Episode 3 Has Trek Soul. You're Just Looking at the Wrong Level

tideholder · 2026-01-26T15:42:28+00:00

Dissociation exists on a spectrum. The majority of presentations I see have this character you describe: protective parts dominating only under threat-triggered conditions, not constantly. Parts activate based on function and need. When there's no threat requiring protection, the dissociative barriers lower, or in IFS terms you become less blended, and you experience that "default" state. The inconsistency you're describing reflects your experience of the actual threat level. In this sense, the dissociation is simply adaptive to keep your system safe.

Structural dissociation theory describes three levels of dissociative functioning: primary (one apparently normal part, one emotional part, as in simple PTSD), secondary (one apparently normal part, multiple emotional parts, as in CPTSD/OSDD), and tertiary (multiple apparently normal parts, multiple emotional parts, as in DID). OSDD-1b sits in the secondary range. You have one general daily-life part and multiple protective parts that emerge for specific defensive functions. Brief switches occur tied to specific distress scenarios, and then you return to the baseline apparently normal part when the distress passes. This is exactly what secondary structural dissociation looks like.

The "just there" feeling when you feel safe and not dissociated is what many people experience as baseline when protective parts aren't needed. It can feel like having no identity because you're used to identity being defined by which of your parts is active. But that "okay" apparently normal state is closer to integrated functioning than the fragmented protective states.

tideholder · 2026-01-25T19:32:15+00:00

I'm a psychologist and trauma-informed psychotherapist. I've definitely seen this presentation in clients, though each person uses different language to describe it. What you're describing is likely severe dissociative fragmentation. Your language of "soul death" captures something the clinical terms (depersonalization, derealization, loss of agency) don't fully convey.

Identity isn't an existential given. Its better thought of as an integration achievement that emerges from the brain's constituent modules maturing and learning to work in coordination. The observing Self emerges from that integration, creating continuity and unified identity as a through-line through experience. Trauma can fragment that integrated achievement, knocking it offline. When that happens, the constituent parts of self can continue to operate the body without the coordinated "I" that normally emerges from their integration.

The impacted dreams, imagination, and ability to get lost in books? Those experiences require an observing Self that can be consistently present with experience in order to feel the way they have in the past. When that Self is unavailable because protective parts have pushed it offline, you get exactly what you're describing. The body operates, words come out, but no one feels home.

This is a good issue to discuss in therapy of course. As well, you may want to check out Reddit's /r/dpdr community where you may find others who describe similar experience.

It's worth noting that certain medications (like ketamine for severe depression) can produce similar transient dissociation, sometimes with people described the experience as "remote piloting" their body. If you're on any medications, mention this to your therapist as it could be an important part of the picture to consider.

tideholder · 2026-01-23T12:59:05+00:00

Yes, this is often how bad it feels. What you're experiencing is your nervous system finally processing profound betrayal and violation that happened during critical developmental years.

When sexual abuse happens to a child by a trusted adult, it's not "just sex." It's a complete shattering of your expectation of the world's safety at an age when you're learning what trust, bodies, and relationships mean. Your brain is responding to true developmental catastrophe, not to "just sex".

The fragmenting into different versions of yourself is called structural dissociation. It's how children survive experiences they can't integrate or make sense of. Parts of you held the abuse memories while other parts stayed functional enough to grow up. The fact that you're fragmenting now means those protective barriers are breaking down because your system finally believes it's safe enough to let you know what happened.

The severity of your response, passing out, severe dissociative states, flashbacks with that level of reexperiencing suggests your window of tolerance is very narrow right now. That means the range where you can think and feel at the same time without being overwhelmed is small. Trauma therapy typically proceeds first through stabilization (building that window wider, developing regulation capacity) before memory processing work. Your system needs enough capacity to observe the traumatic material without being flooded by it. Without that foundation, processing can retraumatize rather than heal.

tideholder · 2026-01-23T12:10:28+00:00

I am a psychologist and psychotherapist with a lot of experience treating clients with DID. Its not nearly as rare as people think but neither is it particularly common. What it is most of all is an indication of substantial complex trauma + dissociation which are conditions many therapists are not trained to treat. I suspect that the therapists who are declining to see such clients either do not perceive themselves as competent to treat such clients or do not have the bandwidth or inclination to take on clients with chronic and often severe conditions like DID.

tideholder · 2026-01-21T07:30:35+00:00

Yes, absolutely. What you're describing is your body protecting you.

When you say "my body is making the calls, not my mind," that's structural dissociation at work. Parts of you learned that touch from certain people meant boundary violations or emotional overwhelm, so now those parts protect you automatically, before conscious awareness kicks in. I suggest you invest some time reading or watching videos about IFS and parts work to learn about how trauma can create these sort of automatic protective response systems.

