When I first began therapy with Dr. Dan Siegel, I didn’t have words for what was happening internally. What I did have were traces of terror – sensations that felt like rogue emotional and physical assaults. With time, I came to understand that the dissociation that protected me as a child had also kept me divided within myself as an adult.
Disorganized attachment can develop when the person you’re hardwired to go towards for safety as a child, is the frightening source of danger. In such an impossible predicament, a child’s brain fragments. One neural network says run away from that person for safety…the other says go towards them to be safe. It’s a biological paradox…fear without solution. This inner conflict doesn’t simply disappear with age, or once you are no longer living with that family. It becomes a mental model for how we relate to ourselves and others. For me, it developed into a dissociative identity disorder…or as Dr. Siegel described, a brilliant adaptation that kept these unbearable experiences sealed off so I could function within the confines of my troubled family. My mind fragmented so I could survive.
What I would come to know in therapy was that the same relational forces that had led to fragmenting would become a powerful source of healing. Within the safety of the therapeutic bond, something entirely new unfolded. Dr. Siegel met each dissociated self-state as it emerged – without categorizing, naming, or organizing them into some conceptual system – welcoming each state as it was, allowing the unique memories, emotions, and adaptive strategies to unfold in their own time. That curious, kind, and open witnessing – connection meeting experience – became a bridge through which what had been separate could now be honored and linked. Over the years, as the protective walls of my memory began to dissolve, my dissociated self-states came to learn, know, and make sense of their story. My story.
Through this process of safety and connection, something profound took shape. The same system that had been disorganized began to become whole. My mind – that had fragmented to survive – began to integrate…and thrive. This kind of relational healing can lead to a new attachment outcome—a state now known as earned or learned security of attachment. No longer disorganized. No longer dissociating.
This is the journey at the the heart of my upcoming memoir, A Brilliant Adaptation: How Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Therapeutic Bond Saved Me – a story meant to show that trauma – no matter how severe – doesn’t have to be a lifelong sentence. The mind’s capacity to adapt is its capacity to heal. That’s the power of neuroplasticity. Through love, reflection, and safe relationship, what was once fragmented can become whole again.
It’s possible to live free from the constraints or our past.
That is my lived experience.
If you’ve experienced your own version of this journey – from fragmentation toward connection – please feel free to share how healing through relationship has shown up in your life in the comments or reply privately. Sometimes our stories can become bridges for one another.