Normalising Dissociation - There Is No Shame In Successfully Surviving

I am incredibly passionate about helping people celebrate their survival and stop demonising the parts of them that helped them do this, even if those parts are now not able to keep up with the needs and demands of the current reality of life.

We need to help people understand how a child being raised in an emotionally or/and physically unsafe environment without safe and reliable objects of attachment learns to use her mind as a refuge—by splitting off and compartmentalizing affects, knowledge, cause-and-effect, talents and abilities, even the memories of the traumatic experiences, into what Pierre Janet termed, “emancipated neural networks.” In the context of a hostile environment, these networks gradually become more and more compartmentalized until they are disconnected from one another, and continuity of self becomes increasingly a challenge. It is a very rare person I meet with childhood trauma that does NOT have dissociative tendencies, so I fully normalise this for people.

Instead of developing a core internalised robust SELF as leader of the system - able to be self protective where necessary only, authentic, vulnerable and stable, the child develops a system of protective SELVES. It is a system that is highly adaptive in an unsafe environment. As van der Hart, Nijenhuis & Steele describe in the Structural Dissociation model (2006), this system relies on our biologically hard-wired animal defense survival responses to facilitate the best possible adaptation in a threatening world. A system of selves must include a part of the personality serving the cause of “going on with normal life:” functioning in daily life, raising the children, being able to provide basic necessities, even enjoying normal developmental tasks or taking up meaningful personal and professional goals.

But while one part of all of us is valiantly carrying on normal life, other parts must serve functions of fight, flight, freeze (or fear), submit, and attach for survival or “cling.” For example, for a child living with a parent who is withdrawn at some times and violent or scary at others, having a different self or part of self prepared to deal with each of these different challenges is very useful: in response to the panicky alarms of a fearful part (freeze) alerting the individual to potential danger, a caretaker aspect of self (submission) can become the precociously responsible child who tries to protect herself or younger children in the face of the violent behavior, while a “class clown” aspect may try to lift the parent’s irritable mood and facilitate relational connection by making him laugh (attach), or a hypervigilant aspect of self (fight) may become a kind of bodyguard carefully observing the parent’s mood and directing the child’s activity to best defend against mood-related “frightened or frightening” behaviour.

However, in adulthood, the fact that current reality is different from that past reality means that a system which once ran smoothly now finds itself in conflict: some parts of self may want to move ahead professionally, for example, or want to get married and have children, while other parts are phobic of intimacy (fight) or terrified of being anything but invisible (freeze) or distance as soon as the relationship becomes close (flight). To make matters even more complicated, the “going on with normal life” self generally continues to grow and develop age-appropriate social-emotional abilities, while other parts become “frozen in time” at age 3 or 5 or 8 or 12 or 17. Other parts are “frozen” not in terms of age but in terms of perception: like the Japanese soldiers who hid out on small Pacific islands during World War II and emerged twenty years later without knowledge that the war was over, some of the hypervigilant and protector parts of self may still believe they are in danger of being annihilated. Because these parts represent “emancipated neural networks,” they are as isolated from new information as those Japanese soldiers.

Parts organized around the mobilizing defenses of fight and flight may still believe that hypervigilance, counterdependence, and relentless mistrust are helpful survival skills, especially when the adult survivor is experiencing flooding, physical or emotional vulnerability, or becoming more confident, successful, or expansive (i.e., when the submissive, frightened, or needy parts are more activated or the ‘going on with normal life’ part is ‘breaking rules’ once punishable in childhood). Fight- and flight- driven aspects of the self that are suicidal or self-harming developed as a way of increasing the child’s sense of having some control (“If it gets too bad, I can die—I can leave—I can go to sleep and never wake up”) and may continue to have strong self- destructive impulses in the context of loss or vulnerability.

The flight response also drives addictive behavior, eating disorders, sexual addiction, and other sources of relief or ‘flight’ from the overwhelming trauma-related feelings and sensations like running away to different locations and needing to keep moving.

