Part 3: Integration – Healing Through the Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) Lens
I’ve come to think of DID as a safe keeper of unsafe memories. As a young child, I couldn’t survive knowing everything that was happening. My mind divided things up so I could keep going. Each dissociated self-state held what wasn’t safe for me to know.
Reflecting now – as a patient, student, and clinician – through the lens of IPNB, I see how early frightening experiences disrupted the normally connected processes of my mind: emotions, thoughts, memory, and identity. These processes became disconnected from each other. That’s my experience of dissociation.
So while it came from a horrific situation, developing DID is what saved me – and ultimately what freed me. I’m extraordinarily grateful for my brain’s ability to fragment and keep me safe until it was safe for me to know how unsafe it was.
From an IPNB perspective, healing is about integration – honoring differences and linking what was once separated. Differentiation preserved; linkage restored. That was the goal of therapy, and that’s what unfolded for me.
The dissociated self-states didn’t disappear. The protective barriers between them slowly and safely began to. As those walls softened and dissolved, the once-fragmented streams of emotion, memory, awareness, and identity reconnected. The truth of my history unfolded and became known to me as a coherent story… my story.
Integration doesn’t mean sameness. It means being able to remember, reflect, and know the story of my life without my past overwhelming my present.
In IPNB, integration is defined as the linkage of differentiated elements – the mind’s ongoing capacity to link distinct modes of information processing into a functional whole. Integration is considered the fundamental mechanism of mental health. Without it, the mind tends to move toward either chaos or rigidity. Healing is the movement from dis-integration toward coherence. Differentiation honored, linkage maintained.
Why IPNB Matters
IPNB helped me understand dissociation clearly and respectfully:
- Dissociated self-states are not fixed “parts” with predetermined jobs or roles, but protective processes.
- These processes created memory barriers, making survival possible in a powerless childhood.
- What was adaptive in childhood became problematic in adulthood.
- DID was a form of dis-integration—differentiated processes fragmented and kept separate.
- Healing isn’t about erasing differences but about honoring and connecting them.
For me, DID was never about multiple selves or personalities. It was about fragmentation—streams of experience pulled apart so I could survive. Healing has been about linking those differences into one continuous, coherent story of my life.
Through the therapeutic bond and deep inner reflection, healing became possible. It’s what allowed me not just to survive—but to live free from the constraints of my past.
