RESOURCES
Here you will find Christine’s interviews, published articles, and favourite links. You’re sure to find a gem that will inspire you.
Interviews
Jane Mulcahy: Law and Justice
June 6, 2024
In this interview, Christine talked about the importance of safety, nurturing and secure attachment for healthy, human development, as well as misogyny, patriarchy, and psychopathy. She discussed how many leaders and those in decision-making roles across the world have psychopathic traits, or are "psychopathy-adjacent" due to an inability to feel and tolerate their own embodied emotions, or display empathy for the plight of others.
Saga Johanna
April 23, 2024
In this interview, Christine talks about infants and babies and what happens when they don't get their needs met during the first years of life. She also discusses about meditation, neurobiology and the possibility of living in an enlightened - not dissociated - state. Finally, she talks about how we can heal from childhood and intergenerational trauma to live fulfilling lives.
Subject to Power Podcast
October 19, 2022
Christine reflects that the human species as a whole is a traumatized species: What if misogyny is not the hatred of women - but a phobia? What if patriarchy is not a power structure - but a pathology? She traces patriarchy and misogyny back through - not just history, but the evolution of human neurobiology.
The Trauma Therapist Podcast
July 20, 2022
Christine talks about how well therapists and their clients are coping with the Pandemic. She offers new perspectives and solutions. She provides some foundational definitions of dissociation, mindfulness, mindfulness meditation, and meditation. Mindfulness can help stressed, traumatized, and dissociated people.
Lisa Danylchuk, How We Can Heal Podcast
May 3, 2022
Christine Forner breaks down dissociation, mindfulness, and securefulness. She helps us understand what securefulness means, the challenges to mindfulness and dissociation, why she believes mindfulness is our parent brain as humans, and much more.
The Good Mind
March 19, 2022
Christine Forner talks about our different active and inactive defenses and how these defenses really do drive the train on the human species.
Misogyny is defined as the hatred or contempt for women. Patriarchy is defined as a system of society in which men hold the power and women are extremely excluded from it.
Lisa Danylchuk Podcast
June 30, 2020
Christine Forner and Lisa Danylchuk discuss a framework for the centrality of dignity and care in collective trauma recovery.
The Health Fix Podcast, Ep 206
October 17, 2020
In this episode of The Health Fix Podcast Christine Forner and Dr. Jannine Krause discuss Christine’s meditation techniques she uses to help those with trauma and PTSD meditate successfully.
WOCA The Source Radio
June 12, 2017
Christine Forner talks about her book, Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations: Trauma-Informed Practices to Facilitate Growth. She delves into the ABCs of dissociation, mindfulness, mindfulness meditation, and meditation. Using mindfulness and imaginative meditation techniques the most injured find healing for their trauma and relief for their suffering.
The Trauma Therapist Podcast
May 16, 2024
In this episode, Christine talks about misogyny, patriarchy, and trauma in our culture—how they came to be, what they look like, and how they’ve been normalized.
Subject to Power Podcast
December 12, 2023
In this episode, Christine crushes the “feelings versus thought hierarchy” and breaks down how absurd (and harmful) this fictional concept is. She also dives deeply into what human emotion, or the affective circuitry - as she calls it, actually is and how it works.
Articles
Lisa Burback, Christine Forner, Olga Karolina Winkler, Huda F Al-Shamali, Yahya Ayoub, Jacquelyn Paquet, Myah Verghese
Psychol Res Behav Manag. 2024;17:2403-2431
Dissociation is a necessary part of our threat response system, common to all animal species, normally temporarily activated under conditions of extreme or inescapable threat. Pathological dissociation, however, continues to occur after the initial threat has passed, in response to reminders or inaccessibility of safety and security. Present across the spectrum of psychiatric diagnoses, recurrent dissociative symptoms are linked to severe trauma exposure, insecure attachment, treatment non-response, and maladaptive coping behaviors such as substance use, suicidality, and self-harm. However, empirical studies testing treatments specific to dissociative processes remain scarce. This narrative review summarizes existing studies and provides theoretical, neurobiological, and evolutionary perspectives on dissociative processes and treatments for pathological dissociation.