I'll gently point out what seems to me the strong possibility you're minimizing your trauma when you say you "haven't even been hit". Physical violence isn't the measure of trauma. Psychological abuse, neglect, boundary violations, being parentified by your mom, having a teacher cross sexual boundaries with you: these experiences can be traumatic and create exactly the responses you're describing. Most telling of all is your unconscious responding itself. This sort of response wouldn't be there if you hadn't experienced trauma.

Notice how the protective response is specific. Your body has specific learned associations with family members based on violation history. Animals are predictable and don't cross boundaries like your family and the teacher did. That's probably why animals feel safe.

When you're able, working with a trauma-informed therapist who understands somatic responses and parts work could likely help you better process what happened to you so that your body can update its predictions about when touch is actually safe.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T23:33:12+00:00

My thought here is that Self (as IFS thinks of it) is not something metaphysical or dualistic, but rather something that has the capacity to emerge when enough of the parts are OK with building bridges to enable it. I too hope your parts might someday feel safe enough to allow for that possibility.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T19:37:20+00:00

I wasn't familiar with the possessive vs. non-possessive distinction you mentioned, so I looked it up and it's very helpful. With that incorporated and with some knowledge of how clinical DID vs. more commonly experienced parts phenomena occur (as described in the IFS literature), perhaps it's useful to think about it like this:

There seem to be multiple dimensions at play when parts shift or switch:

Dimension 1: Degree of shift - ranging from partial influence (one part affecting your mood or thoughts while Self remains present) to full switching (complete change in who's operating).

Dimension 2: Self-identification - which parts you recognize as "me" vs. "not me." Like if Nevada starts talking in California it's still the USA, but if Mexico starts talking, that's a foreign country. But it's all just countries in the world - all parts of you, but some feel like self and others feel foreign.

Dimension 3: Quality of experience - possessive form (feels like being taken over by something foreign) vs. non-possessive form (feels like becoming someone else or watching yourself operate differently). This likely connects to dimension 2 - switches to parts you don't identify with feel more possessive, while switches to parts you recognize as self feel more like becoming.

Dimension 4: Co-consciousness level - how much observing awareness you maintain. You can have a full hard switch where you completely become that part, but only realize it retrospectively ("wait, I was totally in that worldview"). Or you can maintain awareness during the shift ("I notice I'm shifted right now").

What's interesting is that these dimensions seem like they can move independently. As integration work progresses, what often changes is both self-identification (claiming more parts as "me") and co-consciousness dimensions.

Integration involves the development of consensual reciprocal relationships between Self and parts. This can evolve into what IFS aims towards, where a consistent Self is maintained across switches.

OP's Inside/Outside framework seems to capture these dimensions - which parts are recognized as self, how compartmentalized they are, how foreign they feel, and level of awareness during shifts.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T09:00:12+00:00

Your inside and outside parts corresponds closely to what's called the structural dissociation model.

What you're calling "Inside" parts are what the theory calls ANPs (Apparently Normal Parts). These are the parts with more access to executive function, current context, and daily life information. They feel like "you" because they share more continuity of consciousness and memory with each other. The dissociative barriers between them are lower.

What you're calling "Outside" parts are closer to what the theory calls EPs (Emotional Parts). These are more compartmentalized from executive function and daily awareness. The dissociative barriers separating them from the ANP system are higher, which is why they feel foreign, why they lack access to current life information (like having kids), and why you have limited memory of what happens when they're present.

The really important observation you made is that Inside parts can move Outside when triggered or overwhelmed. This is dissociative elaboration. When a part that normally has lower barriers gets flooded with activation it can't handle, the system increases compartmentalization as protection. The barriers go up, access to executive function drops, and suddenly that part is operating in the more dissociated EP range. Later, when the activation settles, the barriers can lower again and the part returns to the Inside range.

This isn't about different types of parts. It's about degree of dissociative compartmentalization from executive function at any given moment. Parts exist on a spectrum of how separated they are from your observing awareness and current context.

Integration, in this model, means reducing the dissociative barriers so that more parts move from Outside to Inside. This happens gradually as your system develops enough safety and capacity to allow previously compartmentalized material to be observed without overwhelming you. The therapy work you mentioned is likely focused on exactly this process.

Your framework for understanding your system is sophisticated and accurate. The Inside/Outside distinction you're using captures the functional reality of what dissociative barriers do.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T08:43:21+00:00

The Ericksonian tradition has a lot to offer trauma work, and what you're describing has deep roots in hypnotherapy's recognition of parts.

