Structural Dissociation?

[Hope4Now]

she had released a bunch of stuff - she looked physically different. It made quite an impression on me...
And it took me A LONG time to be able to do something like that.

The workshop sounds awesome. It makes me happy to think that you can do this yourself sometimes now. It gives me hope that maybe I will be able to as well :) Not that it makes it any easier for you. But really, thank you for sharing that. I'm stuck in this hideous place where I suddenly realize what is happening with me (and I do mean "realize" in the psychological sense, the opposite of de-realize). And it is very scary. Your response gives me some hope...because I've read enough to know that releasing/processing is what it takes to heal, as hideous as that process is.

 

[Hope4Now]

There is actual conversation going on between the two parts now. I have no idea how that is happening given that the EP is so infantile.

This is really good, especially if they can continue to learn to be supportive of each other with your help (help from the real you SELF). I think of "listening" to the infant part as a sort of translation. Infants can't speak in words but they "speak" in all kinds of other ways, and when we're attuned to them, we "know" what they need. Of course figuring out how to give an inner infant what it needs is rather more challenging that a real one (at least in my experience).

Unbelievably freaking fascinating. Now, unfortunately, this has come at a cost to the ANP part. It's part's veneer (for lack of a better word) is no longer super incredibly efficient, clever, sophisticated, charming, functional, etc. She has been taught by the EP that she must be willing to make mistakes, to be less than perfect, to forgive herself. That has come with a high cost and I now feel, that given the social position I am in, the 'whole system' may perish (die). Integration. Not for the faint of heart.

I don't know if any of what I am about to write will make sense to you or anyone else, but I offer it for consideration anyway. Who knows? (Today, I have on socks that say, "Shoot for the moon, and if you hit Mars...BONUS!")

The whole system perishing is what some of my protector parts have been terrified of all this time. (The protectors in this being ANPs...my super functional parts). Much of the work I've been doing on my own and in psychotherapy is on getting the parts I've gotten to know to talk with each other, as you describe. It has been an awful slogging process, and I have continually had the sense that something is just not working right. And overall, I have seemed to be getting worse rather than better in terms of flashbacks and getting hijacked by parts and all sorts of other symptoms. One of the biggest issues has been that my whole emotional system has been pretty much shut down--well, not totally numb, but very, very constricted. I know for all this therapy and trauma processing to work, one has to open one's heart to all of the parts with love and acceptance and compassion. I've not been able to drum up much of any of this for any of my parts in spite of my efforts.

Part of that is because I have some pretty mean protector parts that get in the way. Have spent lots of therapy time working on managing those parts so I can get to know other parts as SELF, not a protector/ANP. I think what's been getting in the way all this time is that what I thought was my SELF (the conscious "I" that is aware of most of what goes on), actually isn't my SELF, but an observer part with no emotion.

One of the major breakthroughs I've had this past week is realizing that all this time in therapy and doing mindfulness stuff, it has been ANP(s) and or EPs up...no real SELF energy (as in the larger self or the authentic self) compassionately managing all the parts. But something major shifted after my big crisis on Monday and I seem to have discovered my SELF energy and managed to locate it inside my body (so that's actually two major breakthroughs). Interacting with my parts from that "place"/"perspective" of SELF feels completely different. Of course my therapist has been talking about this for 18 months, but I finally "get" it. I'm not fighting my parts any more. They are fighting with each other, but I'm there now, too, not as ANPs or EPs but as SELF (which doesn't really get talked about in all the stuff about structural dissociation, but is a huge part of IFS therapy which is supposedly really effective for dissociative issues).

I guess I offer this up in response to your comment, @shimmerz, because it sounds as if your ANP and EP are being so hard on each other and kind of afraid of each other and also afraid of what will happen to you next. I wonder if they know there is a YOU there to take care of them.

 

[shimmerz]

@Hope4Now , no they don't. I thought my ANP was my-SELF. What you say makes absolute sense though. If ANP is a part and EP is a part I thought that I was to create a SELF through merging those two parts. You are saying the SELF is already their, or is it a construct once you get to a certain point of merging the two parts? Very interested in your response and thank you so much for you posting. So appreciate your (everyone's really) perspective.

My EP has one more thing to say

:hug::hug::hug::hug::hug:

'nuf of that - ANP back online :cool:

 

[Hope4Now]

Am sort of starting to figure it all out, but it's different for everyone. One of the things that led me to this point of understanding is that my therapist is forever asking if my parts are aware that I am there (as in SELF). And they never have been other than sort of vaguely cognizant of something invisible and uncertain. Then, on Tuesday of this week, it clicked. Totally different experience. I can't sustain it for long and it's hard to get back there, but I know what it feels like now to relate to my parts from my SELF.