Forner C., BA, BSW, MSW, RSW.
J Trauma Dissociation. 2019 Jan-Feb;20(1):1-15. doi: 10.1080/15299732.2018.1502568. Epub 2018 Aug 10. PMID: 30095378.
Mindfulness-based psychotherapy has proven effective, but faces challenges in treating individuals with dissociative disorders. A disconnect exists between these fields, prompting a need to explore mindfulness through an attachment and human development lens. Mindfulness extends beyond relaxation, contributing to human development and complex social group dynamics. Recognizing the relational benefits of mindfulness, adapting interventions for dissociative individuals and fostering understanding between both fields can enhance therapeutic outcomes.
Forner C. , BA, BSW, MSW, RSW.
Clin Neuropsychiatry. 2023 Aug;20(4):327-336. doi: 10.36131/cnfioritieditore20230412. PMID: 37791093; PMCID: PMC10544243.
Discussing the profound and enduring impact of trauma, particularly amid a global pandemic, proves challenging. Lockdowns over the past two years have unleashed people's trauma responses, revealing a societal abyss that is difficult to grasp. This crisis has led to protests, erosion of human rights, threats of fascism, and actual conflicts in various countries, exposing widespread governmental corruption. The instability and desire for change stem from destructive and violent systems rooted in patriarchy, perpetuating cruelty, selfishness, and violence. Healing requires understanding the effects of misogyny and envisioning a world without its influence.
Christine Forner, MSW, RSW
Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, 3(1):91–106 2019, ISSN: 2523-5117 print / 2523-5125 online. DOI: https://doi.org/10.46716/ftpd.2019.0027
Small children, limited in verbal communication due to developmental constraints, heavily rely on nonverbal cues, particularly after experiencing trauma. As verbal communication takes years to develop, children often communicate through their first language of sensations, movement, and emotions. This poses challenges for therapeutic approaches heavily reliant on verbal communication. Viewing mindfulness through a human bonding lens reveals its neurobiological-affect-regulation benefits, emphasizing its role in social engagement and potential for effectively working with traumatized infants and small children, bridging the gap between nonverbal and verbal expression in therapy.
Books
Christine C. Forner
February 24, 2017
Dissociation, Mindfulness, and Creative Meditations explores the potential of mindfulness and explains why this level of developmental human achievement is so precarious within traumatic stress, especially traumatic dissociation. Chapters discuss the connection and disconnection between mindfulness and dissociative disorders and highlight the importance of gently creating a mindfulness practice for traumatized individuals. Readers will learn how to exercise the part of the brain that is responsible for mindfulness and how to regulate the part that is responsible for dissociation, and they’ll come away from the book with tips that will help even the most dissociative client to reap the benefits of mindfulness practices.
Contributor
Edited by Emily Christensen, PhD.
March 25, 2022
Clinical Compilation, with foreword by Laura Brown, PhD.
The Role Misogyny and the Patriarchy Play in the Development and Continuation of Dissociative Disorders, Trauma and Abuse, Christine Forner, p. 205-236.
Securefulness: A Care-Centered Approach to Therapy, Danylchuk L, Forner C, p. 387-418.
Al-Shamali HF, Winkler O, Talarico F, Greenshaw AJ, Forner C, Zhang Y, Vermetten E, Burback L.
Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2022 Oct;56(10):1252-1264. doi: 10.1177/00048674221077029. Epub 2022 Feb 13. PMID: 35152771; PMCID: PMC9511244
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is frequently complicated by the presence of dissociative symptoms. Pathological dissociation is linked with earlier and more severe trauma exposure, emotional dysregulation and worse treatment outcomes in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Disorders, with implications for BPD. A systematic scoping review was conducted to assess the extent of current literature regarding the impact of dissociation on BPD and to identify knowledge gaps.