Structural Dissociation?

[WhisperingUnicorn]

Oh, thank you for the distinction!

From what we know so far, my man has access (DEFINITELY "limited) to the two primary alters, but we know there is a "wee one" he cannot access at all, and we believe there are others like that, but they haven't "voiced" themselves. So it seems my man would fall somewhere in between?

But maybe "structural dissociation" is a better way for me to understand his system cuz there is an apparently high level of "co-consciousness" or (I think this is the right term) "integration" ... He has already achieved soooo much on his own, just forcing himself to analyze/ask questions/adapt ....

 

[shimmerz]

Is pain pain if you don't feel it? Good question.

I feel qualified to answer this. Pain is not pain if you don't feel it. The injury, however is still the injury regardless of the pain. This can lead to problems.

For instance, if two people have exactly the same cut at the same time, one feels tremendous pain and the other does not, the cut still bleeds, still must be attended to for optimal health, etc. The pain is meant to be a warning signal to the 'cuttee' so that they can proactively take care of their body. Without pain, the organism can wander around with such cut, have it fester, not heal properly, because it doesn't 'feel bad'.

However, there are other indicators of pain. I have done much work on this the past few years. It is dangerous.

 

[Valentino]

and then got covered up with thought.

I'm not sure what this means. Can you explain more?

Good eye, this is a mechanism that I'm still working on understanding and describing. I see it very common with others, but I'm not sure if other's can easily recognize it, because it might be more automatic and fast happening for them.

I really like this definition of emotion from Dan Siegel in Brainstorm, It's only mentioned once in the book, not sure why he wouldn't repeat it more:

Now add to this the reality that these emotional sensations are doing exactly what emotions do, they are getting us to “evoke motion,” e-motion. They create a state of mind in which our whole system, our brain and whole body, is being readied to take action. -- Dan Siegel

Before this definition, I also like Karla McLaren's expansion & reference to Antonio Damasio's definition:

Damasio also puts forward the idea that emotions are “action-requiring neurological programs,” which is such a wonderful way of approaching them. And in my work, I had already done just that! So, for instance, fear requires that you take action to orient to change and novelty, or to avoid physical harm. Anger requires that you take action to protect or restore your sense of self or your standpoint (or the selves and standpoints of others, if your anger is related to social justice). Shame requires that you take action to avoid injuring others or yourself (if the shame is authentic to you. It’s important to first identify whether the shame has been applied as a control mechanism from the outside). Sadness requires that you take action to let go of something that isn’t working anyway, and grief requires that you actively mourn something that is lost irretrievably. And so forth.
--- source: http://karlamclaren.com/emotions-are-action-requiring-neurological-programs-revisited/

So I'm going to hypothesize that an experience starts with an emotion, something that comes from within the brain and body in response or reaction to some sort of stimulus. The design of the emotion is to 'evoke motion', or more technically they are 'neurological programs' readying the mind/body for some sort of action.

The problem comes in with people who have been threat conditioned to be afraid of emotions (feeling, expressing, listening, following, etc). Emotions from within have become the 'threat' focus instead of actual danger and risks from external sources.

Then instead of using story and thoughts to add perspective and context to the emotion, thoughts are used to work against or cover up the emotion. Blame, guilt, projection, or transference are common ways to use thought to cover up emotions. The short term benefit is that there is no more need to respond to the emotion (response-ability is transferred to the external), the long term downside is that it creates a stuck 'victim' mentality role. This is where someone else or the external world has to change in order for that emotion to complete.

Going back to the 4D model: emotions come first, then they want to be embodied with felt sensations, but the thinking brain steps in and stops the feelings and expressions (due to the mind's ability to over-ride emotions in the face of perceived threat). Thoughts (beliefs & stories of projections or transference) are now used to dis-own, dismiss, ignore, avoid, deny, smother, distract, etc.; essentially to weaken and bury the emotion into an unresolved state of memory stored in the body. And the timekeeper part of the brain (time dimension) never comes in with a proper time-stamp, so whenever this memory is revisited, it feels like it's happening in real time present moment urgency. Reinforcing a vicious loop cycle of emotional memory flashbacks, getting retraumatized and re-storing that memory with like or higher emotional charge.