You (and others) might find this link interesting. It is about Internal Family Systems Therapy and is quite a good description of parts. IFS takes a non-pathologizing view of parts...assumes all of us have parts...and provides a model for understanding their relationships. It is somewhat, kind of parallel to the structural dissociation paradigm. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. I see an IFS therapist and an IFS psychiatrist so its been that language and paradigm I've been working on...but somehow having the structural dissociation paradigm to consider alongside it really helped things make more sense. http://www.selfleadership.org/about-internal-family-systems.html

 

[Hope4Now]

You are saying the SELF is already their, or is it a construct once you get to a certain point of merging the two parts?

Yes, the SELF is already there. Just covered up/buried in parts. That's the IFS paradigm.

I think the paradigm offered by the structural dissociation authors, and others who write about DID and other dissociative disorders do not take for granted this notion of the SELF. In some of these writings it does seem that the ANP is the self, and that there are multiple selves when there are more than one ANP...and the work is to integrate in order to create a self.

I think the IFS concept makes much much more sense. And it feels completely right in my body as well. My gut (literally) says it's true. The "work" that has to get done is the same...trauma processing, integration, etc. but the perspective is different.

 

[Eleanor]

I seem to have discovered my SELF energy and managed to locate it inside my body (so that's actually two major breakthroughs). Interacting with my parts from that "place"/"perspective" of SELF feels completely different.

Thank you for this and the link - REALLY interesting, Hope... This is, upon reflection, what my T practices although she doesn't use the same language, but the structure/dynamic is the same...

 

[shimmerz]

Hmmmm, 'conceiving of the mind as an inner family'...... this gives me an image to really work with. Not a functional one, mind you, but an image just the same. Yes, @Hope4Now , great link, thank you so much!

 

[shimmerz]

Forgive me, I may post some thoughts and don't want to keep editing the same thread.

So then I am reading the article above (IFS) as follows.
1. Manager is the ANP,
2. Exile the EP, which is this emotional disregulation of mine, the one that swings wildly back and forth, sometimes within an instant?

What then is the firefighter? Where does that fit in? It doesn't seem to be an ANP function. Is it another EP function (compulsive? is that a reaction to an emotion?) lol. I am so stupid when it comes to figuring out this emotional thing. Seriously, kick me to the curb if I am all off base here. lol.

 

[shimmerz]

"She was angry at this voice and was telling it to just leave her alone. I asked her why she was so rude to the pessimist, and she went on a long diatribe, describing how that voice had made every step she took in life a major struggle."

Isn't this typically the first part of integration? The knowing of the part, and being so horribly angry about it - wanting it to 'go away' or 'die'?

I notice in the paragraph following this quote that different 'parts' inter-relate. I picture a huge Italian Catholic family here (no disrespect here intended, it is just what popped into my head), each person with a long history, one sister who had pissed off another along the way playing into the communication of the present moment, and multiply that by 3 full generations of this family - and perhaps that might be a snapshot of my head and how it communicates. No idea if this makes sense at all - but what the hell....

 

[Hope4Now]

What then is the firefighter? Where does that fit in? It doesn't seem to be an ANP function. Is it another EP function (compulsive? is that a reaction to an emotion?) lol. I am so stupid when it comes to figuring out this emotional thing. Seriously, kick me to the curb if I am all off base here. lol.

You are most definitely not stupid.
I am also not an expert in IFS. More of a novice, I think, given how slow on the uptake I've been.
In my tangled up attempt at synthesizing all this, it seems to me that firefighters are kind of non-functional manager parts...very extreme...so maybe a kind of hybrid of ANP and EP. Both managers and firefighters are "protector" parts. That is, they are functioning under the belief that they need to protect the SELF from being overwhelmed by the pain the exiles are holding/stuck in (and also, I think, against any current external stress and/or traumatization). But their methods of coping are leftover from the past and not suitably adapted to the present even though the approach may have been a survival technique in the past that allowed the SELF to come through trauma unscathed. Or they developed later (e.g., drinking, drugging, cutting, starving, etc.) as an extreme way of coping, especially when the managers don't seem to be enough.

 

[Eleanor]

I would think about it like this: The ANP is the SEEKING system mainly - keeping needs met, maintaining homeostasis etc. the EP's are the bits stuck in PANIC, FEAR and ANGER mostly. Because the biological drive is to get these systems to turn OFF when they are activated up high, other systems (MATING, PLAY, CARE, various basic kinds of pain or direct chemical intervention through drugs or experiential through thrills) can get kicked in to "over-ride" the uncomfortable ones.

This model may be limited here tho... I've no idea how more than one ANP could work. And I don't have a very good hypothesis about what the SELF (the compassionate, courageous etc. consciousness) might be...

 

[shimmerz]

So then the manager one manages day to day survival (ie, life), ANP, and the other is responsible for regulating the steam (firefighter) that the EP puts off with emotions? What do you mean hybrid? This is where Shimmerz starts to spin.....lol