To me, "integration" in this sense means that you negotiate life with an absence of abrupt shifts in your sense of self, connection to experience, and view of others and the world. A lack of integration or "dissociation" means that you can be going along in one state, then suddenly you can be triggered and be thrown into a state of numbness or distress, in which you might view things in a very distorted or one-sided way. An integrated person can still have an emotional response to something, but not necessarily to the point where they suddenly see themselves as bad or the situation as a replication of something traumatic in the past.

Hi Monte... these are great questions and ones I have struggled to understand over the past five years. I ask my T some of these questions but he is rather reluctant to say too much about it. What I have discerned from our conversations is that we need to integrate the child into the adult. The child is the emotional part that holds the past trauma and a ton of anxiety, that I have split off from my adult self in order to survive, function and go on. When things happen, when I get triggered being disintegrated causes me to react (usually in fear) from that child/emotional part. I think this happens because those trauma memories/experiences have been stored in a part of my brain, raw and unprocessed causing me to react in this manner. If we process the trauma (I'm still unable to explain that in words) then it gets stored as a memory like other narrative memories that don't cause triggers or overly emotional reactions. The memory does not bring the child/emotional part forth and she is what causes me to dissociate. She is so frightened that she can only "leave" to survive the memories. And those trauma memories don't feel like the past to her. They likely feel like the here and now and happening all over again.

My T reminds me that the child holds all the anxiety that impacts my life causing me to react and live my life in reaction to past emotional trauma. By bringing the child into the adult it will change my reaction to life and challenges.

Okay that is the first time I have tried to write any of this out and to explain it to myself. I'm not sure this is helpful to you or answers your questions. I have tried to read about integration but it has not helped me much. My T says that is because I'm trying to approach it from an intellectual level instead of a feeling, processing level.

This is a great topic and I'm interested to see what input others have on the topic since it is one of great interest to me.

TN

Hi Monte,

I used to be unable to feel or express feelings of hurt and abandonment or even missing with my husband in any vulnerable way. I wouldn't even notice that was how I felt - I would just go straight to judgement, anger, abandoning the relationship ("this isn't going to work, it was never right, how can I get out of here..."). Those underlying feelings were split off.

It just made life a lot more COMPLICATED. We were constantly in a death spiral. Now I hardly ever go into questioning the relationship as a whole. There's so much more peace. It just feels 'normal'. And when something goes wrong the feelings are there - hurt, abandonment, anger even - but I don't leverage the anger into judgement to try to control the situation. I think I'm not judging myself. Now I notice when I miss him (it starts with feeling a little bit disconnected, or a little bit rejected) and I tell him. It's safe to have those feelings and share them. The breaches don't feel terminal - I know even when it really hurts that we can repair - so it doesn't require me to CHANGE THE SITUATION IMMEDIATELY. More peaceful.

My problem is, I have parts of myself that are separated/fragmented that should be together and other parts that are enmeshed that ought to be separate. As far as fragmented goes, I have the part of me that is creative, spontaneous and high energy; part of me that is introverted, responsible and serious; part of me that is religiously devout; part of me that is bi; part of me that is over-the-top silly; and part that is elegant and ambitious. Many of these parts are so in conflict with each other that it's difficult to sense my true identity. I never seem to know which side to show or how much. I told my T that I often feel like 3 different people. That's a lot to manage emotionally. Making decisions or knowing what I want often feels impossible. I'm a 50-year-old brain and a six-year-old soul trapped in a 31-year-old body. I feel exhausted ALL OF THE TIME.

I imagine if I were whole I wouldn't struggle so much with lack of confidence. I would make better decisions and create good boundaries. I would have better clarity of thought. My relationships would be more exciting and dynamic. My emotional responses to rejection wouldn't be so extreme. I think I'm getting there, but there are still major hurdles to cross.

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I dunno. I don't know if the tending-to process is a one-off or to be repeated many times as events are relived, maybe while slowly learning to do it ourselves?

Monte, for me there was one major reenactment with Manatee that was crap but in the middle of it some magical healing words were spoken. I understood something I hadn't before, and without me even WANTING it to something healed. That was part of a much bigger process that was going on and is going on though. Still having tender spots, still needing care and to learn/remember to respond to pain with gentleness and compassion. But otherwise much as you describe, brilliantly, in the metaphor of a physical injury.

Affinity - I just wanted to say how much I identified with your post! I too get completely exhausted by such internal dynamics.

Monte, I don't know the answers - but hold similar questions. I guess we are trying to head for a better, calmer, more joined-up identity?

sb

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you dont feel balanced until they do join you.its like having a book with a ton of pages missing and its a manual about life and how to survive it and live it. you keep looking for meaning and why? all the time, especially about why you act a certain way and feel a certain way..and you feel little and out of control,until you accept those parts of yourself and gain back those pages and then as your adult self you can then feel more in control, cos now you can make better informed choices and be and feel safe.does that make any sense at all?

Yep, makes total sense. This is what I'm striving for.

My particular challenge is that I grew up in a religiously fundamentalist subculture (My dad was a pastor), so there were parts of my young child self that my parents didn't find acceptable. I was expected to act like an adult all of the time, so I ended up suppressing different facets of my personality. After a while, I became trapped in the behavior. I still suppress a lot; when I hit a particular trigger, it's almost automatic. So the me I am now doesn't feel completely real.

At the same time, I have all these parts that are now trying to emerge, and I don't know if all of those are real, either. They've been crammed down for so long that they seem bizarre and unfamiliar. And because I suppressed so much (and was isolated and abused to boot), I never had the experience of forming long, healthy attachments to people.