Also the thought element of 'proper perspective and context' gets lost in the shuffle. So these fractured memories often are stuck emotional charges (evoking motion that gets stopped) matched with projection thoughts; to push the responsibility of motion onto external sources, or to procrastinate dealing with the emotion until later time.

Essentially it's a case that likely originated because of confused and distorted boundaries, that has led to a situation where higher brain functions are in an internal war struggle with lower brain warning and survival mechanisms. Proper and healthy boundaries need to be rediscovered and defined. But the nervous system is too distracted and exhausted from this inner war. Excessive attachment to thoughts, beliefs and identity story, might be a way to compensate for poor relational boundaries. To ease the confusion of not knowing where one's emotions start and end compared to where other's emotions start and end. Certainty, limitations, and structure is now found in beliefs, thoughts, story, role, identity, habits, righteousness, etc. Maybe these thought boundary fill ins are what make up ANPs?

Anyway.... sort of a clunky and quick response, this is still a work in progress. Hope some of it was helpful and not too controversial.

 

[WhisperingUnicorn]

oh my goodness .. I'm only about halfway caught up on this thread, SOOOO much good stuff here!

core person - ANP - EP - child parts - deceased (infant) twin - PLAY, CARE, et al - integration - lost soul / found ...

I am reeling! But I see my man even more clearly through reading your stories/shared experiences! I always told him he was "exquisite" .. I believe it more FIRMLY now than ever. For every one of you who have shared here, I'd say the same for you ..

df. "exquisite" =
1. of special beauty or charm, or rare and appealing excellence, as a face, a flower, coloring, music, or poetry.
2. extraordinarily fine or admirable; consummate: such as "exquisite weather."
3. intense; acute, or keen, as pleasure or pain.
4. of rare excellence of production or execution, as works of art or workmanship: such as "the exquisite statues of the Renaissance."
5. keenly or delicately sensitive or responsive: "an exquisite ear for music; an exquisite sensibility."
6. of particular refinement or elegance, as taste, manners, etc., or persons.
7. carefully sought out, chosen, ascertained, devised, etc.

I cannot even BEGIN to tell you how much GOOD I am able to take away from all this .. And I'm only halfway through this, so far?

SO MUCH HOPE AND HEALING!

~S2B

 

[shimmerz]

I always told him he was "exquisite" .. I believe it more FIRMLY now than ever. For every one of you who have shared here, I'd say the same for you ..

Wow! Could I use you around more often. I have been called a ton of things through all of this, but never anything close to exquisite. Your exquisite suffer is very lucky to have such an exquisite supporter like you! It is a tough thread. I tip my hat to you for loving so exquisitely that you would put this much effort in. :hug::hug::hug:

 

[shimmerz]

Okay, this is what I am feeling. Like I am a fly stuck in a cobweb. The centre of that cobweb being my ANP and all the other strands various bits and pieces of EP's. I am not certain that looking at this model is not a bit too overwhelming for me. In some cases yes. My 'run away and die' EP is returning to me. This is not a good thing. I would like to focus on her. I am going to try and stop overwhelming my EP's with focusing on the minutiae. I am going to look at this like I look at triggering. I used to trigger over stupid things with the reaction being benign. The larger and more dangerous reactions were the things that I really needed to put my energy into. I almost feel like I have given EP's free rein to run the show because I am so busy trying to identify them. Nope. No more. Isn't working for me. I am losing control in a bad way.

So I will focus on my little girl who wants to die right now. She needs the most care. She needs to know where she is staying. Needs to know I can keep her safe. I haven't quite figured out how I will do that yet but she is who I need to help right now. Focus.....

 

[Eleanor]

@ Valentino - this is great stuff. VERY helpful indeed...

The problem comes in with people who have been threat conditioned to be afraid of emotions (feeling, expressing, listening, following, etc). Emotions from within have become the 'threat' focus instead of actual danger and risks from external sources.

