This video is all about dissociation, dissociation in CPTSD, dissociation and shame, and how all of those connect to the journal series I've been working on, on chronic complex trauma and shame.

As I've said in many videos, I really do believe that the I am unworthy, I am unlovable, I am bad belief system is often the core of what happens to us when we are raised by certain caregivers who struggle.

And so that chronic interpersonal nature of trauma that we are experiencing at the hands of caregivers really sets us up to decide that if I really acknowledge as a child that my caregiver is not safe, what does that say about me?

That means I won't be safe, I won't survive.

So therefore it must be something wrong with me.

And we drag this whole belief system of not being good enough and it shows up in every relationship with everyone, including ourselves.

So let's talk today really quickly about what dissociation looks like in the classic sense, then I'm going to go into a more complicated version of explaining dissociation and the dissociation role in CPTSD that is more complex.

In fact, I shot this video yesterday, but it was so wordy and so complicated, I decided to redo it.

And now I'm in a rush to make coconut cupcakes.

So I'm trying to get through this video, but I also want to make sure I don't talk so much and the concepts don't get so, you know, therapized that you lose the part that I think is most helpful.

So please feel free if you want to post more questions, I will probably make another more extensive video, especially about the part that's related to the dissociation that we see in CPTSD.

And so we'll come back to that.

All right.

Before I do though, please don't forget to subscribe and click the bell.

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I'm going to try to slow down.

You guys know I probably talk too fast, so much.

Okay.

So dissociation really is a response to an overwhelming emotion.

Basically our brains and bodies are saying, this is too much for me.

I need to go somewhere else.

Now the classic dissociation we often think about can really be everything from what they call often highway hypnosis, where you, you know, leave somewhere and you drive home and you know, you're there, but you have no memory of the drive home to spacing out to daydreaming.

Even a daydreaming that can get a little unhealthy at times where you're sort of like, you know, planning out and playing out a story or dream in your life to a way that really removes you from the present all the way into full on dissociation and dissociative disorders, which I'm not going to go into in terms of the disorders today, I'm going to use the word dissociation in a kind of classic sense, but also not so classic as I talk to you more about this idea of the role it plays in CPTSD.

Now I like to think of it as this oftentimes, if you've ever had a really horrible thing happen to you, you know, something that you got shocking news about, or you maybe gave a speech in public, but something that is not your norm, you might look back on that event and say to yourself, yeah, I was there, but I wasn't there.

I was sort of hovering over my body or in the room, but it wasn't really me.

And I can say that I've had a few times in life where I've received tragic news and I felt like, or I've actually been in the middle of an emergency where I was doing everything right in the moment, but I felt like I was like hovering above my body, right?

So there's some classic components we call depersonalization, which is being disconnected or detached from your person, from yourself, and derealization, which is really being detached or feeling separated from the environment.

Like it's a dream, it's not real.

And so those can be components of dissociation.

Now other ways we can know we're in dissociation, like I said, or feeling like we're out of our body, feeling a sense of actually disconnection from feeling our bodies themselves, so being more numb.

We can also see some self-harm occur in those states because we are detached from ourselves and sometimes the self-harming behaviors will reconnect us to ourselves.

We can feel that we are floating above ourselves.

We can lose sense of time and space.

We can have tunnel vision.

We can get lost in another fantasy world like movies or books.

We can really just feel like we are a completely different person sometimes, right?

So I'll list a few more of those.

But that's sort of the classic way we think of dissociation.

Basically I'm going along in life and something happens and it is too much for me to psychologically bear.

And so I go somewhere else.

Now if you're having highway hypnosis, it doesn't mean necessarily you've had major trauma, although we do know that trauma is very much connected to dissociation.

So some form of mild dissociation is very, very, very common.

And it's something that we just do as humans.

I think that all of us who live a decently long life, it's going to happen to you, right?

And so you're going to maybe sometimes have trauma and go places.

But when we talk about chronic complex interpersonal trauma, like we find in complex PTSD, what we're talking about here is that we are often faced with situations where we are struggling to survive.

