Realization is an integrative mental action that needs more and a slightly different kind of energy than synthesis. We take our traumatic and dissociated experience out of the fog of ‘not knowing’ or only ‘kind of knowing’ and enter a felt sense of its reality. It means knowing with our knower that
- bad things happened
- they happened to us,
- and they were really bad,
- they hurt and we suffered
- needs were unmet
- there is still an injury today
- it affects our life, who we are and how we see ourselves in the world
Unlike flashbacks and mere re-experiencing this is a grounded experience we have control over. We allow ourselves to know and feel what really happened, what it means for our life and we act responsibly based on that understanding. That way we can prevent harm, limit the influence of trauma and heal. It can feel like a veil is lifted, puzzle pieces fall into place, there is more clarity, goals change according to new beliefs and our behavior might change without conscious effort. There is surprisingly great strength, courage and freedom that comes with realization.
The problem with non-realization
Amnesia, depersonalization, derealisation, stupor and fragmentation were effective protectors that kept us from realizing the extent of our pain during TraumaTime. They are also what keeps the trauma stuck and stable today. Because they are not integrated the memories show up in flashbacks and then vanish back into non-realization. To heal, we need to overcome the dissociation and restore the connection between the reality of the trauma and our life. That will stop the flashbacks.
As long as we exclude important life-experiences, our beliefs, goals, actions and sense of self will feel confused, we cannot grasp the fullness of the situation, so we cannot adapt our goals accordingly. A classic result of non-realization is re-traumatization: if we were fully aware of the abuse and how it affects our life we would not return to abusive people and allow them to do it again. Our dissociated beliefs make us feel responsible and guilty, we cannot develop the goal to protect ourselves, so we walk into harmful situations over and over again. Our sense of self changes to match the non-realization with a trance-like parallel reality where we don’t even notice that something is wrong or illogical.
The path to realization
Realization is usually painful and it doesn’t always come easily. It is common for emotions like toxic shame and toxic guilt to get in the way. They are a symptom of our dissociation because they keep us from realizing the role of the other person in the situation, sometimes even from realizing that another person was involved at all.
How much we can realize depends on our integrative capacity. That is one of the reasons why it is often necessary to work on this with a therapist. Compassion, affirmation, kindness and co-regulation temporarily increase our capacity. We also need feedback from someone who was not involved in the trauma to gain a different perspective.
We start off with our foundation of synthesis, the puzzle pieces of experience we put together. Synthesis alone doesn’t need much realization, but there is no realization without synthesis. We speak about our memories or fragments of memories in therapy. Our T will listen, offer compassion and resonance, mirror things back to us and ask questions to explore beliefs about the experience. Realization is more stable when it is shared.
Old convictions can be seen in a different light, our inner position toward the experience changes. We might realize that the actions we used to protect ourselves during TraumaTime are not needed anymore, that the goal was achieved.
When we try to put the puzzle pieces together now the picture makes sense, the pieces fall into place. Confusion dissolves and we are left with clarity over what really happened. It is not comfortable to face reality like that, but it is freeing at the same time. The world makes sense, our own behavior makes sense, we no longer have to turn our reality upside down to avoid seeing the whole picture. Behaviors will naturally change based on new-found understanding.
You know you are doing it right when guilt and shame disperse and you notice healthy anger toward abusers and grief about the wounds of the past and their effects on the present. Realization is not cool understanding limited to thoughts, it is a complex integrated experience.
This is a process you will find in any successful trauma work. Some think that pendulation/dual attention between memory and present reality helps with realization. The effect can be created in conversation too, when our T allows us to share things and then helps us to get grounded and regulated with compassionate feedback. In my personal experience that is the most manageable approach, followed by EMDR where realization can happen spontaneously during the process.
You probably can’t do this alone. It needs guidance and a second-person perspective. This is one of the main elements of trauma processing and if it could always be done alone trauma wouldn’t be such a big issue. In my experience, given there is integrative capacity, some realization can happen spontaneously though.
Non-realization in DID
DID is dissociation that keeps parts of who we are separate and stuck in the realm of non-realization. ANPs might know little about trauma and if they do they might not realize the suffering it caused, the bits and pieces of memory get treated like they aren’t fully real. Abuser-imitating parts don’t realize that things actually happened to them too, because they are not different people. Parts who know trauma might have a good understanding of the reality of the suffering but they miss the fact that today all of it is over. Our mind did a wonderful job hiding reality from us.
By keeping all these elements separate we keep ourselves stuck. Our behavior will be anachronistic or inadequate to meet the needs of today. We might even act in harmful ways because we don’t know any better. It is necessary to know reality to live in it and create a safe life in it. That is why all parts need more realization, not just of the trauma but of everyday life in the present too.
The path to realization in DID
We need to start small, which means we won’t start with trauma itself. In DID it is hard enough to realize that there actually are parts inside and that they are real. The voices we hear or other intrusions come from dissociated parts of us. Our first goal of realization is to create an awareness for each other within the system, to overcome the phobia of the inner experience and parts.
Then we can approach the different kinds of non-realization strategically and introduce more aspects of our life to parts who need to know more about the bigger picture.
For ANPs that usually means listening inside, communicating and learning more about the others.
Abuser-imitating parts can join exercises to learn that they share a body with the rest of the system, learn about introjection and how dissociation works, why protectors like them are needed and then get oriented in time and space to double-check if their behavior is still adequate.
Parts stuck in TraumaTime can be ‘rescued’ and brought to the present or they work their way down a timeline of the system’s life to arrive in the present, where they can get oriented, notice how time has passed and life has changed.
Realization can come very suddenly, like a Little looking down and realizing they are in an adult body. Be prepared that getting in contact with reality will turn world-views upside down and cause small moments of crisis in single parts. Things we thought we understood might get lost again for some time because not all of us realized it or capacity was too low to hold on to it. Sometimes it takes a long time until it is a commonly shared understanding.
We cannot hope to integrate trauma without building inner connections and we cannot overcome the dissociation of our personality without realization of the trauma and our present life. It is tricky business that takes a lot of energy (don’t be surprised about exhaustion) but the reward is huge: Things will make sense. What was stuck gets unstuck. We can start to unfold ourselves properly instead of being caught in a prison of the past. Our history stops going in circles and we can move on. We can find safety and peace. That is the fruit of integration and it can only be achieved through realization.
Personification and presentification are special kinds of realization that we need to understand when we deal with structural dissociation. More about that soon.
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