Hmm. That is quite a huge concept. I hear you, I understand what you are saying. Especially about the time line of life kind of thing.. My therapist and I are currently working on this exact thing... putting the time line together and trying to make the connection that this all belongs to one person. Over time we have definitely looked at different aspects of it... we have this kind of trauma here, and this one from this age to that age... and then this happened here and from then to there something else was going on... but we can't put it all in the same place (brain?) at the same time and can't grasp the overall horrendousness of it all.

I am just going to ramble a bit here, because this is exactly what we are working on right now. For us it is really important, because putting it all together will allow us to see something we truly need to see, but can't yet. Some part of me must know this thing then,. I suppose, because some part of me knows that we MUST put it together. But we can't yet... we can look at this bit, but when we turn to another bit the first bit goes away and we are still only looking at one thing again. We can't hold all the things in one place at one time.
In our therapy session last week we came the closest we have ever come to holding all the things together in one place at one time... and we then had a massive internal shut down. For a good chunk of the therapy session we were completely frozen, unable to move or speak. We went too far. We pushed too far. I think we must have blown a fuse somewhere inside and shorted out. Poor T, from shut down to leaving we didn't say a single word.
But we understand that as a protective mechanism. It was self protective. The word you used was detached. What is the purpose of detachment? Self protection. What is the purpose of compartmentalization? Self protection. What is the purpose of a fuse blowing out? Self protection.

I do recall as a child moving from one thing to another. When one thing was finished we shut it off and put attention to the next thing. When something is out of sight it remains out of mind. I might find myself here, and suddenly find myself somewhere else. No matter... this new place I find myself is what I need to worry about now. As a dissociative system we only need to worry about one thing at a time, what is right here in front of me, not what happened before, not what will happen after. Wherever I find myself is what I focus on, what I do, what I think about. Nothing else matters but NOW.

I told you I was rambling. Our personal goal is to know more than now. It is to know before, yesterday, now, tomorrow. To string and tie it all together and to make sense of all of it. Not just some of it. Not just this piece of it. But all of it.

I have to remember that looking at even one piece is really hard. Baby steps.

I hope you can take away something meaningful oR relatable from my ramblings here!