And in these traumas, they're often little repeated traumas, they can be massive traumas, and they can really go to the heart of what it means to try to be safe and try to survive.

And that's what I'm going to talk about next, which is the structural dissociation model.

And that really is this idea that we have dissociation, like I said, as a response to a difficult situation that we can't bear.

And so oftentimes, it can be so, so difficult to even integrate and accept that the trauma lives outside of us in a separate part, right?

So what I'm saying is I have my main part of myself, my main part of myself is Kim, the psychologist, it's Kim, the mom, it's Kim, the, you know, the, I don't know, the group member, whatever it is.

And then let's say I have a trauma, let's say it's a pretty big trauma, I don't, I can't live in that.

It's an unprocessed trauma.

And it was, let's say I was, I don't know, let's say I was robbed at gunpoint, okay?

And I, and I almost died.

And I cannot let myself be in that every day, because I wouldn't be able to function.

So I fragment that off, I put that somewhere else.

And I put on, we basically call our normal, everyday selves, that's sort of my left brain classic idea of left brain structure.

I'm doing things, I'm being a mom, I'm engaging with my patients, I may have a relationship that I show up in a certain way, and I can sort of integrate all of those a bit.

But those are not compatible with this very emotional right brain experience of the robbery, let's say.

Or let's also say of repeated trauma in childhood by an unstable caregiver.

So what do I mean by that?

What I'm saying is that this is the core of this model of structural dissociation.

What I think is so fascinating is that when we are children, let's say with a borderline or narcissistic parent, but let's stick to borderline, let's say an untreated borderline or classic disorganized attachment experience of a parent, right?

So we often do see a relationship between BPD and disorganized attachment in children.

So let's say you have a parent, even without the label of anything, that is just, you know, really runs the gamut of being, you know, frightening and frightened and unstable and a little bit safe, you know, unpredictable, all the way up to not safe at all.

As children, as we've talked about attachment theory, we have to attach to survive, right?

Even if you think of breastfeeding in its original form, we need other people to survive.

So kids who have a caregiver like this, let's call it a primary caregiver, they are faced with an impossible tug of war and dilemma.

On the one hand, they need to attach to survive.

They need something and someone to be there for them to somewhat protect them and keep them safe.

But what if, as in disorganized attachment, that person is also the source of fear and danger?

So there's this dilemma, right?

There's this, I need the person for my safety and security, but I'm also terribly afraid of them and I need to be because they're scary and dangerous and risky.

And so what happens in the dissociation of this issue is that when we're having ways we could integrate it, like I was talking about before, like I have the Kim the this and Kim the that, that's one thing.

But when I keep having repeat traumas, the fragments become different pieces all over the place.

And I can't cope with all of that because I can't really integrate the fact that what's supposed to be safe is not safe.

And I have to also protect myself and access these other parts of myself to survive.

Now the parts are often described as the classic trauma types.

Okay, so when we talk about how we respond to trauma in a classic CPTSD dynamic with dissociation, as I mentioned in this structural dissociation model, we're really looking at how we're showing up.

So we're either showing up as our normal, everyday selves, right, the different roles we have, even though those can also be split apart and have sort of separate ways of functioning.

Or we are operating in our traumatized child self part.

And this will be the part you're going to use for the journal prompts if you're sticking around and doing this, okay?

But as you think about, even if you're not going to do the journal, what would be those parts that my child self used to deal with the opposite of the attachment problem I had, the defending myself, the survival part that I had to sort of, the part I had to do and be to make all of it keep me alive and keep me somewhat safe, even if the word, you know, safe is highly debatable, right?

So we have the normal part of life self, and we have the traumatized self.

Now the traumatized child self, that's the part we can split into, the part we can dissociate into when we're triggered.

And so these are the parts I want you to think about and explore, and as I said, I'll post them down below.

We have fight, flight, freeze, submit, collapse, attach, cry out for help, and appease and please.

