The process of Making Sense through the lens of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB), the field of study developed by my former therapist, Dr. Dan Siegel, was pivotal early on in understanding my therapeutic work for my diagnosis of DID. Making Sense is the scientifically grounded process of “…sorting through memory, here-and-now experience, and imagination towards creating a coherent understanding and narrative of the essence of what’s occurring in our lives – linking our past, our present, and our potential future in a way that situates us in a social world of experience.” (Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology, by Daniel Siegel)
This definition may sound abstract for some – but for me, through my process of coming to understand the causes of and working toward resolving decades of living with DID, it provided an understanding of what had been impossible…and then, slowly, became possible. In the moment Dr. Siegel taught this to me, there was a shift…in awareness…something I could do….something I could figure out….something that would be transformative in my life.
It was hope.
The development of DID in my early childhood fragmented my memory and past safely holding it within dissociated self-states protected by memory barriers. I understand the many self-states as holding my emotions, memories, and even my sense of self as a brilliant adaptation to survive my overwhelming family experience. Because of the disconnection of self-states, I couldn’t link my past to my present because there wasn’t a continuous coherent me doing the linking. I couldn’t make sense of my childhood because I couldn’t know it. It wasn’t safe to know it.
It was through an IPNB lens, in therapy, and in the deep work of understanding what was actually happening in my brain and nervous system, that the process of Making Sense began to help me understand. Not all at once…not quickly…not without pain… but slowly and gradually, the fragmented states began to communicate first with my therapist… then with me…then with each other. I developed the capacity to know, tolerate and hold my childhood without drowning in it. I began to know and understand what had happened to me, and why my mind responded as it did – not as pathology, but as brilliance. Adaptation. Survival.
A brilliant adaptation.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I experienced something that felt like the fullest expression of the Making Sense process. I was in Washington, D.C., where I was born, and I stood in front of the house I lived in from birth to age seven. When I told people I was going to do that, some were alarmed, concerned being there would pull me back, destabilize me, cause harm.
In fact, quite the contrary.
I stood in front of that house and could know about my childhood without being flooded by it. I could know what happened there with clarity, with inner-compassion, and with a joyful sense of who I am now. I wasn’t pulled back. I was fully present. Standing there, I was looking forward, because I was in D.C. that week to co-present a workshop with Dan Siegel – once my therapist, now my teacher, colleague, and friend at the forty-ninth Psychotherapy Networker Symposium. Our workshop was called IPNB in Action: The Science of Connection and Healing — and it centered on our therapeutic work, depicted in my memoir, A Brilliant Adaptation: How Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Power of the Therapeutic Bond Saved Me. That trip, the workshop, the house, the city of my birth, was possible because of Making Sense. Because I had made sense. Because I did that work. Now, I can hold the past, be grounded in my present, and feel genuinely excited about the future.
IPNB is not a form of therapy. It’s a field of study that integrates neuroscience, psychology, attachment, mindfulness, human development, and so much more, to illuminate how the mind, brain, and relationships shape who we become. It informs therapy. What I’ve found, both as a person who has healed and as a clinician and educator, is that when people understand – make sense – of what is happening in their own minds and bodies through this lens, something shifts. The experience of being “broken” begins to give way to the experience of being brilliantly, if not at one time painfully, adaptive.
That is what this blog series is about. Each entry will take one IPNB term and show it through lived experience – bringing it to life through its meaning, through my own experience, and through how I use it in my own life and how I work with clients. Not as a lecture, but as a living example of IPNB in action.
We begin with Making Sense — because that, truly, is where everything else begins.
If you want to learn more about IPNB – here are some good resources: