I’m not going to try to defend the concept of dissociation – that’s too big a job, I don’t have the credentials for it, etc. So I’m going to write assuming that readers can just accept the idea for the moment, for the sake of argument.

I experienced a “shock” trauma in the hospital when I was 3 years old, in 1950, and had my tonsils taken out. I was rolled into the operating room, my mother had to stay outside, and I got very scared. The staff held me down, kicking and screaming, while a nurse put the yellow ether mask over my face (that’s how they delivered anesthesia then) and I lost consciousness. I have a “flashbulb” memory of those events. Have had, all the years since then.

I also remember waking up, alone, and my throat horribly painful. But what I did not recall, until about 4 years ago, was how horrible and unbearable it was to feel alone, abandoned, not cared about. That memory just emerged out of the “blue”, in a way, as I was telling my therapist about a cousin who I felt was trying to dominate me. Only I didn’t know I was feeling like she was trying to dominate me, just that I didn't like how she was acting – that feeling of someone (female) trying to dominate me was connected with how I felt about the nurse all those years ago, and not part of my normal conscious experience up until then.

I adapted as a child by trying to be a “good girl”. Most of my adult life I found my identity in roles and rules. Had some friends but no really close ones as an adult, except for my late husband. I had kind of an off/on switch with my anger/rage. Could usually “control” it, keep it “off”. But then I didn’t have the feelings associated with being “hurt”, either, as I said, and couldn’t interpret social nuance. Was likely "emotionally unavailable".

My feelings – and my capacity to sustain an authentic ego/container/”skin” -- came “back to life”, so to speak, through the process of “having a relationship” with my therapist. She knew how to do it, I didn’t, but my interpersonal feelings came into play over time. I developed a better sense of “self and other”, both of us being valid, neither of us being perfect, the relationship getting mended after “ruptures”, where she was not OK for me and I was not OK for her.

So why couldn’t that have happened earlier in my 50+ year therapy journey? My therapist thinks it’s mostly because the therapists had not done enough of their own therapy.