You ever feel as if you’re at odds with yourself or you don’t quite feel like yourself? Or you ever feel as if in some cases you might have a personality and in other cases you might have a different way of interacting with people? Well, what if the internal conflict was even deeper? What if it was even like a core part of your identity? This is where we introduce the idea of dissociation.

Hi, my name is David Archer. If you like this content, you can like, you can comment, you can subscribe, and let’s get it. Let’s see what this is all about, about structural dissociation.

A Case Example of Structural Dissociation

I was working with this lady and let’s just call her Shaniqua. So what was going on is that we were having our sessions. This is a person, she’s very successful as a businesswoman, entrepreneur, everything was very well done in her life. But she noticed that there was this anxiety and she explained that she had it from her childhood.

At first, it was hard for me to understand this because she was pretty confident, well put together. Posture was good. Vocal projection, all of that stuff. So I was like, all right, well, yeah, sure. Let’s talk a bit about what’s going on.

What was interesting is once we got to the topic of trauma, I remember it to this day, she was in my office, all of a sudden she curled up in a ball on the chair, like her feet were on the chair. And she was then using a child’s voice instead of her adult voice.

Of course, at first I was taken aback by it, but then I realized, I thought back to my training and I understood, oh, this is that part of her that might’ve maybe been shunned from society or even shunned or hidden away. And so there was almost like this apparently normal personality of her. And there was also this emotional part of her, and we’re going to break it down.

Historical Perspectives on Consciousness and Parts

We’re going to talk about structural dissociation, but even before that, I want to speak about some people who were thinking about parts and different types of consciousness before that.

W.E.B. Du Bois coined the term double consciousness, speaking out about how as an African American, as a Black person, it’s like you have this element of you that is connected to your culture, which is the Blackness. And then you have this element of you, which is participating in the white supremacy and security culture, which is the whiteness, and how we can at times be at odds with these different parts of ourselves.

Frantz Fanon went a step further talking about how there’s the colonized and the colonizer part that exists within us as well. And sometimes that can lend to the conflict that relates to internalized oppression. It’s almost as if we take on the negative traits of the oppressor and do the damage when the oppressor is outside of the room.

Years later, and even around that time, in World War I, there was a researcher, I believe his name was [Charles Samual Myers], who was noticing that some of these soldiers, when they come back from war, there would be this split in their personality. Of course, there’s the well-to-do person that you think is the apparently normal personality, which he coined the term. And there was the emotional part, which was experiencing the shell shock, experiencing the feeling of being withdrawn and defensive.

That’s where we get to discussing about how this relates to not only just identity, but the trauma and the difficulties that take place. Here’s the basic idea that I want to impart to you:

Trauma is the impact. Dissociation is the response.

It’s how we kind of make sense of it and how the personality reintegrates itself. Sometimes it does it in a way that is adaptive, and sometimes it can be a little challenging. And that’s when people need a bit of extra assistance.

Understanding ANP and EP in Structural Dissociation

Here’s the core idea. With structural dissociation, we’re saying that there’s a core split between the apparently normal personality (ANP) and the emotional part (EP). With structural dissociation, the trauma survivor’s personality gets split into at least two parts. There’s the apparently normal personality and the emotional part.

The apparently normal personality is attempting to detach from these traumatic memories, attempting to be away from the whole emotions, like Shaniqua trying to do her work. And then there’s this emotional personality. That is Shaniqua’s child part that is stuck, re-experiencing, stuck in the past, being that little kid stuck in that closed building, in that closed room.

The emotional part is stuck re-experiencing these vivid memories. And the apparently normal personality oftentimes wants nothing to do with any of that. Apparently normal personality wants to be in relationships with people, wants to evolutionarily continue on the species.

The emotional part is stuck in the fight, flight, and freeze. It is stuck in the suffering and the defensive responses, the action systems that are meant to keep the organism alive at all costs. So that’s why we know that this perspective is related to evolutionary things that have been around for thousands and even millions of years, and is not just an act.

In fact, there are studies that show that there’s different brain regions that activate when the trauma survivor is acting as ANP versus when they’re acting as EP. So it’s not an act. It’s not multiple personalities. It’s not what you’ve seen on television. This is a real thing. In fact, it’s not multiple personalities. Their personality is all of these parts. It’s just that it’s a different organization than what maybe many neurotypical or many people who are not traumatized would experience.

The Interruption of the Narrative

As I said, the trauma causes this interruption in a person’s life. So instead of the meaningful narrative that many of us might have about our lives, this trauma causes a split and it makes it hard to integrate into a coherent narrative what it is that took place and what it is that transpired.

When we go through a massive or overwhelming form of stress, if it’s intense and chronic and persistent enough, we’re talking about ritualized abuse, we’re talking about trauma from parents, betrayal trauma at key developmental periods, then it makes it hard for us to digest the story. And it means then that instead of us having a narrative of how our life went, some of it is stuck in this raw, undigested form.

That’s where we see the split of the emotional part being stuck in that state-dependent, terrible state that they might have experienced trauma. Depending on the level of traumatization, we’re going to see a spectrum.

