Simply stated, dissociation is our brain's way of coping—helping us take a “break”—from stressful or traumatic things.
Although dissociation is most often a result of trauma it is important to remember that our mind can and does regularly dissociate in “normal” ways. For example, many of us have experienced “highway hypnosis” wherein we cannot recall specific details of our commute once we have arrived at our destination. This being out of touch with our immediate experience could be considered a type of dissociation.
Dissociation can happen a number of different ways with varying degrees of seriousness.
The Dissociation Experiences Scale is a self-assessment tool that includes problematic dissociative experiences as well as types of dissociation we all experience (like “highway hypnosis” or day-dreaming). Although this self-assessment tool is not a substitute for clinical diagnosis or advice it may be helpful to determine what level of dissociation you operate at.
“Me...also me”
The real problems with dissociation is dis-integration. It’s not helpful if one part of us is putting us in places that the other part doesn’t remember how we got there. Similarly, it is not helpful when we know we should, or would like to be, feeling something but cannot access our feelings or emotions.
Perhaps you have seen the following style of memes on social media like this....
This “me...also me” style of meme is an example of dis-integration—the realization that we all have different “parts” of us that can be wildly different.
In his book The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk describes how all of us have different “parts”. Whether these different parts are simply somewhat conflicting parts of our personality or trauma-related dissociation understanding and awareness of these different parts ('unblending") is a first step to getting them all to work together in healthy ways.
“We all have parts. Right now a part of me feels like taking a nap; another part wants to keep writing. Still feeling injured by an offensive e-mail message, a part of me wants to hit “reply” on a stinging put-down, while a different part wants to shrug it off.
"Most people who know me have seen my intense, sincere, and irritable parts; some have met the little snarling dog that lives inside me. My children reminisce about going on family vacations with my playful and adventurous parts.
"When you walk into the office in the morning and see the storm clouds over your boss’s head, you know precisely what is coming. That angry part has a characteristic tone of voice, vocabulary, and body posture—so different from yesterday, when you shared pictures of your kids. Parts are not just feelings but distinct ways of being, with their own beliefs, agendas, and roles in the overall ecology of our lives.
"How well we get along with ourselves depends largely on our internal leadership skills—how well we listen to our different parts, make sure they “feel taken care of, and keep them from sabotaging one another. Parts often come across as absolutes when in fact they represent only one element in a complex constellation of thoughts, emotions, and sensations. If Margaret shouts, “I hate you!” in the middle of an argument, Joe probably thinks she despises him—and in that moment Margaret might agree. But in fact only a part of her is angry, and that part temporarily obscures her generous and affectionate feelings, which may well return when she sees the devastation on Joe’s face.
"Every major school of psychology recognizes that people have subpersonalities and gives them different names. In 1890 William James wrote: “[I]t must be admitted that . . . the total possible consciousness may be split “into parts which coexist, but mutually ignore each other, and share the objects of knowledge between them.” Carl Jung wrote: “The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does,” The natural state of the human psyche consists in a jostling together of its components and in their contradictory behavior,” and “The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem. Thus, the adversary is none other than ‘the other in me.’”
"Modern neuroscience has confirmed this notion of the mind as a kind of society. Michael Gazzaniga, who conducted pioneering split-brain research, concluded that the mind is composed of semiautonomous functioning modules, each of which has a special role. In his book The Social “Brain (1985) he writes, “But what of the idea that the self is not a unified being, and there may exist within us several realms of consciousness? . . . From our [split-brain] studies the new idea emerges that there are literally several selves, and they do not necessarily ‘converse’ with each other internally.” MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, a pioneer of artificial intelligence, declared: “The legend of the single Self can only divert us from the target of that inquiry. . . [I]t can make sense to think there exists, inside your brain, a society of different minds. Like members of a family, the different minds can work together to help each other, each still having its own mental experiences that the others never know about.”
"...“Twenty years after working with Mary [a client that had DID], I met Richard Schwartz, the developer of internal family systems therapy (IFS). It was through his work that Minsky’s “family” metaphor truly came to life for me and offered a systematic way to work with the split-off parts that result from trauma. At the “core of IFS is the notion that the mind of each of us is like a family in which the members have different levels of maturity, excitability, wisdom, and pain. The parts form a network or system in which change in any one part will affect all the others...
Dissociation Occurs on a Continuum.
"...The IFS model helped me realize that dissociation occurs on a continuum. In trauma the self-system breaks down, and parts of the self become polarized and go to war with one another. Self-loathing coexists (and fights) with grandiosity; loving care with hatred; numbing and passivity with rage and aggression. These extreme parts bear the burden of the trauma.
"In IFS a part is considered not just a passing emotional state or customary thought pattern but a distinct mental system with its own history, abilities, needs, and worldview. Trauma injects parts with beliefs and emotions that hijack them out of their naturally valuable state. For example, we all have parts that are childlike and fun. When we are abused, these are the parts that are hurt the most, and they become frozen, carrying the pain, terror, and betrayal of abuse. This burden makes them toxic—parts of ourselves that we need to deny at all costs. Because they are locked away inside, IFS calls them the exiles. “At this point other parts organize to protect the internal family from the exiles. These protectors keep the toxic parts away, but in so doing they take on some of the energy of the abuser. Critical and perfectionistic managers can make sure we never get close to “anyone or drive us to be relentlessly productive. Another group of protectors, which IFS calls firefighters, are emergency responders, acting impulsively whenever an experience triggers an exiled emotion.
“Each split-off part holds different memories, beliefs, and physical sensations; some hold the shame, others the rage, some the pleasure and excitement, another the intense loneliness or the abject compliance. These are all aspects of the abuse experience. The critical insight is that all these parts have a function: to protect the self from feeling the full terror of annihilation.
“Children who act out their pain rather than locking it down are often diagnosed with “oppositional defiant behavior,” “attachment disorder,” or “conduct disorder.” But these labels ignore the fact that rage and withdrawal are only facets of a whole range of desperate attempts at survival. Trying to control a child’s behavior while failing to address the underlying issue—the abuse—leads to treatments that are ineffective at best and harmful at worst. As they grow up, their parts do not spontaneously integrate into a coherent personality but continue to lead a relatively autonomous existence.
“Parts that are “out” may be entirely unaware of the other parts of the system. Most of the men I evaluated with regard to their childhood molestation by Catholic priests took anabolic steroids and spent an inordinate amount of time in the gym pumping iron. These compulsive bodybuilders lived in a masculine culture of sweat, football, and beer, where weakness and fear were carefully concealed. Only after they felt safe with me did I meet the terrified kids inside.
"Patients may also dislike the parts that are out: the parts that are angry, destructive, or critical. But IFS offers a framework for understanding them—and, also important, talking about them in a nonpathologizing way. Recognizing that each part is stuck with burdens from the past and respecting its function in the overall system makes it feel less threatening or overwhelming.
As Schwartz states: “If one accepts the basic idea that people have an innate drive toward nurturing their own health, this implies that, when people have chronic problems, something gets in the way of accessing inner resources.
The Goal In Treatment of Dissociation is Collaboration and Integration of our “Parts”
"Recognizing this, the role of therapists is to collaborate rather than to teach, confront, or fill holes in your psyche.” The first step in this collaboration is to assure the internal system that all parts are welcome and that all of them—even those that are suicidal or destructive—were formed in an attempt to protect the self-system, no matter how much they now seem to threaten it.” (Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. The Body Keeps the Score.)
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
For some frequently asked questions about dissociation click here.
To watch a video I created to help people start thinking about and fleshing out our parts you can click below:
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