Misidentification of the threat. Brilliant. Bad training/conditioning. A spin off of Pavlov's famous experiment - he got the dogs to salivate at the PRIOR stimulus instead of the appropriate one. Here is the insight that spun me a number of years ago, just because the dogs salivated at a bell one shouldn't infer that they wanted to eat the bell. Or even that they were hungry. The difference with emotions is that emotions are meaning, so when we are habituated to feel FEAR or PANIC in response to expressing our natural emotions because they are consistently (enough) followed by rejection or abuse, THAT it the transition that needs retraining. FEAR and PANIC inhibit or turn OFF other emotional response systems - presumably before they are done, and so... that activation... what, gets put "on hold?"

And the timekeeper part of the brain (time dimension) never comes in with a proper time-stamp, so whenever this memory is revisited, it feels like it's happening in real time present moment urgency. Reinforcing a vicious loop cycle of emotional memory flashbacks, getting retraumatized and re-storing that memory with like or higher emotional charge.

So the system NEVER GETS TO COMPLETE THE CYCLE. This would explain why it is so important to "stay present" when the EP is activated, and how important it is to have "backup" in case one 'slips" and needs help re-grounding.

This would seem to me to imply that there are a couple of kinds of "stuckness" the habitual (where a specific system is stuck in a high level of activation and doesn't successfully integrate with the rest as in SD and DID) or developmental - and the more straightforward single trauma stuckness. Where one is in a disaster or victim of a crime and it just can't get... completed for whatever reason.

Then instead of using story and thoughts to add perspective and context to the emotion, thoughts are used to work against or cover up the emotion. Blame, guilt, projection, or transference are common ways to use thought to cover up emotions. The short term benefit is that there is no more need to respond to the emotion (response-ability is transferred to the external), the long term downside is that it creates a stuck 'victim' mentality role. This is where someone else or the external world has to change in order for that emotion to complete.

So lets see if I've got this right. Instead of time stamping and integrating the emotional experience into genuine memory (where other integrated systems can appropriately identify it) and thus initiating a feedback cycle that will better calibrate emotional response in the future, and generate more adaptive responses as a result, the system gets stuck as is - and no learning can take place. When tertiary emotions (socially constructed ones which misalign the emotional response system with the appropriate objects) are trained in a way that they turn the opposite direction they are supposed to (FEAR and PANIC are external after all) the whole system gets.... f*cked, for lack of a better term.

Just thinking through out loud here.

Blame as I see it properly described is when one person expects another person to internalize the first person's anger toward the second person. Basically to become angry at yourself. I gotta say, the more I think about blame, the less sense it makes to me. And this model of it would make clear why blaming someone else is essentially pointless. 1) It is hard to be/sustain anger at oneself, and not particularly helpful. 2) It mobilizes an emotion relative to events which have already occurred and so cannot be responded to.

Guilt is about rejecting yourself - disowning previous actions. It is about PANIC. This one is a lot easier to habituate a child to by simply rejecting them when they do something, if the adult is modeling this, the kid will eventually pick it up. Monkey see...

Projection and transference.. I have to think about more.

Thoughts (beliefs & stories of projections or transference) are now used to dis-own, dismiss, ignore, avoid, deny, smother, distract, etc.; essentially to weaken and bury the emotion into an unresolved state of memory stored in the body.

Figure out and demonstrate the mechanism of this ... win a Nobel Prize?

Maybe these thought boundary fill ins are what make up ANPs?

Really interesting... ANP's make up ... I don't know, prosthetic emotional systems? Just enough to get by?

almost feel like I have given EP's free rein to run the show because I am so busy trying to identify them.

But you HAVE identified them. So now the task is to ground yourself and work with them one at a time.... or with a T in rapid succession. Yes? So they can get more experience, get all the way through the emotional response in a supportive context so the system can turn OFF, and the experience get encoded and the system re-calibrated. Most of this stuff should, if the theory is right, happen automatically. The bit that is tough and painful is staying present while the EP is on line and has its say.

My T session today was all about old grief, and giving that bit of me (which really seems to run a lot of my show..) what she needed - attachment, to be important - to come first. LOTS of ambivalence about this... but that is the story of my daily struggle...

 

[greenleaf]

Is pain pain if you don't feel it? Good question.

I guess it would be more accurate to say it gets... disappeared. It is very odd.

