I’ve been working through some difficult emotions. Difficult because when triggered, the emotion is so intense and overwhelming that my brain shuts down and I experience what is known as dissociative amnesia.
Dissociative amnesia is common in PTSD and varies in severity, from being isolated to one memory or entire episodes of the past to forgetting who they are or how they got somewhere.
I often feel spaced out and there’s a buzz in my head when I’ve dissociated from a big emotion. I’m aware of overwhelming internal conflict and have about one or two minutes to describe what I’m feeling before it’s gone and I have no recollection of what caused it. It feels like a fact instead of a feeling from that moment on. The feeling is pleasant, dreamy and needed in that moment.
Writing poetry is helping me to befriend the vulnerable parts of myself, a concept used in Internal Family Systems Therapy, developed by Richard Schwartz. People with complex PTSD are more vulnerable to the parts of themselves becoming dissociated or separated from each other. This is the brain’s natural defense mechanism to protect us from continuing to experience the effects of (childhood) trauma.
I am frightened of my angry part
Driven to protect
They have become enraged
Nothing will assuage
Their possessed preoccupation
Obsessed with concealing
My angry part is angry at me
Angry for wanting to trust
Angry for taking control
Angry for saving our younger parts
Without their permission
For denying them their role
To protect from pain
They have been pushed aside
And discarded
Unwanted
Despised
My teenage part can’t heal
While they hold their anger at me
It makes me feel so unsafe
They are not letting me trust
Not even trust myself
I experience the parts of myself as if they are cogs. For many years, the cogs have been turning alone, not connected to each other. I have felt disconnected from myself, lost, not sure of my identity and constantly blending with the identity of whichever vulnerable part of me that has been triggered.
Therapy is helping me to integrate the vulnerable parts of myself with the more capable parts, like interlocking all my cogs internally so that the smaller vulnerable parts (or cogs) can be supported by the strong parts of myself (my “big cog”).
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