QUOTE: "encouraging separation makes this a real circus in which the patient almost creates more trouble for herself than anything else. Isnt it difficult enough having to hope nothing sets off your dissociation so that you find you are again lost?"

This has been a question of mine also, since I have learned that I dissociate. It's at different levels and intensities, some extreme. I do know that there were 3 times, during my growing up years, that I have "re-seen" the trauma, only to have the TV shut off with no memory of what the outcome was. Those seem to be 3 different "parts" of me that react in different ways to triggers I experience. I have come to "know" these three parts, and I'm learning how these 3 parts react in those situations.