This month, I am going to take a pause in introducing the next Spiral of Healing to introduce a few different perspectives on what it means to understand ourselves and identify as ourselves as we move through the healing journey. Healing can begin to feel muddled and confusing when there isn’t a coherent sense of Self to anchor into in the process. Many of my prior blogs have discussed how to create differentiation from trauma, internal conflict, strife, and dysregulation by creating more access to Self. But what about when there isn’t a coherent sense of Self that can be accessed? I had shared that October’s blog post will work to define the Self through the lens of discontinuity and structural dissociation. Perhaps the question is not simply whether we have a Self, but how we come to know, access, and experience ourselves as a Self. Different knowings will teach the Self in various ways. I like to teach to the Self more directly. Identification with a Self helps us to relate to ourselves and others. There are three distinct but interconnected dimensions of Self.
Self as inherent: Is known to be something that is not manufactured, but something that is implicit and strengthened through repeated access of and development of it.
Self as experienced: Is our subjective sense of continuity, identity, agency, and connection to ourselves, which can become disrupted through trauma and dissociation. Some of us may experience Self as a baseline or a feeling; a familiar way of existence that is associated with capacity, energy, connectedness, and purpose.
Self as integrated: The developing capacity to experience our different parts, emotional states, memories, and internal experiences as belonging to a larger, interconnected whole. Severe physical, sexual, and/or emotional neglect lends itself to the disruption of an integrated Self. In fact if the trauma is disruptive enough to our development, we may develop disconnected parts to our personality that serve as at different times and for reasons related to self-protection. In this context self-protection may become synonymous to self-erasure or a deliberate absence of it (the subjective loss of access to Self in the service of protection).
Not everyone can access all dimensions of Self continuously.
Locating yourself will mean something different dependent on how accessible each of these three dimensions of Self are. The more severe the trauma and the more you had to dissociate to protect yourself, the less inherent and accessible your sense of Self will feel. The absence of cohesion and the continuity of Self will inevitably lead to complexity within the process of healing and self-actualization. Let’s talk about what it means when the Self is not integrated and why this happens. Although there is a spectrum of dissociative experiences, the inability to conceptualize and experience a continually accessible Self is most closely associated with structural dissociation.
The Theory of Structural Dissociation (SD) suggests that neither of us are born with an integrated personality, that we are born with loosely connected ego states (i.e., multitudes of Self). These ego states are more likely to integrate if our attachment needs are adequately met. Disintegration can occur if developmental processes are stunted by significant trauma in early childhood. Infants operate off a loose collection of ego states that handle different needs. Over time, as we experience the consistent meeting of our needs, these ego states will integrate into one cohesive personality. Severe early childhood trauma can disrupt this process.
Hence, different ego states are left unable to merge with one another due to conflicting needs, traumatic memories, repetitive learned action paths, and responses to trauma. The more severe and the earlier the onset of the trauma, the more likely it is for structural dissociation to occur, a disintegration of personality where some may develop dissociated identities. For those of us who experience a relatively integrated sense of Self, internal disorganization may still manifest through insecure or disorganized attachment patterns due to having endured inconsistent parenting, abandonment, and/or betrayal. One develops protective tendencies when the primary caregivers of the child are inconsistent, loving one moment and abusive/neglectful the next, preventing healthy attachment to form within and with others, resulting in internal disorganization. However, internal disorganization is not the same thing as structural dissociation. Disorganized attachment does not necessarily mean someone lacks a coherent Self, and structural dissociation does not always involve a complete absence of co-consciousness.
This can also happen if one parent is loving while the other is neglectful. However, for most of us, this internal disorganized structure of attachment is not the same as structural dissociation. The difference being that in SD, there are distinct ego states that are not integrated into one’s personality. Most of us may have internal disorganization but will have one coherent personality. In SD, there is a distinct presence of self-states that hold traumatic memory or take on a function/role to prevent the accessibility of traumatic memory, which may involve varying degrees of co-consciousness and awareness between self-states. These processes are not integrated into one’s personality and rather, there is a splitting into multiple disconnected states (or sometimes personalities). Within the framework of structural dissociation, severe, chronic early childhood trauma may interfere with the integration of different self-states, which can remain relatively disconnected in the service of survival (van der Hart et al., 2006).
So how can you find differentiation of Self within fragmentation especially when healing requires such differentiation and present day orientation?
Well…we do not have to know ourselves as a whole before we can begin relating to the parts of ourselves that have remained disconnected. Sometimes, learning to relate to those parts is precisely how a greater sense of wholeness begins to develop. The goal is to create more internal harmony and help to orient yourself to the presence of safety and truth that can exist in the present, differentiating the past from the present and helping ego states differentiate between then and now.
My previous blogs speak to the disconnect between ourselves and the recognition and acceptance of other parts of us. But what happens when the very parts of ourselves that we are working to differentiate from do not experience themselves as belonging to the same whole?
For individuals who experience structural dissociation, the process of differentiation can become particularly complicated. When different parts of the personality have developed around different experiences, needs, emotions, and ways of surviving, there may not be a consistent sense of I that can recognize and relate to each of them. One part may know something that another does not. One part may feel something that another cannot access. One part may experience the world as relatively safe, while another continues to experience danger that belongs to a different time. These experiences can feel contradictory, confusing, and even incompatible with one another.
