Those of you who have read books on DID treatment have seen the phrase ‘the phobia of the inner experience’ and noticed that the reflection about this experience is a basic skill for all inner work. But scientists always forget to explain what the Inner Experience is supposed to be. How would we know? Nobody ever taught us and we are subconciously avoiding all knowledge of it.
What the textbooks do tell us is that inner experiences can be triggering. Otherwise we wouldn’t be so terrified. That is why we will use a very structured and grounded way to approach the topic.
Inner experiences
Everyone has inner experiences. It is not something that is specific to trauma or DID.
I think that the most useful inner experiences to reflect about are these:
- feelings/emotions
- thoughts
- body sensations
- hopes and worries
- internal images and fantasies
- preferences and wishes
- needs
- impulses and urges
- goals and plans
- attention and awareness
- memories
- intrusions eg inner voices
As you can see, these are not completely foreign concepts. We just rarely think of them in a more abstract way. All of them can be related to trauma or the existence of other parts and all of them can be intrusive. Intrusions are inner experiences that disrupt our usual experience in a way that is often unpleasant or outside our control. The suddenness and sense of not-coming-from-me if especially scary.
If you like, you can create small cards for each inner experience you want to explore. Start your practice with just one or two and not the whole list. You can add cards as needed or keep some for later. It is most useful to start with emotions, thoughts and body awareness because those are constantly needed for regulation.
Noticing inner experiences
Before we start to reflect, we need to notice what is going on inside. We pick one card from our pile and take a moment to try and sense that aspect of our inner experience. We may use our senses to ground ourselves but it would be wise not to dig into several inner experiences at once. Too much awareness of too much of our inner world could easily get overwhelming at first.
Next we write down what we noticed. Getting a journal is a really good idea. When Ts ask us to journal, this kind of reflection is what they want us to do. The mindful stance we practice will help us not to evaluate and just allow everything to be there without having to do anything about it. It just is.
You can decide if you want to include intrusions from other parts or set them aside for now. Be warned: once you stop distracting yourself and become mindful internally, some parts will probably try to get your attention. They usually don’t get a chance to be heard. When you have established a regular habit of reflecting it will go down and feel more manageable.
Choose one or more cards and notice the inner experiences one after the other while writing down whatever you get. It is ok if its not much. Practice will make it easier.
Reflection
Then we come to the step where we are actually reflecting and not just noticing. Reflection means thinking about inner experiences to understand them properly. We go through our notes of the things we noticed and think about them to see if there is anything we can learn from them or to somehow make sense of them.
Then we can ask ourselves
- How does this fit together? Are inner experiences connected?
- How is it connected to the situation?
- Have I experienced that before? Does it seem familiar?
- Is it related to TraumaTime?
- What does it tell me about myself (or another person/part)
- Do I like this inner experience, why/why not?
- How can I change the experience to make it better for me? Do I have to react (at all?)
- How does this influence my life or behavior?
- …
You can come up with more questions for yourself. These are just meant to get you started.
The trickiest part in reflection is meaning making. That’s difficult for many people but especially difficult when there is trauma. We are so used to making meaning from a trauma perspective and not everything is about trauma anymore. Frankly, we might need help with it. Someone who listens to what we noticed can check our own interpretation and add theirs based on their cummulated experience. We only receive and keep what is helpful and resonnates with us (because other people aren’t always right either) but it really helps to be able to talk things through with someone else. Over time we will recognize stable patterns in the way we are feeling, thinking and experiencing. Things that aren’t just an ever changing response to outside events and more like a part of who we are. We are getting in touch with our personality.
Reflecting about other parts
Once we get to know our own patterns a bit better we can put a greater focus on exploring the inner experience of other parts. We can use our cards and start by noticing, again. Whatever other parts want to share gets written down. It might need patience when the dissociative barriers are really high. Parts don’t always communicate through intrusions of inner voices. It is important to check the other aspects of inner experiences to see if maybe there is an open line of communication somewhere else. We work our way through our whole pile of cards, one after the other, listening and paying attention, and we won’t be picky. Maybe a part can’t communicate with words but there are plenty of options with images or urges. (Or, let’s be real, throwing emotions and memories at us.)
When we have collected all the information we can get, we reflect about it again. We ask ourselves the same questions we used before, just with the awareness that this is the experience of another part or several parts. Something to keep in mind is that these parts might not be oriented in time and space. Their current experience might look very different from the reality we know. There is something we can learn from it but it doesn’t have to be literally what they shared. It might not even be about the present situation. We have to tap into our own knowledge and understanding and put their experience into a frame that takes into account that there is trauma and structural dissociation. It needs a kind of reality checking that is best learned in therapy.
Over time we will notice patterns in the inner experience of other parts and they will be different from our own, more or less. That is why DID used to be called multiple personality disorder. We have more than one relatively stable pattern of experiencing the world.
When the phrase ‘inner world’ was first used, it just meant the realm of inner experiences. Everyone has that inner life that is made of a variety of experiences. Yes, even with aphantasia. Images are just one small aspect of it all. With DID, we just have a lot more of it and it gets complex at times. Reflection is the tool that will help us sort through it and hopefully understand more of it.