While it is technical, I actually found it a lot easier to understand than other articles I've recently read (which this one seems to be referencing in the discussion of structural dissociation). I found the synthesized description of primary, secondary and tertiary dissociation much easier to decipher than Van der Hart's actual article on that topic. I am just about half-way through this one, but finding I can follow (though maybe having read that past article kind of laid the groundwork).
Anyway, I really appreciate the sharing. I especially relate to:
quote:This attachment style involves simultaneous or proximate alternation of defense and attachment emotional systems (EPs involved with both systems and ANPs with the attachment system), manifesting in intense insecure dependency with a phobia of detachment, and intense disavowal of dependency and phobia of attachment.
I don't think there could be a more perfect way of describing the work with my T in our first year together. In fact, I'm fairly certain my early journals including this concept of phobia of these "parts" and the attachment and dependency needs, before I had read anything about dissociation or had more than a cursory (ECE) knowledge of attachment theory. This is just what I experience. Beginning to read about the phase oriented treatment is also interesting, as I can see how we moved through a period of being in phase one and now we are doing a lot of phase two work, but feel like we'll probably have to be cycling back to phase one soon, as I am not tolerating the particular work that has come up with a part that experiences the "intolerable aloneness" I have read about in this and other articles, which I have also described to T as hopeless aloneness and desperate aloneness. Working with that seems like such a trap. Reading about it in this way helps get me out of experiencing it for a bit, though, and back to conceptualizing it, which provide some much-needed temporary relief. Whew, back to reading!