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In my prior article, What is Hypervigilance and How Is It Related to Unresolved Trauma?, I focused on the unconscious trauma-related defense mechanism of hypervigilance.
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| Healing Trauma |
In the current article I'm focusing on how trauma therapy can help you to integrate the various split off parts of yourself.
What Are Split Off Parts of Yourself?
When you're trying to cope as best you can with traumatic situations, a common unconscious temporary coping strategy is to "zone out" or dissociate from your thoughts, feelings or circumstances (see my article: Discovering Disowned Parts of Yourself).
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| Healing Trauma |
This coping strategy is relevant at all ages, but it's especially relevant if you're a young child because young children haven't developed the necessary skills and strategies to deal with dysfunction happening around them--whether the dysfunction is a chaotic family, unpredictable parents, abusive or neglectful parents, substance abusing parents or other similar traumatic situations.
As a child, when you're not emotionally or psychologically equipped to deal with trauma, being able to dissociate (or "zone out") is an adaptive survival strategy when what is happening around you is overwhelming and traumatic.
Dissociation is a way your mind protects you by compartmentalizing events or circumstances that would otherwise cause you overwhelming stress. The overwhelming stress of childhood trauma is especially difficult if there is no one to help you to manage it.
Dissociation creates a sense of detachment from overwhelming stress and it can allow you to function reasonably well in other areas of your life.
For example, even though there might be highly traumatic dynamics in your home, if you compartmentalize these dynamics, you can excel academically or in sports and anyone who doesn't know your family dynamics might not be aware that you're being traumatized at home because you appear to be a "normal" child in every other way.
Why is Integrating Split Off Parts of Yourself Essential For Healing from Trauma?
Everything I have mentioned so far about dissociation sounds adaptive, so why is there a need to integrate the parts of yourself that have been dissociated?
As I mentioned previously, dissociation is a temporary unconscious solution during traumatic circumstances but, as an adult, you pay a price for the parts of yourself you have dissociated.
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| Healing Trauma |
First, it's important to understand that, unlike dissociation, psychological integration is a strong indicator of positive mental health because it involves bringing together various parts of your personality, thoughts, feelings and behavior into a cohesive whole.
Second, psychological integration leads to increased self awareness, self reflective capacity, emotional regulation and resilience.
However, when you have dissociated parts of yourself, you can experience a lack of self awareness and emotional dysregulation and a lack of psychological integration.
Dissociated parts can also create problems in your adult relationships because you might externalize your problems by blaming others and projecting dissociated negative feelings about yourself on your partner, which can be an obstacle to healthy relationships.
How Does Trauma Therapy Help to Integrate Split Off Parts of Yourself
Trauma therapy is an umbrella term for many different types of therapy including:
- EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
- AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy)
- Parts Work Therapy (including Internal Family Systems, also known as IFS, and Ego States Therapy)
- Hypnotherapy (also known as Clinical Hypnosis)
Clinical Vignette
As mentioned above, there are different types of trauma therapy.
The following clinical vignette, which is a composite of many cases, illustrates how Parts Work Therapy can help with integrating dissociated parts:
Bob
When he was a child, Bob grew up in a family where his father was a severe alcoholic and his mother had an eating disorder.
Whenever Bob's father, Jim, drank at night, he would become enraged, scream at Bob's mother, Bob and his two older brothers. Sometimes Jim would get so angry that he would go on a drunken rampage throughout the house where he would break furniture.
Bob's mother, Anna, was so frightened that she would cower in the corner of the room with Bob and his brothers. She was afraid Jim might physically abuse them. Although he never got violent with them, there was always the fear that his drunken rage would end in physical violence.
After his drunken rampages, Jim would be physically exhausted. Then, he would beg Anna to help him to go up the stairs to bed. At that point, Anna was so relieved his rage was over that she would help him to walk up the stairs so he could collapse in his bed.