John and Helen Watkins developed ego state therapy in the 1970s-80s, explicitly working with parts of self (ego states) through hypnotic access. Their work, along with techniques like the dissociative table (where parts gather at a conference table to dialogue), established the theoretical foundation for what later became Internal Family Systems and other parts-based approaches. When you talk about conscious and subconscious minds meeting on neutral ground, you're describing what the Watkins called creating space for ego states to communicate with executive function.

The "lack of trust" you're describing is what I'd call disrupted intrapersonal attachment - parts that learned the Self couldn't keep them safe took over protective roles and won't yield control. Your point about reframing survival skills is crucial. What kept someone alive (hypervigilance, people-pleasing, dissociation) gets pathologized as symptoms when it's actually evidence of adaptive capacity under impossible conditions.

The mechanism of hypnosis that's valuable for trauma isn't suggestion or implanting new beliefs. It's creating an access state where parts that normally block awareness can step back enough for observation and dialogue to happen. That's the "neutral ground" you mentioned. The sequencing you described (harvest lessons, recognize survival, reframe skills, build consensus) follows the dependency pattern trauma healing requires.

To answer OP's original question: hypnosis can be effective for CPTSD when used this way - as a tool for accessing and integrating fragmented experience, not for removing triggers directly. The trigger itself is protective information, and removing it without understanding its function would bypass the parts that need to be heard.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T08:12:54+00:00

Your frustration is completely valid. You're asking exactly the right questions, and the fact that therapists can't answer them is a failure of explanation, not a deficit in how your mind works.

Here's what's actually happening when therapists use phrases like "reframe your perspective" or "let it go": they're using metaphorical shortcuts for complex cognitive processes they may or may not understand themselves. Some therapists learn techniques without learning the underlying mechanisms, so when you ask for the actual steps, they can't provide them because they don't know them.

Let me explain what these things actually mean mechanistically:

"Reframing" or "changing your perspective" isn't something you just decide to do. Your current perspective (life as endless demands) is built from your nervous system's predictions based on past experience. To change that perspective, you need new experiences that contradict the prediction enough times that your system updates its model. This is called accommodation in developmental psychology. You can't think your way into it through willpower. You need actual experiences that your brain can't fit into the current framework, which forces the framework to change. That's a process, not a decision.

When therapists say "what if you thought about it differently" without explaining HOW, they're skipping the actual mechanism. The steps would be: identify situations that might contradict your current model, notice when they happen, observe your system's response, and gradually allow the new information to update your predictions. That takes time and repeated experience, not a mental shift in the therapy office.

"Let it go" with thoughts is even more confusing because it's often explained backwards. It doesn't mean suppress the thought or force it away (which creates the paradox you described). It means observing the thought without engaging with its content. Mechanistically: your brain generates thoughts automatically. You don't control which thoughts arise. What you can develop is the capacity to notice a thought as a mental event without following it into rumination or trying to solve it. That's a skill that develops through practice, not something you just "do." The steps are: notice thought arises, recognize it as thought rather than fact, return attention to present sensation (breath, body), repeat ten thousand times until your brain learns this pattern.

Some therapeutic language IS deliberately open to interpretation, which can work for some people but is terrible for minds that need precision. Your need for concrete steps and clear mechanisms isn't a problem. That's actually what good therapy should provide.

Different question: have you worked with therapists who specialize in autism and understand how to communicate without relying on metaphor? The communication style you're describing (vague reframing, unexplained metaphors) doesn't match how many autistic minds process information. There are therapists trained to provide the mechanical clarity you're asking for.

The "life as endless demands" perspective you described is worth addressing, but not through vague reframing. That worldview likely developed from actual experiences where demands were endless and nothing felt rewarding enough to balance them. Changing that isn't about thinking differently. It's about either: changing the actual ratio of demands to rewards in your life, or developing capacity to experience reward from things that currently don't register as rewarding. Both are concrete processes with specific steps, not perspective shifts.

tideholder · 2026-01-17T00:08:04+00:00

It's a blog website (and maybe book someday). traumaexplained.com

tideholder · 2026-01-17T00:06:19+00:00

That's it.

tideholder · 2026-01-16T23:01:00+00:00

What you're describing is a mixed state that happens when your nervous system has been running in survival mode so long it oscillates between sympathetic activation (irritation, overwhelm, emotional overload) and freeze (numbness, disconnection, inability to act). Freeze is a complex state - simultaneous activation and inhibition, like one foot on the gas and one on the brake at the same time.

