One of the tricky problems with complex trauma is that our healthy separation between inside reality and outside reality is under-developed. We struggle with both sudden overwhelm from outside events and a tendency to take our inner experience as a literal reflection of outside reality.
Separating ourselves from outside events
You might know situations when you felt flooded by what was happening in the outside world. It can suddenly get so close it is overwhelming, almost like the events can reach inside us and change how we feel or who we are. In response to these kinds of intrusions on our self we might act impulsively to recover control over the situation. If it happens a lot, we get diagnosed as ‘borderline’. It is how small kids experience the world and they learn to cope and have boundaries through exchanges with caregivers. Not sensing the separation can be a sign of emotional neglect in these early years of life. It is not a character flaw.
The key for creating a separation from outside events and protecting ourselves from this kind of flooding is a focus on our mind and our ability to take a step back into an observing position. Then, our mind serves as a filter. Whatever happens in the outside world goes through the filter of the mind where we think about it and where we gain control through our reflection. We make ourselves aware that all our inner reactions are just thoughts, feelings and other inner experiences. The outside reality is still outside of us and we are somehow coping with what is happening inside. We can change our coping behavior and therefore we can manage our inner experience. It is not dominated by outside events. We cut the direct line of impact through reflection in our mind so that we can choose a response. Today, we have mental capacities that replace dissociation.
Separating the world from our inside reality
As usual in trauma responses, there are two extreme ends of experiences when the boundary between inside and outside reality is low. On the other extreme we believe that our inner experiences are literally true in the outside world. Everything we think is Truth, what we feel must be felt by everyone else too, our beliefs are real simply because we believe them. But our inner experience is impacted by trauma views that aren’t correct anymore. We experience the world through a lense that distorts everything.
Resolving the effects of such a damaged lense is difficult because we need to learn basic reflection skills to question what we perceive as truth. Thoughts are just thoughts. Feelings are just feelings. They come and go and while they are really happening they aren’t always a good reflection of the real world. We need to not take ourselves so seriously for a moment and check what we are doing in our mind. We project our inside reality to the outside.
Next we need to find a person who can help us to recalibrate our lense. It should be someone who is really good at reflecting. Then we can share how we see the world through our lense and they can share how they experience the situation or how they would look at it. By trusting them and maybe asking a couple more people about it, we can adapt our way of looking at the situation and reduce projection. It takes many small steps of comparing views to learn how to look at the world and see it as something that is different from our inner experience and that happens outside of us and all around us. It is not identical to our subjective experience.
Too much separation between experiences
With parts, we probably experience additional extremes. Some parts might avoid everything that has to do with inner experiences. It is made easier for them when the body and emotions are numbed already and there isn’t much to sense inside. Other experiences like impulses are subdued through harsh control or shutdown responses. The inner experience that will be more difficult to silence are thoughts.
We resolve this ignorance of inner experiences with tiny steps, exploration and reflection and enough time to rest so we can build up capacity for inner experiences. It needs quite some courage, but feeling things inside also allows us to feel good things and that is worth the effort.
Other parts might not acknowledge the outside reality. They believe that their inner pictures, emotions, beliefs etc is all that there is. They stay unaware of the outside reality and the things that happen in the outside world. It is usually a problem because it prevents Orientation and Grounding. Parts stay stuck in a reality that is often dominated by trauma memories and don’t get a chance to make new experiences in the outside world. They stay isolated.
To help these parts to become aware of the outside world they first need awareness of the body as this big thing we all live in. It is different from their imagery of their own bodies in the inner world. To perceive the outside world we need the senses of the body. There is no other way to create contact. We don’t need complete awareness of all body parts but it works best when parts can look through the body-eyes and touch with the body-hands, when they can use the senses. It might need reminders to really use the big body and not inside bodies in the inside world. Once there is perception we can piece together a picture of the outside world, including what older parts might know, and compare it to inner experiences. Our connection with the outside world is what can create a felt sense of safety in a world that is perceived as safe. It might not need another person to help with this. The guidance of parts who are already well oriented in the outside world could be enough. Regular reminders help parts to stay aware that there is more than one reality to pay attention to. More awareness of the outside world is made possible because it isn’t flooding us anymore like it used to when we were small children. There is a separation now that keeps us safe, so we don’t have to dissociate anymore.
Advanced reality checking
Advanced reality checking happens on 2 axes. One of them is time. We separate past from present, today from TraumaTime. The second axis is our experience and we separate between inside experience and outside experience. Is the troubling event happening in the outside world or are we dealing with an inside experience that was triggered by something. That helps us to distinguish between a flashback and an actually dangerous situation. The difficult experience might be limited to our inside world while the outside world just goes on as usual. Our interventions are greatly improved when we manage to distinguish between those realities while also not dissociating them. Inside experiences are valid but they need to be approached differently than outside danger. Otherwise we will be stuck in chronic stress responses.
Separating inside and outside reality is an important skill for regulation and impulse control. It helps us to understand the world and to choose appropriate responses. Practice will make it easier and inner cooperation can help us to be more grounded in safety. Whenever we get stuck with just separating past from present we can check if we mixed up inside and outside reality in some way or lost sight of one or the other.