerational Traumatisation and Dissociation". This volume documents lectures and results from workshops that shed light on different aspects of the topic.
With contributions by: M. Huber, R. Plassmann, S. B. Gahleitner, M.-L. Kindler, L. Krebs, G. Heyers, R. Sander, T. Becker, S. Leuter, H. Schickedanz, H. Girrulat, R. Stachowske, K.-H. Brisch, M. Seidel, R. Stachetzki, P. Heinz, G. Wild, P. Hafele

Splitting up as a result of experiencing violence is a phenomenon that is as old as humanity. For a hundred years, people have also described what it is like when small children, who repeatedly suffer overwhelming stress at the hands of adults, "go away inside". Some of them develop a multiple personality - a trauma-induced splitting of the personality, which today is called "dissociative identity". Being "many" also requires a lot from those affected: constantly finding their way in a world that changes abruptly for them in a frightening way and occasionally seems completely alien.

"I always thought I was crazy. Sometimes I would miss hours or days, and I didn't know what had happened in that time. And then I also started hearing voices. I really thought I was crazy. "But Sarah S. is not crazy. Anna, Herta, Lolita and Tom, small children and strong male "protectors" live in her, more than 50 "persons" in total. Sarah is their "hostess" who could control the body according to her consciousness most of the time in everyday life. Sarah is a multiple personality. Her "persons" are split-off parts of her, created by severe traumas: tortured and raped by her father, treated sometimes lovingly, sometimes cruelly by her mother, "sold" by her parents to a child pornography ring, Sarah could only survive by splitting herself up, giving up her "I" and creating new "persons" to deal with the violence and store the memory of it.

What are the effects of traumatic stress?
What is trauma actually? And who is affected? Researchers now assume that we are all exposed to a situation at least once in our lives that causes us to collapse internally. Most people manage to process the event reasonably well, even if some take many years. But what if the event leaves deeper wounds, for example because it is repeated (several times)? How long can we endure and persevere without suffering long-term serious consequences?
This book deals with "toxic" traumatic stress and its consequences.

Today, modern trauma therapy is well structured, follows a consistent and verifiable treatment model and helps those affected to first stabilise themselves in order to then be able to process the explosive event and its consequences step by step. In this book - the second volume of the series "Trauma and Trauma Treatment" - Michaela Huber presents the ethical principles of trauma treatment in a way that is also understandable for laypersons and answers the most important questions of affected persons and therapists about the treatment process.

The author also describes the most important techniques for working through trauma with numerous examples. In addition, she gives recommendations for colleagues and relatives of traumatised persons on how to prevent "compassion fatigue". Finally, the appendix recommends clinics and other institutions that work in the field of trauma therapy.

How change can succeed
"Something has to change in my life - but I don't know how yet." Many people who have such a thought do not even know at first: do they "only" want to lose weight or change a symptom? Or do they want much more - possibly even to start a whole new life? In 14 exercises - six of which are on an enclosed CD - Michaela Huber guides her readers through a process of personal change. It is essential to overcome learned helplessness and to rediscover or further develop one's own abilities and resources.

What does it mean to live under constant threat?
The conference "Integration of the Stranger?!" was jointly organised by a professional society for complex trauma sequelae, the DGTD, and
from an institution that cares for refugees, the Psychosocial Centre for Refugees.

This book brings together the contributions of the conference. In all of them there is a connection between the themes of complex trauma and flight.
There are similarities between fleeing intolerable family relationships or destructive, exploitative groupings.
and the flight from war and crisis zones.

Psychotherapists working with survivors of violence also have to deal with their clients' malignant compulsions of thought, feeling and behaviour - with their perpetrator introspections. While academics argue about whether all violent offenders are not "sick" and belong in forensics rather than prison, therapists struggle to find ways of integration for their clients: How can destructive impulses be brought under control? What possibilities are there to prevent someone from becoming an offender in time?

This is the book of two experts: One has suffered a lot and emerged as a mature woman who writes wonderful poems and touching texts. The other is a trauma therapist and presents some of her findings and those of her colleagues on several topics in this book. Both areas of the book stand independently next to each other. Pauline C. Frei writes from her current perspective as an integrated adult about the time when she was still a multiple personality. At the same time, she reports on the difficulties of getting out of a long-standing entanglement in a destructive cult. The part written by Michaela Huber deals with what the body goes through when it has to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), provides an examination of "evil" in psychotherapy and deals with the basic attitudes in working with traumatised people.

"Pain, the Dalai Lama once said, pain is inevitable. Suffering depends on the decision. Pauline C. Frei has chosen: to look, to integrate. Was it worth it? Read for yourself."- Michaela Huber

This book contains poems, texts and images on living, dying and healing. Arranged in ten chapters, each with an introductory text by Michaela Huber, you will find poems by Pauline C. Frei. These texts cover a wide spectrum, beginning with the discovery of writing as a means of expression, through coping with everyday life under the auspices of a serious, incurable illness, to themes such as letting go, death, love, courage and hope.