I do relate to a lot of it. I've never experienced myself as fragmented, unfamiliar "parts" taking over etc. But isolating the hurt feelings and wanting to have self-control over my vulnerabilities and insecurities, not asking help from anyone is a major part of my history and a source of many of my problems earlier in life (still challenging but now I consciously try to go against the current). Now at least I do seek/accept help in practical things. I never even went to therapy until I was 40 years old (now 43), but actually that is for the better... in any case, I've proven very therapy-resistant, in spite of having all my interest in psychology and even therapy on a more theoretical level. I was never terminated by a T (I dumped both of them more than once instead), but I did get into situations with both of them that they were mostly clueless and just let me do whatever, within certain limits of their engagement (big difference between two Ts in terms of how much and what kind of engagement).

The dissociation is interesting, because years ago I would have never described my defenses as such. Other people did though! I've just become more deeply interested in this based on some posts on PC, including actually some of yours, here today. Now I do believe that I have a form of this but I do not experience it as unconscious/automatic... more like a learned process over time, to manipulate my own awareness "as needed", as a defense to be able to effectively deal with certain situations. This "manipulating my awareness" is also something that was pointed out to me a few years ago by someone (not a T) and I find it more and more accurate as I become more conscious of how I actually do it in everyday life. I also did in therapy, I think - part of the reason why it never affected me very negatively, beyond transient annoyances.

I've been told many times that I should allow myself to feel my feelings more directly and more frequently, but somehow I have a massive resistance to going over a certain limit with it. I much more often retreat into intellectualization - it is very hard to break for me even with awareness.

On being alone - that's another feature that, I think, I tend to kinda ignore or even dissociate. I am very much a loner kind of person but rarely feel lonely, if that makes sense. I usually do when I am very depressed or otherwise in a bad place mentally.

For me, as I said I don't experience myself as having parts or fragments - much more like it's a gigantic one mutidimensional web, both developmentally and in complexity in the present, and my focus moves all over the place, while I always have a strong sense how everything is interconnected. Internally, but as I said other people, when they experience many aspects of me at different times, do describe it as having many faces and elements of it that often surprise them. When I was in therapy, Ts I interviewed, and the two who worked with me for a while, tended to be intensely interested in and drawn to me - but in the end, still clueless. Same experiences with many people throughout my life. I usually then just got the feedback of being so different, unique, unlike anyone else they have experienced, and am left again to myself to try to understand it

Oh, actually one of the reasons why I like this psychotherapy forum and come here regularly even though I am no longer in therapy is because I feel that there are a larger number of people here than in my general environment that I easily relate to in various ways. Lots of similarities. But maybe this is just because here we talk about these deeply personal things all the time, and in the everyday, I actually isolate myself from experiencing the same quite often?