During Phase 1 of your therapy (stabilization) working through traumatic memories is not the main focus. But that doesn’t stop trauma memory from coming up. So, what do we do with that?
The answer is containment. We have already introduced you to the basic and advanced version and one that is littles-friendly. Now let us introduce you to a system version of it.
With DID chances are that memories are not just in bits and pieces but also spread over different parts within the system. Someone might hold the memory of a smell, someone else remembers words or thoughts, others hold pain or fear. All by themself the pieces often don’t make sense and it will be a task for the future to put them together to get the full picture of what happened to all of you (Phase 2).
Til then it helps to collect the bits and pieces in a place where you can respectfully store and contain them, a place where you have access to them, if you want to.
It is this ability to store and access memory at will, that makes containment different from repression or dissociation.
Some Systems already have something like an archive in their inner world. There might be a room with filing cabinets and maybe there is someone who knows their way around the archive. If this is working for you and you can find things, don’t change it. Just add files as needed.
If you don’t have a place like that I would recommend building one. You get to choose what you want it to look like. It could be a filing room or a library, a warehouse, a bank or anything that makes sense to you.
For us, it is a museum. Here is why:
- honor: we want to make sure to show honor to the memory as well as the part sharing the memory and by using the imagery of the museum we communicate value. Our memories are precious. Everyone who is sharing is adding something valuable to the collection. This establishes a culture of sharing instead of hiding or rejecting.
- Ancient: the memories are old. Old things are kept in museums. We need a reminder that all this has happened a long time ago. The imagery helps us to be oriented in time when we are dealing with traumatic memories.
- Puzzle: we treat our pieces of memory like bones of dinosaurs. We know that we don’t have a full skeleton but we can guess which piece belongs to which scene. So we place them in different display cases accordingly, roughly where we think they should go. One bone doesn’t show us the full picture, but we are getting there.
- heads and tails: what we remember and what we put together might not be what actually happened. That is not „false memory“. There is a fascinating story in the history of paleontology. E. Cope rushed when writing his paper about the Elasmosaurus he found and accidentally placed the head on the wrong end of the spine. What he described had a very long tail, instead of a very long neck. We might put the head on the wrong end sometimes. We want to get as many pieces as possible to be able to put things together as accurately as we can.
- Truth: Even while we experienced things in the past they were altered by our own perception, beliefs etc. We remember the truth we perceived. And the brain fills the gaps. We are aware that while we get the skeleton, the basic structure and events, right, we might err in the color and length of fur.
- No active excavation: The museum is not an archaeological excavation ground. It just gives home to pieces that are brought there. Leave them alone and let things come up at their own time. Archaeology is not a recommended method for trauma therapy. We use the imagery of display cases to keep us from wanting to touch stuff (because we are too curious for our own good)
- Visiting: a museum is not a place to live. We go there, bring in or look at something, we return home to our cozy couch and real life. Living among old bones kills. There are no chairs in our museum. It is not a place to dwell.
- Sharing: our museum is a „public“ place inside. Everyone can go in and look at the memories others have shared while keeping their distance (the display cases create a similar effect as the screen technique). It makes a lot of sense to accompany Littles when they bring something. This is building a sense of connection inside, even with such a difficult topic as trauma memory.
We are sharing this with you not to tell you that you too need a museum, but to share our basic approach to memories, our mindset. No matter what your archive looks like, this perspective on memories is helpful.
System-Containment is SystemWork. The elements of sharing, connection and relational experience will bring you closer together. When would it be more important than when dealing with traumatic memories?
I have a question that is relevant to many tools, not just this one…I’m pretty sure I have DID, or if not, the dissociation I have with cPTSD is on the far end of the spectrum. My memories are like this…In bits and pieces scattered all over and experienced in various ways. Sometimes I listen inside and learn things I did not know or sometimes I say things to my T I did not know. But I also have aphantasia which is the inability to visualize. Do you know of people with DID and how they manage things like safe places and creating archives without being able to visualize or really imagine?
from what I hear… you wouldn’t try to visualize it. People create real safe spaces in their homes and use those or the memory of how that felt. Looking at a calming picture of a nice place can have a positive effect too. It does something to the brain. For some people with aphantasia it is possible to work with positive memories, especially when the memory covers more senses that only sight.
Options for containment would be writing things down and then putting them away safely eg in a special box or using items like a big marble that can store the energy that is ‘too much’. I would work with tangible items instead of imagery but apply the same principle as it is used in the imagery. In this case, I would start a real archive, like in a book or folder or on the computer to take notes, store them for later access but leave them there after working with it.