The Spectrum of Structural Dissociation

The primary form of structural dissociation is going to be PTSD. That’s where there’s one ANP and one EP.

You’re going to see that as the trauma gets a little bit more intense, that’s where complex trauma comes up or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS). This is the secondary level of structural dissociation. With complex PTSD, DDNOS, there is one ANP and many EPs.

The final stage is the tertiary level of structural dissociation. That’s where you hear about dissociative identity disorder. With dissociative identity disorder, that’s where you get many ANPs and many EPs for each of those ANPs as well.

That’s where things become a little tricky. That’s where it becomes really challenging for people to deal with their day-to-day stresses.

The Impact of Phobia Between Parts

When we think about Shaniqua then, is that no matter what she would do on her day-to-day, things are okay, like at the surface level, okay? In the business world, things are okay. Difficulty with relationships, but it’s okay. She’s climbing the corporate ladder and doing those things, setting aside relationships. That’s just not as important. But getting to where she needs to be financially and all of these things.

However, this difficulty of being able to feel fully integrated is why the anxiety still persists. This EP, this emotional part of herself, is still stuck in the suffering.

This is why dissociation can persist for a long time. It’s because the ANP becomes phobic and is afraid of confronting the traumatic memories and even afraid of confronting the EP as well. It kind of needs to hide the fact that EP is there. And EP might come up once in a while. There might be flashbacks that are going to manifest. It might be like certain tendencies or fears or switching in and out.

That is when it becomes really challenging. And that’s when a lot of times people need to then go and see a therapist.

To protect itself from being overwhelmed, ANP needs to do what it can to live its life. So then it’s going to maybe shun this part of itself. But this is what prevents the integration from taking place.

As long as you’re phobic of your fears, it’s impossible for you to—like that emotional part is still going to be yearning for that attention. So what we need to do in different ways, we need to find ways of integrating the personalities.

The Three-Phase Model for Treating Structural Dissociation

Just know that for some people with complex part systems, some who have dissociative identity disorder, for example, are going to be like, “What do you mean? What parts do you want to integrate? Nah, this one’s not integrated. And yo, this one has no interest in that.” That’s why we want to just make sure we’re taking an approach that’s respectful of all part systems that are out there.

But generally there’s the three-phase model as I introduced in one of my other videos. There’s stabilization, there’s the trauma treatment, and then after there’s integration.

Step One: Stabilization

Stabilization is still going to be helpful for us. We want as much as possible to have a working alliance between the different part systems that are there. Meaning we get it, ANP, you’re not really friends with EP. We get it, EP, you know, you got some hangups about ANP because it’s been rejecting you all these times. We just need something that’s workable so that we’re not getting overwhelmed and that there aren’t these substitute actions which are relating to suicidality, addictions that are going to threaten the whole system. We want to make sure that everything is good.

Step Two: Trauma Treatment

The trauma treatment is going to be us making it so that we are reducing some of the fear in the system between ANP and EP, healing some of the traumatic memories that are stored within EP, taking that younger part out of the burning building, making it so that we can use some self-parenting once in a while, which brings us to integration.

Step Three: Integration

Making it so that that EP can actually feel at home and that we no longer need to have so much of a fear confronting our trauma and that we can expand what we want to do in our lives, that it’s not just about work. Sometimes overwork is also a substitute action because it’s harmful for the organism but it prevents you from needing to confront the loss and the difficulties that are there. Sometimes overwork can be as damaging, if not more damaging, than actual addictions or suicidal ideations because there’s a health consequence to these things.

All of this just to say, with Shaniqua, what do we do? We’re teaching her step one, grounding techniques, feeling okay in the body, feeling okay with fear to some degree. Step two, trauma treatment. We’re going to be healing some of the traumas that are at the core of these fears, making it so that EP is all right, making it so that ANP gains the courage to be able to hold space for EP.

And then step three, making it so that the embrace can happen with both parts and all parts, as much as possible, and making it so that everyone can get along in the family system.

Conclusion: Anti-Racist Psychotherapy and Healing

So this is structural dissociation. Of course, this is just an introduction to it. I didn’t develop this theory. This is Onno van der Hart, Ellert Nijenhuis, and also Kathy Steele, so I can’t take credit for it, but this is a theory that has been helpful for me to understand how to treat dissociative symptoms, specifically when people feel as if they’re in conflict with parts of themselves.

We want the whole internal family to get along, and this works for dissociative parts. IFS is for non-dissociative parts. Structural dissociation could technically be for both, but it’s focused on the dissociative personality structures.

So this is what it is. If you like this content, you can like, share, comment, subscribe, share it with your friends, share it with your therapist, share it with your therapist friends, and let people know that we want all parts of the individual to benefit from psychotherapy. We want to be as open and embracing of all the different types of people that are out there, regardless of a person’s neurodivergence, regardless of a person’s personality structure.

All people deserve to heal. That’s what anti-racist psychotherapy is all about. Alright, so many blessings, take good care, and peace.

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