And yet, each belongs to the same person.
This is where I want to make an important distinction between dissociation and differentiation. Dissociation involves a degree of disconnection between experiences that have not been sufficiently integrated. Differentiation, on the other hand, involves learning to recognize and relate to an experience without becoming entirely consumed by it. When we differentiate, we are not trying to create further separation between ourselves and our parts. Rather, we are learning how to remain connected to experiences that may otherwise overwhelm us, without requiring those experiences to define the entirety of who we are. For someone experiencing structural dissociation, this may not initially happen through an overarching sense of Self. It may begin within the parts themselves. A part can begin to recognize what it feels, what it fears, what it needs, and what it has learned to protect against. Over time, there may be increasing opportunities for one part to become aware of another, to recognize differences between their experiences, and to begin developing curiosity toward experiences that have historically felt inaccessible or threatening.
We do not need to experience ourselves as fully integrated before we can begin to develop the capacities that support integration. This is also true for those that do not structurally dissociate and identify with dissociated identities. Disintegration can happen to varying degrees. Structural dissociation is a form of disintegration; but disintegration is not synonymous to structural dissociation. For those of us that identify as one, we might experience this as disorganized attachment, showing emotional affection and closeness toward someone at times and withdrawing at other times, for example…
Sometimes, the process of becoming more connected to ourselves begins not with a clear experience of Self, but with a willingness to become acquainted with the many ways we have learned to exist.
Perhaps we begin by recognizing that what feels true for one part of us may not feel true for another. Perhaps we begin by acknowledging that the feelings, fears, and convictions we carry do not always belong to the same moment in time. Or perhaps we begin simply by creating enough room for an experience to exist without immediately needing to understand, change, or resolve it.
In this way, differentiation can become an act of connection rather than separation.
And as our capacity to recognize and relate to our different experiences develops, so too may our capacity to experience greater continuity, cooperation, and connection within ourselves.
The goal is not to reject the parts that helped us survive in pursuit of a more acceptable version of ourselves. It is to create opportunities for experiences that have existed apart to increasingly belong together. And as such, this will require a lot of toleration and will involve moving through the same Spirals of Healing that I am leading you through.
And so the process of attaining and becoming ourselves looks different for all of us. Each of our configurations is inherently complex and resourced differently. For some of us, healing will involve learning how to access more of the Self that we have always known. For others, it will involve becoming acquainted with parts of ourselves that have remained disconnected from our conscious awareness, perhaps for much of our lives. And for many of us, it will involve both. For some, healing may also include coming back to some form of Self that feels like it needed to float away long ago to protect you. The Self can feel like the safest and yet the most exploitable, which is what sometimes may cause it to contract, shrink, hide, or even float away in times where we feel like we may temporarily sever from it. In either scenario, we will have to learn to work with the parts of us that protect us in different ways and to differentiate from them in times of turbulence and when certain parts may feel more powerful than the Self we align with/wish to align with. Integration is not about eliminating the differences within ourselves. It is about increasing our capacity to recognize, tolerate, and remain connected to those differences without requiring them to exist in isolation from one another.
This is where the Spirals of Healing become particularly important. We may need to Retreat from what has caused fragmentation in the first place or when the internal world becomes overwhelming. We may experience Dysregulation as previously disconnected experiences become more accessible. And we may find ourselves returning to Toleration, again and again, as we learn to make room for experiences that have not yet found a place within our understanding of ourselves.
Each of these movements offers an opportunity to develop a different relationship with what we carry. As I introduce the later Spirals of Healing, I will continue to talk about what healing may look like for those that identify with fragmentation.
For those who experience structural dissociation, this process may involve learning to recognize that different parts of the personality can hold different understandings of the same world, the same relationships, and even the same life. The work is not to force agreement between them, but to gradually develop enough communication, cooperation, and shared awareness that these differences no longer have to remain entirely disconnected.
And perhaps this is where our understanding of Self can begin to expand.
Self may be something we inherently possess, something we learn to access, and something we come to experience more continuously through our growing capacity to relate to the many dimensions of who we are.
We do not need to know every part of ourselves to begin caring for ourselves. We do not need to resolve every internal contradiction to begin finding moments of peace and purpose. And we do not need to experience ourselves as entirely whole to begin moving toward a more integrated way of being.
Perhaps the Self is not always something we can easily locate. Sometimes, it is obscured by the experiences we have endured. Sometimes, our experiences of ourselves are so divided that the idea of wholeness feels unfamiliar, even impossible. But healing does not ask us to arrive at wholeness before we begin. It asks us to become increasingly willing to know what has remained unknown, to make room for what has remained apart, and to develop a relationship with the many ways we have learned to survive.
We are not required to abandon the many in pursuit of the one. Perhaps, in learning to hold the many, we can begin to find ourselves.
Before I resume in introducing the next Spiral of Healing in November, I am going to take another pause to introduce how complexity and fragmentation can play out within all of us, within the people we are most drawn to, like that of friends, family, acquaintances, partners, lovers, and especially those that remain undefined in our lives.
More to say…
Kindly,
Sarah