In my last post, Abused Adopted Child: What is a Dissociative Disorder?, I explained what a dissociative disorder is. I also talked about the dissociation continuum. In this post, I will explain more about how a traumatized adopted child develops a dissociative disorder.

Think about the human soul as being a large pond. It is fluid, and all of the emotions intertwine to make the person who he is. As the child experiences emotional pain, he freezes over some of the pond. Most people, whether traumatized or not, do this to some degree. A "normal" person's soul probably looks like a cool pond with patches of ice on top.

As the child is repeatedly traumatized, he freezes the lake so that the entire surface is covered in ice. Some cracks develop in the ice: Those cracks are the separation from the memories that the brain stores in a different way, resulting in flashbacks when the child is ready to begin healing. A child with PTSD looks like a lake that is frozen over with cracks in the ice, but the water underneath is still fluid.

The abuse continues, and the child moves into a dissociative disorder. He freezes over the lake more and more, and different patches of ice splinter off, causing the child to feel disconnected from these patches. One patch might hold the anger. Another patch might hold particularly painful memories. The child loses the ability to feel whole because the separated patches of ice feel disconnected from the fluid parts of the lake.

As the abuse becomes even more severe, a child might move to the far right of the dissociation continuum and develop dissociative identity disorder (DID). In this case, there is no liquid left in the lake. The child's soul feels very disjointed, with each block of ice feeling very separate from the other parts.

Even though the symptoms manifest in different ways, and even though some dissociative disorders cause the child to feel disconnected from other parts of himself, every separate part is still part of the child's soul. As the child learns how to warm his soul through self-love, the ice begins to melt. As he heals, all of the frozen parts return to liquid form, and the child becomes whole again.

This is why I take issue with Hollywood's portrayal of DID. If you watch "The Three Faces of Eve," it appears that three women are sharing a body, when the truth is that these are three separate parts of one soul. As Eve healed and the parts integrated, two of them did not "die" as the movie suggests. Instead, they melted back into the lake, returning to where they always belonged.

Related Topics:

• The Caused Disorders



• Adopting an Abused Child series

Related Blogs:

• Older Child Adoption blog


• Parenting Special Kids blog


• Reactive Attachment Disorder blog

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