04/17/2026
When your client glances away mid-session, is it distraction—or something more?
According to Harvard-trained psychiatrist and trauma expert Frank Anderson, dissociation is one of the most underrecognized phenomena in clinical work—not because it's rare, but because most of us are trained to be on the lookout for the dramatic version and missing everything else. The subtle glance away. The client who's always in their head. The shutdown that gets labeled depression.
These are all points on a spectrum we're only beginning to understand.
In this conversation with the Networker's editor in chief Livia Kent, Anderson demystifies dissociation, challenges some of the field's assumptions about IFS and parts work, and offers a bottom-up, body-first approach to helping clients come back to the present. He also makes a compelling case that "dissociation" itself might need a new name—one that honors the survival intelligence behind it rather than pathologizing it.
đź”— Read the full interview here: https://bit.ly/4sEgMVY
