Quote:
Originally Posted by L.P.
You mean like an original? I have come to think that my system does not have an original. I don't know when we started splitting up and all that, but we were young. I'm not sure when a child develops a sense of self, but in my case, it's more likely we never developed a single sense of self, rather senses of selves. But who knows. It seems like someone had to put us here... maybe it was just a function of the brain and the brain is really the original. I dunno. It can make my mind get to spinning.
We have a lot of fragments still left within us that have not been integrated. We also have a lot of fragments that have been integrated. They reside in a place in my head called the woods. The fragments that we have integrated (I happen to have a good amount of them in me, personally) have not really given me a more well rounded sense of self or even understanding. I don't know if it's a me thing or what, but they are so choppy and single... I don't have any better understanding of who I am beyond I was a person who had a jacked up childhood. And I already knew that. Heh. I don't know if it's because I am still not holding a bunch of fragments or if it would be the same if they all somehow became part of me... and I'd just get sporadically flooded with a bunch of incomplete thoughts that play out in my head like nonsense I can't grab onto.
I'm talking a lot... sorry. Short version, nope... my system has no me that I am aware of. And yeah, I think part of the whole healing process and living life instead of reacting to it is creating a me as time goes on.
-Veda
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L.P. that's what the theory of structural dissociation posits: that in normal human development the personality structure of the brain is such that it doesn't integrate until a certain point in development. A baby feels and experiences a whole lot of emotional states etc, but has not yet developed a sense of self - a self-knowing, if you will. The infant or young child experiences and feels, but doesn't organise those experiences or emotions into a cognitive narrative or attribute them to 'self'. Those experiences and emotions, good or bad, simply 'are'. In normal human development the personality doesn't fully integrate into a single, stable and solid sense of self until around 6 years of age.
So trauma that happens in those first six years greatly disrupts the normal integrative development of the brain. This is especially so when the trauma comes form primary care givers - the infant or young child is unable to integrate the trauma, so the self and the separate emotional states (and knowing states) remain separate. One single sense of self that owns all of the experiences and emotions never emerges.
So yeah- it is split from the beginning.