“I rise from my worst disasters. I turn, I change.”
Treatment for complex trauma is, painfully, exorbitantly expensive. We want to help you get the care you need and deserve but may have no means to obtain right now.
While it may feel scary to do, we warmly encourage you to reach out to us if you are struggling to pay for your care. You are not alone in this. For a chance to receive financial assistance for your treatment expenses, we will send you an application, in two steps, that you can then fill out in your own time, at your own pace.
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Please send all requests, completed applications, and questions to our separate, internally confidential email:
BAB.GrantRequests@gmail.com
⇢ If seeking financial aid for treatment costs, please put “Application Request” in the subject line.
⇢ If seeking a Therapy Box, please put “Therapy Box Request” in the subject line.
This helps us prioritize your emails and be confident in what you're seeking!
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Financial Aid is made payable to the provider of therapeutic services, and covers a portion of the non-reimbursed, out-of-pocket expenses directly incurred for the ongoing treatment of complex trauma and dissociative disorders. Funds are not available for back balances of unpaid services or needs outside of ongoing treatment or inpatient therapy.
NOTE: At this time, our fiscal sponsor's 501(c)3 licensure is restricted to the United States, which means that law prevents us from offering financial support to any therapist or facility outside of the US. It is our sincerest hope and goal to expand BAB's outreach to establishing branches in other countries - making financial support an international possibility. With everyone working together, we can hope to see this goal realized!
CORRESPONDENCE NOTICE: Your voice matters. Your story is important. We care deeply about your pain - both past and present. However, knowing details of the trauma you've experienced - especially those which are graphic in nature - will not help us help you better. It can even deplete our resources and clarity, leaving us less efficient in guiding you to the help you deserve. Severity of trauma has zero bearing on approval of grant applications. We care about you, and thus, for your safety and ours, we ask that you refrain from sharing traumatic material.
In the event of an emergency, please contact your therapist, local crisis center, or call 911. We will gladly help further when your safety has been ensured.
We know far too well that the number of treatment providers available in a given region is sometimes a flat zero. This means that, even if we had bottomless funds to approve every application or made sure cost wasn’t a barrier for any survivor we spoke to, there isn’t always a provider around for them to see. We are working on that! (And, to any therapists interested in expanding their training, please do reach out! We have options!)
We began the Therapy Box Project, in part, as a response to this crisis. It was the most accessible, achievable solution our team could complete, but it isn’t the longterm solution survivors deserve. Until those fixed solutions arrive, or for anyone who - for any reason - also won’t qualify for a Therapy Box, we want to be sure you aren’t left with nothing. …or even feeling like there's nothing.
On our Resource page, you will find many websites, books, and media that are great for learning and to feel broadly understood, but we know not all can help you work through your personal "tough stuff". So, we wanted to pluck out a few specific titles, just for survivors in your position, because they’re workbooks. They exist to help facilitate your individual recovery and are often used as an adjunct to therapy for those lucky enough to receive it. But, if you’re on your own and this is all you’ll be able to access for the foreseeable future, we know what a lifeline they can be.
You are not helpless, nor hopeless; you deserve support and guidance just like everyone else.
➣ Growing Beyond Survival: A Self-Help Toolkit for Managing Traumatic Stress by Elizabeth Vermilyea — This is one of the best workbooks for just about anyone who finds themselves on our site or seeking treatment - whether you have PTSD, C-PTSD or any dissociative disorder. It teaches you about your mind; provides loads of symptom management skills like grounding, containment, modulation for intense feelings or self-harm urges, imagery for pain and sleep, and so much more; helps you deal with intrusive memories, panic and dissociation; and asks you questions to help work through the harder material at your own pace.
This one gets the top spot because it is useful to just about every level of complex trauma. It has the fundamental tools we all need to lay the groundwork that lets us safely continue our journey to wellness,.That is especially important when you are working on your own and/or until you find someone who can help you through the truly traumatic pieces. Bonus: We also did an interview with the author herself, here!
➣ Me, Not-Me, and We: A Lived Experience Workbook for Phased Recovery from Complex & Relational Trauma with Dissociative Identity Response by Emma Sunshaw — This workbook is written with the beginner in mind - someone very new in their journey with DID/OSDD. It will very gently and compassionately walk you through the basics of getting to know, understand, and communicate with your system. You will learn about the importance of pacing, safety (internal as well as external), symptom management skills, and movement. There are exercises, but processing traumatic content is not the focus.
Younger parts of the system are invited and kept in mind throughout the book. For those who are more advanced or highly trauma-literate, this may not be your preferred workbook, but it is the perfect safe and gentle introduction to a process that can itself be traumatic, scary, and overwhelming - particularly when on your own.
➣ Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder by Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall — This was one of the first workbooks to be specifically written for those with Dissociative Identity Disorder. It is a bit dated [from the early 90s], so some of the information is perhaps a but out of touch with the current understanding of DID and structural dissociation, but it's still able to facilitate many of the basic tools utilized in DID treatment - like getting to know your system, internal communication, and beginning to gain internal cooperation.
➣ Becoming Yourself: Overcoming MC and RA by Alison Miller — This workbook has the highest specificity for whom it will apply, and that is for the subset of survivors who have RA/MC or organized abuse backgrounds. This is truly one of the most comprehensive, informative and interactive books on the subject at all, let alone workbooks. Given the prevalence of treatment providers specializing in this area is dramatically less than the very limited C-PTSD and DID/OSDD providers, this could be the greatest tool to understand what has happened to you and continues to happen to you internally.
This includes things like: helping you determine what is likely real from things that were not, learn who is inside and how they are arranged, understand programming and how to better protect yourself against it, as well as how to more fully digest both broad and nuanced aspects of your healing. That applies even if you have a therapist and are using it in combination with your therapy. But, this is a really tremendous asset if you have no one you can turn to or trust.
➣ The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk — After a little thought, we decided to add this book in here, too, even though it's an exception (as it’s not a workbook and will not interact with you therapeutically). This book is still a remarkable instrument in teaching you the neurology behind trauma, which can help you view and interact with your wellness and your body entirely different. As it turns out, that's pretty important!
This book demonstrates things from a scientifically proven and physiologic perspective as he explicates the power and necessity of physical movement - amongst other things - in trauma survivors' recovery. van der Kolk firmly delineates through examples and evidence how much a survivor can begin to heal their mind by being intentional about their physical movement - even without talk therapy. Knowing there are things you can definitely do to help yourself now, in this time without a therapist, is invaluable!
**Note: We do want to mention that, while all of these workbooks are as mindful as possible about the risk of triggering the very survivors engaging with them, this book isn’t written through the same interactive lens. It is made for broad, educational, science communication and contains many examples of trauma that can be quite upsetting—especially in this time without therapeutic support. Please use personal discretion.
Unfortunately, any resource or book is going to cost money, and any workbook that is helping to guide your treatment will be even more expensive. We recognize this and know that it may not be a cost you can tackle yourself, even after scouting those at discounted prices. If you find yourself in this place, please don't hesitate to contact us and see if we may be able to help! You may actually be the perfect survivor for our Therapy Box Project and we can’t wait to bring the support you deserve to your doorstep!
One final note: Even if you think there are no treatment providers in your area who treat complex trauma or dissociative disorders, or think all are currently booked, please reconsider! We might be able to help you locate someone you didn’t know was there, as many don't advertise themselves as working with trauma publicly. Give it a try! The worst that happens is we discover that's an area really in need of our attention, more education and awareness! But, you may just discover there’s someone right there waiting for you or that the voices on the other end could offer more comfort and support than you thought possible. We’re in this together :)