In response to the acting out of fight-flight driven parts, submissive and needy parts may become ashamed, depressed, and filled with self-loathing, while the ‘cry for help’ parts beg not to be abandoned because of it. However, if attachment- and submission-driven parts grovel too much, fight-flight responses can be triggered, and the cycle begins again. Freeze parts can propagate CFS and other associated conditions. All the ‘F’ responses dysregulate the nervous system and cause physical symptoms. For more information on this please see my previous post about the cell danger response.

Often there will be a final tipping point; a physical or/and emotional challenge that is often reminiscent in some way for the system of prior trauma, that causes people to experience a disruption of their functionality to an extent that they end up seeking help, education and healing.

In order to navigate this level of complexity, we need to have some simple “laws,” or rules of thumb, which can help us to focus on the forest rather than getting confused by the trees. The first “law” of dissociative integration is “A PART IS JUST A PART,” meaning that, no matter how regressed, helpless, and confused the person is at a given moment in that traumatic nervous system response, there are other parts or states of mind which are confident and competent and adult. It is my job as facilitator to always reflect this to the wonderful whole person I see in front of me and help their nervous system and inner system come home to its innate coherence.

ALL parts are welcome, none are bad or shunned. AND the whole is greater than the sum of parts. This re organisation can take time, but it IS accessible as it is an innate return to flow and coherence. I too have walked this path so I speak from experience too. From a life growth and spiritual perspective, which I also teach from - I believe this kind of biopsychosocialspiritual integration is really part of why we are here and is not about ‘mental health issues’ but about the depth of life journey we have come for and the profound power in that hero’s/heroine’s journey.

No matter how self-destructive someone is at a given moment, there are other parts which want to live and have fought to survive. In fact, even the suicidal alter or ego state rarely wants to die. That part of the self, driven by fight responses, is fighting to live, struggling for control over feelings of being overwhelmed, powerless, and demoralized. It wants to do something: to take action, not give up. The facility and healing person must remind themselves that whatever part(s) is dominating consciousness at a particular moment is a fraction of a whole system designed to be in balance.

Because in dissociative adapted people, the system and the person are one and the same, a facilitator must try to avoid the two most common pitfalls in dissociation treatment: speaking to the system as if it were one integrated human being or allowing the therapy to become a “revolving door” with a procession of inner “family members” coming in to tell their stories and get the therapist’s support for their needs. It is usually most helpful to work with the “parent” or “parents” primarily (that is, the Adult Self or host personality) and to teach the system how to become more cohesive by coaching the Adult Self in developing the skills needed to foster increased internal communication and cooperation. I love this part of my work and it feels as natural to me as breathing to help people self relate in this way with their parts/mind and their body. We foster the ability of an “observing awareness/ego” to appreciate how traumatic experiences create the necessity for complex dissociative mechanisms of defense (Perry, 1995) and to notice how an elaborately fragmented psyche works—to understand its emotional logic, even when that defies rational logic. This brings in much needed self compassion, which is still an under appreciated part of trauma healing, although the power of it is growing thanks to the likes of researchers like Kristen Neff (her work is highly recommended). This understanding and observing mind also brings in some inner organisation as the person begins to understand what is happening inside, which in turn brings down fear and shame.

As that inner communication increases through the nervous system and the mind, we begin to integrate and increase coherence in the system. Much of this work is through the body; accessing the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, collapse parts through sensation, image, movement and helping these responses heal, deactivate their response or complete a stuck impulse, so that the system can return to homeostasis. We promote the acquisition of new, healthy self-regulatory abilities which can lessen the need to rely on dissociative defenses and thereby lead to a greater capacity for internal connectedness.

It is so important we de-stigmatise what has kept people alive, what was an intelligent adaption that worked beautifully to get them through. It was a normal adaption for abnormal circumstances.

It is not a faulty mechanism or anything that needs to be gotten rid of. What we seek is CHOICE in the system, that there is growing awareness of more present moment resources, stability and safety to lean into so that dissociation isn’t the only road to follow. This takes time, spaciousness, support and where possible gentle humour of the awe inspiring holding of both challenge and strength in our lives. If we managed to survive our childhood with such little choice and power, it shows us that we really do have all the resource we need inside to heal ourselves now. Gentle self inquiry with compassion and listening to the unparalleled wisdom of the body will guide us home.