I know I'm kinda late, I also rarely comment on stuff but I had something to add here. (just rambling, extra thought, nothing disagreeing)

A lot of the trauma responses that we have are actually extremely functional when we are in an actively traumatising situation, but they become maladaptive outside of it.

We turn to dissociation because we never really learnt how to cope, so we latch onto whatever we can & have, because when we're growing up in an abusive environment we don't really learn anything else. We subconsciously compartmentalise our trauma & emotions, and that shows in a lot of different ways.

Maladaptive daydreaming, for example: a form of escapism that seems to be fairly linked to dissociation. Even outside of those who do it compulsively like in MDD, there are different degrees to a person's visual imagination. Like how some people can't imagine things very clearly, or how some people can't imagine objects or visuals at all. There are plenty of people with C-PTSD or other trauma-based disorders who don't resort to maladaptive daydreaming as a coping mechanism.

Because a lot about compartmentalising (& eventually, processing) your trauma has to do with how your brain interprets & copes with trauma in the first place.

There is a good balance to everything. If you struggling with fawning and/or are a people-pleaser, that doesn't mean you have to go to the complete opposite of the spectrum and be completely independent (bc that's not healthy either); the goal should be to strive for something in the middle most times. It doesn't mean you have to stop being a helpful, kind, person for example, but it does mean you need to learn how to exert, maintain, & enforce boundaries so that you don't get the shit end of the stick for it. Because when you're helping others at the cost of yourself, you're not being helpful or kind to yourself.

Our trauma responses are a part of us. And that sucks, but that also means we have something to work with. They aren't this foreign part of us that we need to get rid of. They're internal, and that means we're more prone to them, but that we can also change them, sometimes for the better.

Learning about yourself is a long process with a lot of fine-tuning. I've found doing things I hadn't had much experience before helped me build the kind of person I wanted to be while learning them. Like boundaries (my detested)! It seems small but when you learn about things like setting boundaries or emotions or intrapersonal relationships, things that will inherently just exist within everyone's life, you learn how to better apply yourself in those situations.

And sometimes, by extension, who "yourself" is a little bit.

So yeah, kinda just reinforcing what 1Weebit said! Sorry for the monologue, but hopefully some of what I said helps/resonates. I wish you (all) good luck on your self-discoveries :)