I think that people with structural dissociation can have parts that feel certain pains -- or sometimes feel certain parts of the body. When that "part" is not active, the part and pain might not be in one's daily-life consciousness. These other parts are still sort of aware, though, from what I understand; I wonder if they are fully conscious, though, or sort of on hold? Are they feeling the pain all the time, or do they go mostly inactive to tamp it down? This stuff is confusing, and probably not well understood by anyone I bet... maybe the folks researching this will do MRIs; if there is greatly reduced activity in areas that turn out to be related to parts holding pain, for instance, maybe those parts don't sit there suffering constantly... I hope they don't...

 

[sun seeker]

I'm only just reading this thread now after a few people referred to it. I haven't gotten very far yet but intend to get through it, and all the links. It's a helpful thing to understand and I thank every one of you who have contributed. For a long time I've felt "split" and living at least two realities simultaneously, aware of both; in the more adult one I feel like I am living a lie and can only manage to believe it for short periods of time and in the childlike one I feel ashamed and fear losing my place in the adult world... And a lot of the time I am so spaced out it's more like being a robot. A goal for a few years now has been to integrate the two (or more), but though I'm now more aware of them, I haven't had much success. There was a moment the other day when I felt I was coming close.

So far, there is one thing I want to respond to:

"1. If you have DID, or DID-NOS (I forget what the DSM-V now calls it), are you ALWAYS in a part, or do you ever feel like you're not? Or is it just impossible to really know because there are so many parts and it's just one of the apparently normal ones in the driver's seat?

This caught my attention. I don't have DID, but I don't have one solid identity, either. Like an empty shell, with different parts flitting through. I'm realizing now, thinking about it, that there is a sort of managing director telling which parts to come forward when. But that managing director doesn't feel like "me" either. It's like a tiny point of awareness in the back of my head.

Thinking about this question, something startling came to me. I do healing work. That is when I feel the most "me". There is a sense of peace, of rightness, of oneness with what I am doing. Now is that because that is really who I am, or because at those times I am acting as a channel for the energy flowing through me but "I" am still empty? Interesting, thought provoking stuff this.

 

[sun seeker]

He got there and... it is not that he felt better, it is that he no longer noticed that he felt so crappy, and stayed for hours. Later than me! We both teach, and we almost never miss, and have both regularly taught (and seemed FINE) and not noticed how sick we were until class ended, even though as we were walking up to class we each thought things like "sensible people stay home when they are this sick..."

In severe DID, the kind where there is missing time and no awareness between the alters, each alter can have different physical characteristics, even different medical conditions. I didn't know people could do this with less extreme dissociation. Interesting.

Sorry if someone has mentioned that already, I'm still reading...

 

[sun seeker]

This is good to know. Apparently secure attachment is huge in all of this as well and was not part of my environment when the split occurred. Oddly enough I have been dealing with a ton of 'attachment' issues to key people in my life since the melt down. The above paragraph (to me) means I don't have to worry about further 'splits' as DID affected people do.

My computer won't let me quote the statement the above is in response to; it was about how in structural dissociation further splits won't occur. It took me several times reading this for my brain to take it in for some reason. I have a question about this.

Above I wrote about having a child part that holds my shame. That, I've been aware of as long as I can remember. But more recently, within maybe the past 18 months, I've become aware of another child part that I actually like and that is easy for the adult part of me to be with and nurture. I can be co-conscious, the adult part soothing and talking to the child part. But it feels like a different child part. So where did it come from? If it isn't possible to split further, where do these new parts come from? Or have they been there all along and only come to light when we begin to heal? Is it possible to integrate them with the other parts?

Sorry, seems I had more than one question!

 

[shimmerz]

Now is that because that is really who I am, or because at those times I am acting as a channel for the energy flowing through me but "I" am still empty?

Sun, I believe that when we channel healing we are attuning to our 'higher selves'. Part of the work I am doing with trying to get to my SELF as opposed to my EP and ANP, I believe the EP and ANP are constructs whereas the higher self is not affected by our embodiment. I attach to the higher self through meditation, healing, keeping high energy. I believe the higher self is closer to self than anything else. My plan is to use the higher self stuff to get a sense of SELF and continue faking i til I make it. Not sure if that makes sense or not, but that is my strategy.