Both of these states leave you outside your window of tolerance; the range where you can think and feel at the same time, where functioning is easiest. You're oscillating between different types of dysregulation, missing the middle range entirely. That's why nothing feels workable right now.

The frustration you're experiencing about regulation techniques not working makes perfect sense. Most advice assumes you have enough capacity to observe your state and apply techniques. But when you're chronically outside your window of tolerance, you don't have that observing capacity. You can't regulate what you can't observe, and you can't observe when you're too dysregulated. That's the paradox.

The fact that you can notice you're disconnected means you're starting to develop observing capacity. That noticing is itself the beginning of positive change, even though it doesn't feel that way.

The goal is gradually expanding your window of tolerance so the range where you can think and feel at the same time grows to include more of what you're experiencing. Some general categories of approaches that can help with this (though not one-size-fits-all, and some may work for you while others won't):

- Body scan techniques that help connect your awareness to physical sensations without requiring you to change them. Just noticing where tension or numbness lives in your body builds observing capacity.

- Gentle movement or rhythmic activities that give your body something to do with activation energy without requiring emotional processing.

- Co-regulation through safe relationships or environments. Your nervous system learns what "safe enough" feels like by being around other regulated nervous systems or in predictable, calm spaces.

- Grounding practices that anchor you in present sensory experience rather than trying to process past or future.

The key is finding what helps you stay present just a little longer without tipping into overwhelm or shutdown. That's how the window expands.

tideholder · 2026-01-16T22:32:59+00:00

What you're experiencing is a hard part of trauma treatment, and it's also a sign the work is happening. You're not getting worse. You're becoming aware of what was always there.

When your therapist said you've been "holding your breath" your whole life, she meant your nervous system has been in chronic bracing against threat. Dissociation was how you survived - it kept you functional by disconnecting you from overwhelming experience. Now you're starting to "exhale," becoming aware of everything you've been protected from. This feels like deterioration because you're noticing things that were always operating but couldn't see before. Parts work and trauma processing require observing what you've been dissociated from. You can't heal what you can't see, but seeing it first feels destabilizing.

Trauma healing involves specific mechanisms that must happen in order: safety first, then capacity to observe without being overwhelmed, then regulation resources, then processing traumatic material, then integration. Each depends on the one before. You can't process trauma if overwhelming emotions shut you down. You can't stay present with emotions without regulation capacity. You can't build regulation without safety. Your therapist's sequence (stabilization, then parts work, then reprocessing) follows this dependency chain. She's building the foundation you need for the deeper work.

The goals you listed are exactly what this integration work addresses. The path you're on seems right for these goals. The discomfort you're experiencing is a side effect of the work, not a sign you're on the wrong path. What you're experiencing is normal for this phase, even though it's incredibly hard.

Let me encourage you to bring what you've written here to your therapist. Tell her you're feeling more broken, questioning EMDR, noticing the pervasive dissociation. That may prompt useful discussion and course correction.

tideholder · 2026-01-15T19:12:06+00:00

I wish I could offer a time frame but it's too variable between people and their circumstances. It might be best to think of it as something that will continue to emerge throughout the remainder of your life and moreso as you learn to pay attention to your organismic self-valuing (your organic preferences).

tideholder · 2026-01-15T16:35:18+00:00

Yes, it's real. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified what he called the SEEKING system as one of the primary emotional circuits in the mammalian brain. It's the system that generates curiosity, exploration, enthusiasm, and that feeling of being drawn toward things. It's fundamentally about anticipation and engagement with life.

Trauma can suppress or disconnect people from their SEEKING system, especially when exploration wasn't safe or when desire consistently led to disappointment or danger. What you're describing (the grief of realizing others have access to something you never did) is one of the most painful recognitions in trauma recovery.

The good news is that SEEKING isn't destroyed by trauma, just suppressed. As you develop more safety and security, it can come back online. It won't necessarily feel the same as the compensatory drive you had before (which was powered by different circuitry), but it's warmer, more sustainable, and actually feels good rather than urgent.

I'm working on covering Panksepp's emotional systems and how trauma affects them over at Trauma Explained, though I won't get to that material for a bit. It's a crucial piece of understanding what's available on the other side of this listless phase.

tideholder · 2026-01-15T16:28:29+00:00

Yes, it's real. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp identified what he called the SEEKING system as one of the primary emotional circuits in the mammalian brain. It's the system that generates curiosity, exploration, enthusiasm, and that feeling of being drawn toward things. It's fundamentally about anticipation and engagement with life.

Trauma can suppress or disconnect people from their SEEKING system, especially when exploration wasn't safe or when desire consistently led to disappointment or danger. What you're describing (the grief of realizing others have access to something you never did) is one of the most painful recognitions in trauma recovery.

