Usually when we come across structural dissociation, it is an overt description of DID, partial DID, or OSDD. Many different voices and personalities inhabiting one body, obvious divisions between personalities, maybe different voices and clothing styles or something else you can easily see in a video or a Reddit post.
The contents of these videos or posts may or may not include conflicts between alters or parts, but they usually depict parts as highly differentiated and verbal, and they tend to focus on the dynamics between alters/parts as each lives its own, individual life inside the shared body.
This can sometimes miss the one core aspect of structural dissociation which is always present, regardless of how it otherwise manifests:
Internal conflict.
Structural dissociation is often stated to arise from lack of integration and abuse. This is true, but not very nuanced: almost every psychiatric condition involves some form of lack of integration, and many survivors of even severe childhood abuse are not significantly dissociative.
At the heart of structural dissociation lies an irreconcilable conflict between three action systems. These are biological networks stretching back millions of years in evolutionary time: their roots are visible across mammalian species.
One operates on the daily life action system.
One on the defence action system.
One on the autonomy action system.
The daily life action system handles social engagement, eating, sleeping, work. This action system focuses on getting through the day, handling the tasks that life throws at us. The core longing in this action system is to take care of our needs.
The defence action system handles threats. It builds on the mammalian defence cascade: orientation to danger, cry for help, fight, flight, freeze, submission, collapse. All mammals share these functions, we all rely on them for survival. The core longing in this action system is to get rid of threats.
The autonomy action system focuses on autonomy and control. It aims to control our internal environment, and to some extent our external environment, to influence the outcomes in our lives, to exercise agency, and to avoid helplessness. The core longing in this action system is to feel in charge.
Every living person has all three action systems. They are intended to work together to handle the complexities of life: basic bodily needs, social engagement, daily tasks (daily life action system), the threats we face (defence action system), and being autonomous beings (autonomy action system). All three are vital parts of being alive.
Structural dissociation is an irreconcilable developmental conflict between these three systems.
That's it. Structural dissociation is not specifically a number of different alters with different names, or lack of childhood memories, or an inner world where different parts live, or different voices in your head. Those can all arise from the core irreconcilable action system conflict, but the exact manifestation of that conflict varies a lot. In a majority of cases, the parts arising from this conflict are well-hidden.
So what does the core conflict look like?
Your "getting on with daily life" action system tries to get on with daily life.
Your defence action system keeps interrupting it as it reacts to threats.
Your autonomy action system keeps interrupting it as it pushes for control.
What does the getting on with daily life system do? It tries to deal with people, studies, work, paying bills, eating, sleeping. "Just let me get on with my life" it says, "I have things to do."
What does the defence action system do? It reacts to threats. In structural dissociation, it was "trained" in a fundamentally threatening environment, so anything reminding it of those developmental threats triggers it – up to and including your very own body's basic existence. If your developmental environment was one where your needs, your distress, or your very presence were treated as a problem, then simply existing in a body that has needs can register as a threat.
Some parts of us residing in the defence action system flee. Some fight. Some submit. However they do it, the one thing they all have in common is, they deal with threats, and because of how "trauma time" works, the threats they see are fundamentally a combination of both the past and the present. A voice, an action, lack of action, anything in the present that reminds them of a developmental threat calls them to activate their defences.
The autonomy action system, meanwhile, wants to be in control. Have power. Not be beholden to these old threats, or current demands, or all these feelings, or the freezing, or anything else the defence action system keeps throwing in its path. In the power dynamics it grew up with, it wants to occupy the position of the powerful. It sees the world in dualistic terms: There is only power and weakness, and I must be powerful.
Why do these action systems end up in conflict with one another?
Because they repeatedly faced an irreconcilable developmental dilemma: The person I need for survival is a threat.
The daily life action system knew you must attach to a caregiver. A young child will not survive without one; no mammalian young will. The daily life action system must suppress anything that gets in the way of that.
The defence action system knew your caregiver was a threat. You must overcome, or flee, or pacify the threat, otherwise you will not survive.
The autonomy action system knew you had no power. They had power, you were weak as all children are next to an adult, you must become strong and powerful.
The daily life action system said: Go away, do not react to the caregiver, I must attach to survive.
The defence action system said: Run! Scream for help! Fight! Submit! This is the end!!!
The autonomy action system said: I will do no such thing. They have power. I will obtain it. I will become powerful. Stop bothering me with emotions.
Because the core conflict arose at and persisted throughout the earliest stages of life in reaction to people you were literally dependent on for survival, this internal conflict has been at the core of your very self from the get go.
And that is what sets the most entrenched and pervasive forms of structural dissociation apart from other forms of psychopathology: It began at the very beginning, before you had language for it, before you had a continuous sense of self, before you had any reference point for what "normal" feels like.
The daily life action system needs to suppress awareness of this. To get on with daily life, it needs to not be aware of the other action systems. The more we inhabit our daily life self and the less we inhabit our other selves, the less it feels like anything. This is why it is not only possible, but relatively common to live for years and decades with little awareness of these internal dynamics.
We might notice the defence action system when it intrudes into our daily lives with its panic, anxiety, anger, submission, and freeze. Our daily life self tends to find this a hindrance to its mission of having our daily needs met, so it redoubles its efforts to suppress awareness in return. If you have been spacing out while reading this, that's probably why.
The autonomy action system tends to focus on external power imbalances between itself and others. The defence action system's intrusions make this much harder: It is difficult to be strong and autonomous when you keep being hijacked by fears, anxiety, and panic. This makes the autonomy action system direct its control attempts at the defence action system: Be quiet, go away, stop detecting threats, I am the threat. I will control you.
Where does all of this leave us as people?
Angry and focused on power when operating from our autonomy action system.
Panicked, fearful, and submissive when operating from our defence action system.
Spaced out, fatigued, and confused when operating from our daily life action system.
And, most importantly, yo-yoing between and blending these states with little to no oversight, only noticing what our current state cannot provide:
- Awareness of what is actually happening inside us, when operating from the daily life action system;
- Safety when operating from the defence action system; and
- Power when operating from the autonomy action system.
Depending on your own unique developmental trajectory, this spectrum runs from confusion and fog in daily life, panic and submission in defence states, and anger in autonomy states all the way to fully differentiated self-states with their own names, memories, and ways of being in the world. Regardless of where on the spectrum we are, the one thing we have in common is very little oversight capable of detecting and remembering the states and the shifts between them.
The goal of treatment is not to overcome any of these systems. All three are vital. The goal is to bring them into communication with each other so that the conflict does not have to run the show.
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