Afterwards, Anna would come downstairs in a state of anxiety and she would binge eat. Typically, she would eat a few boxes of donuts, cereal, cookies, a couple of bags of potato chips and leftovers from dinner until she felt sick and then she would go upstairs to sleep in a separate bedroom from Jim.
After their father went to sleep, Bob's brothers would disappear into their own bedrooms and lock their doors. As a result, Bob was left alone with no one to talk to about his father's drunken rampage and his mother's eating disorder. So, he would climb the stairs to his own bedroom and stare at the ceiling for hours until he eventually fell asleep.
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| Healing Trauma in Trauma Therapy |
As an adult, when Bob started trauma therapy, he didn't remember much of his childhood at first. He remembered doing well academically and in sports, but the rest of his childhood was a blur because he had dissociated it.
He sought help in therapy because he was having problems in his relationship with Nina, a woman he had been dating for a year. She asked him to get help because she was fed up with him blaming her for his problems.
Before processing the trauma, his therapist worked with Bob to help him to develop better coping skills. She taught him mindfulness meditation. She also encouraged him to journal to increase his self reflective capacity.
When his therapist assessed he was prepared to process his traumatic childhood, she introduced him to Parts Work Therapy (see my article: Getting to Know the Many Parts of Yourself in Parts Work Therapy).
They started slowly so Bob could get the sense of what it means to have different internal aspects of himself. Gradually, he became aware that, just like everyone else, he had many internal parts and shifting self states and this was normal (see my article: Understanding. Your Shifting Self States).
When his therapist assessed Bob was ready to work on his unresolved trauma, she asked him to bring in pictures of himself from childhood. Since his family didn't take a lot of pictures when he was a child, Bob could only find two pictures of himself.
He hadn't seen these pictures in a long time and when he looked at them in his therapy session, he was surprised to see himself as a young child sitting by himself with a blank stare. It was at that moment when Bob understood how dissociated he had been when he was a child.
He also realized why he didn't have many memories from that time--his experiences had been dissociated and compartmentalized so that they were inaccessible to him at that point.
As Bob gazed at his pictures, he felt a deep sense of compassion for his childhood self and Parts Work Therapy helped him to reconnect to that part of himself (see my article: Self Compassion as an Essential Part of Trauma Recovery.
Over time, Bob sensed his younger self coming alive again. He was able to reconnect with his younger self and imagine he could give his younger self what he didn't get as a child.
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| Healing Trauma in Trauma Therapy |
Gradually, as Bob became more psychologically integrated, he developed a greater sense of self awareness, self reflective capacity and a capacity for emotional regulation.
His girlfriend noticed the difference which helped to improve their relationship.
After he overcame his anger towards his parents, Bob felt compassion for them too because he realized each of them had been traumatized when they were younger (see my article: What is Intergenerational Trauma?).
Conclusion
Dissociation is a unconscious survival strategy that temporarily helps to deal with overwhelming events or circumstances.
However, over time, even though dissociation is temporarily helpful, it creates problems in terms of a lack of psychological integration.
Traumatic dissociation, especially dissociation that occurs over time, is an obstacle to psychological integration and positive mental health.
Trauma therapy can help to integrate the dissociated parts of yourself so you can develop increased self awareness, emotional regulation and healthy relationships.
Getting Help in Trauma Therapy
If you think unresolved trauma is an obstacle to your well-being, you could benefit from working with a licensed mental health professional who is a trauma therapist.
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| Getting Help in Trauma Therapy |
A skilled trauma therapist, who has advanced skills and training in trauma recovery, can help you to work through unresolved trauma.
Rather than struggling on your own, seek help in trauma therapy so you can lead a more fulfilling life.
About Me
I am a licensed New York psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR, AEDP, EFT (for couples), Somatic Experiencing and Sex Therapist.
I have over 20 years of experience helping individual adults and couples (see my article: What is a Trauma Therapist?).
I offer in person therapy in my Greenwich Village office or online sessions.
To find out more about me, visit my website: Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.
To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.
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