And so really quickly, when you're in the fight response, you are in your vigilant response.

You are angry, judgmental, mistrustful, controlling, destructive.

It's that very much, you know, I need to push back to survive.

When you're in your flight self, you are in that more escaping.

You are taking off.

Like in a battle, like I mentioned, you might be out of there, right?

But this is where you distance yourself.

You're ambivalent.

You run away.

You can't commit.

Or you are addictive or eating disorders, what they talk about.

Now with the freeze response, this is a result of fear.

This is like that thing where animals play dead to survive, right?

So it's, or humans do actually too in violent situations.

We're frozen, we're terrified, we're wary, we're phobic of being seen, and often you can see panic attacks that go with that.

When we talk about submit or collapse, this is oftentimes where we see depression, shame, filled with self-hatred, passiveness, being the good girl or caretaker, and self-sacrificing.

And those are really about just sort of completely, you know, just letting yourself fall down in terms of not really bringing your full self in in order to survive.

And we often think of dissociation as an attempt to disappear, to be invisible.

And that's what we're doing when we're going into all of these coping types, right?

We are somehow going somewhere else to deal with whatever's happening, and it may not necessarily have been the ideal response, but the self-compassion here is that it was what you had to do to survive, and that's really important.

And then we have attach, cry out for help.

And that's where we're looking for connection, but it's a desperate look for connection.

We're fearful of being abandoned and rejected, and we can be wanting someone to lean on.

And this particular part of a trauma type can look like borderline, which is a whole different video.

And therapists can misinterpret a client's needs for this attach, cry out for help as being very borderline-y.

And so it's important to understand that once you pick a label, you start following the label down the road, you look for more evidence, you're probably going to get there.

So we want to make sure we're separating when we're in that state where we all desperately need to be attached and be safe versus a full-on disorder, which, like I said, is another video

I'll come back to.

And we have appease and please.

And this is really that people-pleasing and disregarding ourselves, that fawn response to get our needs met.

So I want you to think about, as you go into the journal prompts, which of these you tend to use in terms of your own defensive styles.

What did you have to do, and how does that show up today?

And I'll discuss that more in the next few seconds in the journal prompts.

So, the root of dissociation is that regardless of whether we are talking about the sort of classic, I need to go somewhere else in the moment, or spacing out or being triggered, to falling back into my sort of dissociated responses of trauma, all of those remove me from real connection, from real empathy often, from real self-compassion.

And dissociation, along with shame, which is, remember, that sort of internalized self-blame unfairly placed on ourselves, often the root of I am bad from caregivers who were unstable or wounding and things like that, is that our shame and our dissociation both remove us from connection to ourselves and others.

And they act as like personal boundaries and barriers against the things that will actually help us.

Because what helps us is truly being self-compassionate, knowing how to get our bodies safe, which is why I discussed those in the first couple of videos in the journal, safe place, self-compassion.

And being able to integrate the parts of ourselves that are wounded and that we've used to cope is part of what the therapy looks like when you talk about how to heal CPTSD, how to start to learn to calm our bodies, do some breathing, respond, let's say, in that conflict with a partner from a place of awareness, from a place of connection and calm.

And so that's hard to do if we've sort of gone into that dissociated part of ourselves that is defending and protecting and surviving.

So as I said, I'll make another video on this whole concept because I think it's so fascinating.

But I want you to know that when we're talking about healing shame, we're talking about how to get in connection, how to have healing and self-compassion, and how to stay present-minded.

And that's why dissociation is such a huge part of this journal part, is understanding where do you go?

What are those dissociated parts of yourself?

Where do you actually go when you are going somewhere else?

And so how can you learn to get yourself more grounded and back in the present?

Because all of those strategies prevent us from being seen and known, and from knowing and seeing and feeling and hearing other people, in addition to ourselves, okay?

So in terms of this journal issue, I want you guys to hopefully join with me now and we will start the journal part.

So if you do not want to do the journal, this would be a good time to just end the video.