[“When other defenses fail us or increase the danger, freezing and submission responses are automatic at all developmental stages. In the face of inescapable threat to life, the brain and body instinctively “feign death”, shutting down, going unconscious and/or limp, or “pretending to be asleep,” as human beings often describe it. The innate ability to neurocept or sense the severity of the threat is accompanied by an instinctive tendency to engage the safest, most effective defensive response in a given context.
In the same way, human beings instinctively seek psychological distance from traumatic events or from “deep memory” to avoid being overwhelmed by the remembrance. To keep on “keeping on,” we must psychically split off from what is happening right now, what did happen a moment ago, and what might happen next. Whether in wartime, in a concentration camp, or in the context of childhood abuse and neglect, some sense of self must be kept separate from the horrifying events around us even if that self just goes through the motions of life. To get up each morning and face death, abandonment, assaults, or imprisonment requires somehow disowning the horror and fear left from the day before and the dread of what is to come. Disowning “the other one” inside is a survival response: the overwhelming feelings are no longer ours; that shame does not belong to us but to “him” or “her;” the white-hot rage and violent impulses certainly aren’t “me.” By disowning our traumatized parts and/or “not me” self-states (Bromberg, 2011), by disconnecting from them emotionally or losing consciousness of them via dissociation, we preserve our hearts and souls from growing as bitter as our circumstances. We hold out hope for the future and we keep going.
Distancing from the trauma serves another important function in childhood, another way of surviving: it allows us not just to keep going but to keep growing and developing despite whatever befalls us. With distance or disconnection from the trauma, children can focus on mastering age-appropriate developmental tasks and developing a repertoire of functional abilities. When part of the child can concentrate on “normal” activities, such as going to school, can experience new learning and mastery, can play sports and make friends, there is an opportunity for normal development of exploratory and social drives. The going on with normal life self, unaware of what is happening or only dimly aware of it, might become a “parentified child” by day, a good student at school, a lover of nature or horses or books or making things with his hands. The worse the trauma or neglect and the less safety, the more distance will be needed from the knowledge of his or her emotional and physical vulnerability. For example, in times of war, in abusive families, or in a concentration camp, it might also be adaptive to disown normal physical needs, attachment-seeking, or the wish to be comforted. When we disown needs that can’t be met or feelings that are unacceptable, we protect ourselves from unbearable disappointment or punishment (e.g., “I’ll give you something to cry about!”). One way to accomplish this challenging task is to split the sense of desperate needing and the refusal to need anything between two parts: one part that actively seeks proximity, comfort, or needs-meeting and one that just as actively pushes others away or keeps a hypervigilant, suspicious distance. Disowning one’s sad or lonely or needy parts, as well as angry, hypervigilant, or counterdependent parts, prevents self-acceptance and self-care, but it is safer. When the individual must adapt to an environment that punishes or ignores a child’s basic needs and feelings, self-compassion too becomes “dangerous.” It cannot be “me.” Depending upon what best promotes safety and optimal development in each unique environment, children might have to identify with their angry, aggressive, hypervigilant parts and disown their innocent, trusting, attachment-seeking parts, or they might have to reject the parts that bore the brunt of the abuse so that the trauma can be blamed on “their” vulnerability. Alienation from self is often necessary, too, to maintain some semblance of attachment to grossly neglectful and abusive caretakers—an under-rated but important survival instinct when we are young enough to be dependent on our caretakers. If the “good child” is distasteful to attachment figures, it can be more adaptive to disown the “good me” or even the going on with normal life self and identify with the bad, ashamed, disgusting child who doesn’t threaten dangerous or neglectful caretakers. Whichever parts endanger the child’s adaptation must be walled off; whatever parts are necessitated by the environment must be identified with as “me.”]
janina fisher, from healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors: overcoming internal self-alienation, 2017
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