In our quest to make sense of ourselves and the world we will spend quite some time reflecting about experiences. We already shared how to reflect on inner experiences. Now we will look at how to make sense of the world around us.

 

Constructivism

We all know only fragments of all the things there are to learn in the world. The fragments come to us through our education, our curiosity and engagement with everyday life and specific topics etc but also through our trauma experiences. We build our reality based on these building block. That is a form of integration called synthesis. Depending on how much trauma we experienced, how isolated we were and how constant the traumatization was, our collection of knowledge about the world can get extreme and lopsided. Other people, including our Ts, seem to live in a different reality and no matter how much they talk, they are not convincing us to see things differently.

But how does it happen, that others develop such a different view of the world? They got their knowledge from different experiences and therefore different fragments of reality were integrated. Putting their fragments together led them to a different picture. They might have trauma fragments in their reality but they also have a ton of other experiences and knowledge that serve as a counterbalance. Their reality is not dominated by trauma. Most of society is blissfully unaware of trauma or in deep denial.

So the first thing we need to understand is that there isn’t a big reality we all share that is true and if we just work hard enough and learn all there is to learn we will know the real truth. We all just put together fragments of what we perceive as real. And this individual inner construction of reality is heavily based on the experiences we already have in our collection. We try to make new pieces of information fit in between the old ones to continue the interpretation of reality that already makes some sense to us. Sometimes we turn new fragments of knowledge around and around until we find a way to fit them in upside down.

 

The mind

The next useful step is to think of the mind as a kind of processing device. Something happens in the world. The sensory input enters our body through our senses and as we become aware of it (perception), it ends up in our mind where we can think about it. Here, we sort through the fragments of information we just got and try to make them fit together to create an interpretation. In response to this interpretation there will be an Inner Experience. Our mind likes it when it can make connections so that things fit together. But our mind has experienced trauma. That means that it will be hypersensitive to real or imagined similarities to trauma situations and it will put new experiences right between the old ones – and old behavioral scripts on how to respond to them. The way the mind makes sense of information isn’t always helpful because it is based on a reality that doesn’t happen anymore. It is wise to understand that our interpretation of information can be off while the information (perception) itself absolutely happened. Some situations are much clearer than others and the less context we have the easier we might connect the wrong dots. What we need is a bit of additional reflection to sort through the process of meaning making to double check it.

This is what it usually looks like

 

This is what we need to do, whenever we realize that our interpretation of what is real is different from that of the people around us.

 

We take a step back and reflect about the process that got us to our first conclusion and see if it can be interpreted differently. Helpful questions could be:

• What is the basic perception that entered the mind?
• How did the mind interprete this?
• How would someone else have interpreted this?
• What are 3 other possible interpretations that could also fit the situation?
• How does my own interpretation influence my inner experience?
• Would other people think that this response is too much/too little/somehow missing the point?
• Can I ask someone how they would have experienced the situation?
• How does my trauma experience impact my interpretation of what is happening?
• In a world without trauma, what could my perception mean?
• If I zoom out of the scene, what kind of context could I notice that would add helpful meaning to the situation?

 

Our mind is not perfect in the way it processes information. We can admit that without falling off the horse on the other side and claiming that it is all wrong. We all construct our realities and some of them are more helpful than others, that’s all. We try to reach more helpful conclusions that keep us safe and also give us freedom to explore and to live without constant fear. As long as our life today is relatively safe we can often improve our experience by re-evaluating our meaning making in our mind. Then new input can start to balance out our old experiences and we can leave our old life behind. That is what we do when we use reality checks and separate past from present. Those are forms of reflection about the outside world in relationship to our inner experience. When the circumstances we live in are (still) bad, no amount of reality checking will change that because that is really the input we get. Then it is time to change the circumstances.

 

Reflecting about multiple realities

The fun thing about DID is that we have more than one first-person-perspective and therefore more than one view of reality. Our mind is separated into smaller sections. Different sections of our mind might filter perceptions differently so that other details can enter our awareness. The consequence is that parts will not have the same base of information to begin with. Then the separate sections of the mind compare information with a separated data base of past experiences and try to create interpretations that fit into separated but stable constructs of reality. The results of what different parts consider to be real right now can be worlds apart. I think it was Kluft who spoke of DID as ‘Multiple Reality Disorder’. This is a tell-tale sign of DID, more so than overt switching.

When we can’t even agree on relatively similar constructs of reality it will have a major impact on our functioning. To make it worse, some of the constructed realities are so deeply rooted in a world that is made up of fragments of trauma and not much else that our responses to current events will be so far off it can get dangerous or seem psychotic.

What we face looks more like this

To make sense of all the different realities and experiences within these realities we need to explore what is happening in the mind of other parts. Every piece of information that helps us to understand how they see the world, what they expect, how they generally experienced things in the past and how their thought process works will help us to figure out their reality. Just like we reflected about our own mind we get curious and think about their mind, a form of mentalization. Because of the trauma content that will show up we might need proper pacing. Curiosity usually helps against fear.

We also keep in mind that none of our constructed realities is literally the one big truth. Neither our own construct nor that of the other part is perfect even if parts are extremely sure about what they know. We all only know fragments of a vast universe of information. There is always more to learn. And there are always more interpretations of perceptions that are worth exploring.

When we do reality checks with parts who live in their own world we never try to take anything away from what they know. We come as learners and we try to inspire new learners. That means that our main focus is on synthesis, the process of connecting dots. We offer parts new dots that have been outside their realm of experience and support them in making meaning of them. If they try to turn the fragment of information upside down to make it fit we can gently explore if that is a helpful interpretation and explain that we know a different one. Do they want to hear it? We need to broaden the range of experiences to allow good things to get integrated into an otherwise dark reality. That way we foster more realization about today. Whatever we can offer to balance out past experiences will be helpful. Once there is a solid base of better experiences we can approach the old reality.

We don’t try to take anything away from it. I don’t think we can. These parts know better what they experienced than we do. What we can do is move that reality on the axis of time and gently push it into a perceived past. It was absolutely real and it is also not happening anymore. Today offers a new reality with lots of other experiences. This is called presentification. We use the basic concepts of integration because our inner realities are dissociated. Before we try to get parts to make better meaning of things through changing the way the mind processes information we need to work on re-integrating our realities. CBT will not work on us when the structural dissociation of the mind and its impact are ignored.

 

Denial

Denial can be understood as a failure of integration between dissociated realities. We can’t fit the reality of one part into that of another. It is just too big and too different. To integrate knowledge we need to start really small by connecting single dots between realities. While we might interprete things differently and therefore have a different understanding of them, there are still some things we can be sure about because there is proof. We know we have been in a certain place at about the right time because there are photos or tickets. To overcome denial we gently look for the things we know for sure. And then we add small pieces of information that fit what we already know. How much we can realize depends on integrative capacity and we improve it by doing self-care and resting. Trying to force it makes it worse. Integrating realities takes time and patience and both sets of realities will change considerably in the process and we move closer together.

 

Parts who are connected and who feel safe enough to engage with each other are more able to use curiosity and playfulness to explore different perspectives. We ‘keep each others minds in mind’ and gain a shared meta perspective. Once there is enough synthesis between realities we can start to question our interpretations together, ask each other about our opinions on a situation and help each other to balance our shared reality. We learn to tell each other when we think someone is stuck in trauma thoughts or lacks context to understand a situation. Integrated Functioning includes a network of more similar constructs of reality that work together to create balance. It reduces the amount of problems we face and improves our experience of the world and our life.