In my last post, Abused Adopted Child: Emotional Segmentation through Dissociation, I talked about how abused children have the ability to segment their emotions. This enables them to survive horrific abuse. Abused children who suffer ongoing and severe trauma beginning during early childhood (generally before age six) might segment their emotions to the extreme of developing Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

DID is the same disorder that used to be known as multiple personality disorder. As I stated in Abused Adopted Child: What is a Dissociative Disorder?, Hollywood has sensationalized the disorder, making it appear "freaky" when it is really a highly adaptive way of coping with extreme trauma. Several readers have asked how to identify a child who is resilient: A child with DID is definitely resilient, as well as intelligent and sane.

Children with DID have suffered such extreme trauma that they have separated themselves from their "original child." The original child "sleeps" deep inside of the subconscious mind, and the child interacts with the world from the perspective of being multiple "parts." Each part is a part of the child's soul, but each feels separate from the other parts. (See Abused Adopted Child: Dissociation Continuum for more on this topic.)

In most cases, a child with DID has what is called a "host personality," which is the part that the child considers "me." The host is really just another part that is separate from the others. It is generally a part that retains the child's innocence so the child can live as if he was never abused. Because the host personality is just an alter part, other parts can "come out," causing the host personality to "go in." The child experiences this phenomenon as "losing time."

The child might spend most of his time living from the perspective of the host personality. However, if another part is triggered (something happens to put the child back into defensive mode), the host personality is "protected" inside while another alter part takes over. When the host personality comes back out, the child has no awareness of what happened while the host personality was not present.

Meanwhile, another alter part is interacting with the world from its own segmented perspective. One alter part might be self-destructive. Another alter part might feel an enormous amount of rage and be destructive. Still another might be overwhelmed with terror or grief. Whatever part "comes out" feels its emotions in a "pure" form with no context in relation to the other parts. From an outside perspective, it can be disturbing to see your child suddenly experiencing a pure form of rage.

Other children can experience "co-consciousness," which means that the host personality stays present while another alter part is also present. When this happens, the host personality (the child) feels as if he is having thoughts that are "not his." For example, he might start yelling if a rage-filled alter part is triggered, but the child is perplexed about where this intense rage is coming from. The rage might even disappear as suddenly as it appeared.

In my next post, I will explain more about alter parts and their role in protecting the inner/original child. As bizarre as DID might sound, keep in mind that it is a very adaptive way of surviving extreme trauma. Anyone with DID is intelligent and very adaptive.

Related Topics:

• Understanding Integration



• 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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