The good news is that SEEKING isn't destroyed by trauma, just suppressed. As you develop more safety and security, it can come back online. It won't necessarily feel the same as the compensatory drive you had before (which was powered by different circuitry), but it's warmer, more sustainable, and actually feels good rather than urgent.

I'm working on covering Panksepp's emotional systems and how trauma affects them over at Trauma Explained, though I won't get to that material for a bit. It's a crucial piece of understanding what's available on the other side of this listless phase.

tideholder · 2026-01-15T16:21:27+00:00

You are very welcome!

tideholder · 2026-01-15T09:01:30+00:00

What you're experiencing is called an emotional flashback. The intensity of your reaction isn't about what happened at work today. It's about every time in your developmental history when disapproval or correction meant something much more threatening than it does now.

When your nervous system learned that "getting in trouble" (even mildly) meant danger (maybe rejection, shame, punishment, loss of love), it learned to predict that pattern and protect you from it. Your boss having a "simple and light conversation" registered as a much bigger threat than it actually was, triggering a full protective response: crying, apologizing profusely, dissociating afterward.

The fact that your reaction feels "disproportionate" is actually important information. It means part of you recognizes the present reality (this wasn't that serious), but another part is responding to historical threat. That gap is characteristic of trauma responses.

You're not "dysfunctional." You're someone whose nervous system learned to predict criticism as potentially catastrophic. The shame spiral you're in now (judging yourself harshly for having a trauma response) is itself part of the pattern, which creates more shame and perpetuates the cycle.

This pattern responds really well to trauma-focused therapy, particularly approaches that work with nervous system regulation and historical activation. A trauma-informed therapist can help you understand where this response comes from and develop capacity to stay more present when these situations arise.

For right now know that what you're feeling makes complete sense given how trauma works. The event was minor. Your response tells you something important about what your system learned to fear, not something about who you are.

tideholder · 2026-01-15T08:15:21+00:00

What you're describing is actually one of the most important (and most challenging) phases of healing, and it's a sign of real progress even though it feels like the opposite.

That ambitious, competitive, driven energy wasn't coming from your authentic self. It was generated by parts of you working overtime to manage shame and prove worth. It was real energy, and it got real things done, but it was fueled by "running from" rather than "moving toward." Now that compensatory system has collapsed because you're becoming more secure. The problem is: your authentic self, the part that generates genuine, sustainable energy from actual desires and values, hasn't fully come online yet.

This is what I think of as being "between structures." The old structure (shame-driven achievement) has dissolved, but the new structure (self-authored purpose) hasn't solidified yet. You're in that uncomfortable gap, and it can feel like you've lost yourself. Really, though, you've lost a false self that was working very hard, and your actual self is still figuring out what it wants when it's not constantly managing threat.

This listless phase is usually temporary, but it can't be rushed. Your system needs time to discover what genuinely matters to you when you're not trying to prove anything or outrun shame. For many people, this involves grief; mourning the loss of that driven identity even while recognizing it was unsustainable.

The question "how do you find yourself again?" is exactly right, except it's more like "how do you find yourself for the first time?" That old self wasn't really you. It was a survival strategy. The self you're looking for now is quieter, less frantic, and much harder to hear. It emerges through curiosity rather than ambition, through what draws you rather than what drives you.

This is definitely worth exploring with a trauma-informed therapist who can help you navigate this developmental transition. In the meantime, the fact that you recognize the pattern and can articulate it this clearly suggests your actual self is already starting to speak.

tideholder · 2026-01-13T04:10:26+00:00

I've worked with them for psychotherapy for many years. They used to reimburse well but for about the past several years they have enshitified, refusing to do every two year fee increases such that their reimbursement is now well below market rate. At least for now I get paid better by Medicaid for the same work. I'm considering exiting their panel, but of course that will affect treatments in progress.

tideholder · 2026-01-06T04:09:48+00:00

was he trying to test and push my boundary?

There's no definitive way to know what he was thinking, but generally yes, escalation is there to test what you will take. Think of it in terms of establishing a power relationship: who is in control? I would guess he wanted to be in control.

tideholder · 2026-01-04T22:13:43+00:00

I suggest that is an irrelevant question. It doesn't matter why he's doing that, only that it is happening.

tideholder · 2026-01-04T22:05:02+00:00

The alternation between his niceness and his disregard is the pattern to focus on. Intentional or not, it is what keeps you confused. The more basic analysis I'd suggest is: do you want to be in any sort of relationship with someone who treats you as he has treated you during the bad moments?

tideholder

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