Is This Structural Dissociation?

[ms spock]

People talked about how self love was important, and I always thought but I am such a bad person, there can be no self love for me, and it turns out that Self Compassion is the key for my Complex Trauma - Developmental Challenges - my Serious Attachment issues and my PTSD. I would never have believed it though.

 

[kona355]

People talked about how self love was important, and I always thought but I am such a bad person, there...

You carry the sacred gift of life within you. What you've been through has tried to destroy that life and probably maimed it, but at your sacred core, you remain.

It's hard to see, much less feel this truth, like living in a cave while others bask in the sun. The sun exists always. I believe part of the power of therapy is the hope that one day we'll feel that warm self-love, like the sun shining through.

 

[ms spock]

There is not sacred core here @kona355 - well maybe there is - but I can't find it - and then I can - but it is some severe fragmentation with barely a glimpse of the the other parts.

Therapy, for me was a place of extreme abuse and exploitation - emotional, intellectual, spiritual, sexual and my own life force - people who didn't want to finish off their own therapy and instead became therapists in order to act their stuff out on their clients. I am very suspicious of people who want to become therapists because as I see it happening in Australia - it is people who don't have the guts to really do their own therapy and get into therapy to try to get their clients to do what they really need to be doing.

So therapy is not a safe space for me - and that is a big impediment in my healing process.

Australia has the highest rate of psychologists in the world per capita with the worst training facilities. It is a double whammy. Incompetent and dangerous psychologists supervising and training another level of incompetency and dangerousness in their students. I was passed around one group of psychologists for an emotional gang bang. They were all into that sacred core body work stuff so I am not so at ease with that.

 

[kona355]

There is not sacred core here @kona335 - well maybe there is - but I can't find it - and then I can - bu...

My head is spinning just reading what has happened to you with therapists doing those things. But when I think back, I've heard some of the same things happening here.

I'm sorry for this happening to you. It was and is criminal and makes me angry to my core. Abusers with credentials are those who Christ said would be better if they had never been born, for a special hell awaits them.

The fact you have survived this far and are able to contribute the way you have on this site is evidence to me of those good fragments you mentioned having glimpses of.

I should have made a distinction between new age sacred core, and the sacredness I meant of being that part of us that defines who we are when all the wounds, scars, and poisons are removed. That's what ideal therapy is supposed to do, right? Help us find that part deep down, so deep even the evil ones couldn't reach it?

At least this is my hope, it's what I think I struggle for, to find that part of me living so deep even I can't find it, but somehow I believe it's there. This make any sense at all?

 

[ms spock]

It does, that part came to the surface a few months ago for me. I knew it came back but I don't know what to do about it or how to access it. Interesting.

 

[ms spock]

I think if I can contact the part that does the eating that might help in giving up the eating rather than just wildly trying to do things without that insight.

It depends, some days, on who actually turns up.

I have a kid part that I come from with my partner - you know joking around and be cute. I didn't realise that until today. Gosh I have got some stuff to sort out. Better to know it though, than just be confused about things.

 

[ms spock]

So I am struggling a bit with this - it feels a little overwhelming - but that is just my amgydala doing it's thing.

 

[Ellabella44]

It is overwhelming, things can eventually go smoother. Like with the self compassion I have fragments that have very strong emotion. And when I do the meditations, I am comforting the fragment that has that emotion.

If fear comes up for example, it is my youngest fragment who needs to be reassured. The "I'm sorry this is so hard for you" is for her not adult state. It's well selves compassion instead of for just one self. But included is compassion for having the fragments. Hope that helps a bit.

 

[ms spock]

Thanks Ellabella44, it does help, the very least knowing that I am not alone, and that others have this as well, and practical suggestions are always greatly valued and highly appreciated. I can do that. I can manage that. Thanks.

 

[ms spock]

I experience parts as well. And I also find it very confusing and sometimes doubt that this even is a thing, even when I know it is. I don't have DID since I don't have any memory loss and I always feel like I'm me, if that makes sense. Just differents sides or parts of me. My therapist has diagnosed me with DDNOS, which is a form of structural dissociation as well, only not as separated and split up like DID i guess.

Interesting. I doubt as well.

I'm starting in a therapy group soon which follows this manual

Dead Link Removed

I started to read it. It is intense I think it might be as big for me as David Burn's book "Feeling Good" and "The Mindful Way Through Depression".

many people with developmental trauma have had to separate these sides or parts more when we were younger, simply to be able to function in life, or to survive. It's not really a necessary coping mechanism any more though, but my fragmented mind hasn't yet realized that I'm safe now.

Me either.

Anyway, my therapist says that the first goal often is to accept every part of yourself, even the lashing out parts. So here comes self-compassion again I guess. Have you noticed how you relate to the different sides of you? My strategy so far has been judge them all. Not helpful.

Yes it is not helpful. I don't know what to make of it. Though I am terribly ashamed of the lashing out part to the point I just detach from it, which is also not helpful. Though by stopping myself from speaking, doing lots of exercise and Mindfulness I am not doing that as much, well that is the hope.

 

[ms spock]

I don't know if I am sick and in pain or it is a flashback type of thing or if it is somatisation. Other people have these problems!

 

[Saria]

Though by stopping myself from speaking, doing lots of exercise and Mindfulness I am not doing that as much, well that is the hope

Sounds like you're taking steps in the right direction, no doubt! I'm impressed by all the things you do to get better - working on cognitive distortions, doing mindfulness and Tai Chi ++, the self-compassion challenge and everything. Structural dissociation may seem confusing and weird and different from other symptoms, but in the end it seems to me like (almost) everything is about intergration. Mindfulness promotes integration in the mind, compassion and loving kindness meditation as well. Dan Siegel writes that integration is the core mechanism in the cultivation of well-being. Maybe integration in structural dissociation is a little different, I don't know, but to me it helps to normalize it all, and gives me confidence and hope that my dissociative symptoms might be improving even when I'm not directly focusing on working with parts etc.