I guess I'm finally in a safe enough place that my suppressed inner child is finally making herself known. I didn't have much of a childhood; I spent most of it engaged in adult tasks. So now my kid wants to come out and have some fun. And how to integrate that into my adult life??

The good news is, I'm finally beginning to experience a real, healthy attachment. The bad news is, my emotional reactions feel so extreme--like I've been set on fire. Yet I go to session and can't get the reactions out. I talk in such a calm, collected way: I don't scream or cry or do any of the things I feel like doing. I'm so outwardly composed. I call it "emotional constipation."

It sucks.

(((SB))) (((Monte))) (((Draggers)))

Hi, Monte,
I don't think we've "met"-- or, if we did, it was with a separate part of me that I am not accessing right now.

One of my professors explained trauma memories as being encoded as procedural memories instead of narrative memories. In other words, if my parent used to hit me, I recorded that more along the lines of remembering how to ride a bike instead of remembering a happy occasion, like walking to school through the forest with an older sibling.

That's because being hit was dangerous, and it would have been in my best interest to learn how to avoid being hit.

This is also why triggers are, well, triggering. It's our procedural memory for surviving getting activated.

Integrating these memories means learning to remember them as episodes, stories, and not as procedures. It's creating neural pathways that link those parts of our lives with the others.

Doing so doesn't mean we won't be more sensitive to the potential for danger than we might have otherwise been, it just means we can cognitively moderate our responses.

I recently gained a deeper understanding of this. I've had very difficult and painful experiences with my child recently, and, as a consequence, was far more "triggered" in school and in public places than I have been for a long time. So, this means I need to remember to be kind to myself when I get thrown into a difficult state--like how BLT described--instead of beating myself up for it. Probably anyone would have a hard time seeing his or her child suffer like this, and with a trauma history, having a hard time in other ways is not strange or disgusting, like it always felt in the past.

It's kind of nice, actually, to be able to put this stuff together. Painful. But in a productive way, like stitching up a gash. I guess that's pretty much what it is.

It sounds like you're getting to a healthier place, too.

monte,
thank you for this post, it's something i'm striving to understand myself and i'm grateful for everyone's responses.

i have always felt broken or split, long before entering therapy, and to me it felt like the (main?) split was between the part of me that had to endure all the hurt and the part that had to act normal - maybe its because this was a conscious effort at times, and at other times it became almost natural and 'effortless', what had happened was completely forgotten/ split off. so from early on i was somewhat conscious of feeling split even though it was a secret.

so i have lived with this all my life but i don't know if i'm any closer to 'integration'. the literature confuses me more sometimes or maybe its that i'm still 'dissociating' when reading it therefore i can't fully grasp what i'm reading, can't fully accept the hidden parts. for me, the closest i ever get to feeling integrated is when i can make peace between different parts of me - this usually happens after intense conflict, when i can finally see the part that was hurting. the feeling at peace doesn't last that long, but the moments when i do have it, i imagine this is what being whole must be like.

draggers, i cried so hard when i read your post, especially about integrating the part that held all the pain. thank you for sharing, it was beautiful and painful and an honor to read. strangely enough, after crying like that, i became so sleepy suddenly that i couldnt keep my eyes open and fell into a deep sleep, maybe i needed to forget again.

thank you everyone for sharing.

puppet

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Hi Exploring and thanks, I found what you wrote to be of great help and googled further about it. I found (amongst many articles) this:

Monte, I was so glad to read this! Glad it was helpful and that you researched it further. The paragraph you shared was very apt.

It helps, don't you think, to have an understanding of the physiology of trauma responses? For me, it converts shame into at least a degree of self-compassion.

One metaphor that helps me with the concept of integrating is imagining, for example, the DC road system. Have you been to DC? The traffic is crazy.

Now imagine that it actually consisted of separate but parallel road systems. When this imaginary network of highways and byways was constructed, it was functional; the people who travelled to one destination had no need of the other systems, and vice versa all around.

Now, though, employment, social, and cultural destinations draw people from all walks of the DC suburbs. The road systems need to be integrated. Connections need to be made to facilitate this--not only that, but this must be done while the road system continues to operate, because the whole metro area can't just shut down while this project is undertaken.

Imagine the complexity, the time involved. It would take effort, skill, understanding, and patience, right?

Rewiring neural networks is like that--except far more complex. So, I think kindness to ourselves while we undergo this mammoth project is warranted. And--years down the road, when we think we are done, we might discover a byway that was not adequately connected during the initial overhaul. Further work might be necessary. And that's okay. It doesn't mean the original project was unsuccessful, it just means that it wasn't quite finished.

I think "finished" probably never actually comes, just "progressing."

Anyway. Just my $0.37 cents.

People need to be careful when they talk to dissociated people like us. When anyone says that the goal is to Integrate, stop the alters inside, get you put together, they might not know that it sounds like a death sentence. We need to be careful we don't threaten and coerce our alters too. The worst anxiety episodes can come from forcing, or not listening to, the inner child. I think that the therapist needs to be knowledgeable and nurturing for a long time...years, I mean. And even then, I don't believe the inner kids are dissolved or gotten rid of (unless you want). Instead, there needs to be negotiation and cooperation instead of conflict. My adult self has responsibilities in the real world and the inner kid, or kids, need to comply while knowing confidently that they will be tended to as well. I was in the hospital many times with anxiety emergency until I learned to know and respect my inner kid. Now, I never get that bad for 15 yrs now.

Hey, Exploring, I'm from DC and know just what you mean by routing the traffic. I remember when they built the Beltway (expose my age) and how we had it so much better getting from area of DC to the other. Yes, the mind needs organization too, figuring in the needs of all parts.