Structural Dissociation and the Mask of ‘High-functioning’

The experience of growing up with parents who couldn’t offer the necessary emotional support has a profound impact on the terrain of your inner world.

It’s not the kind of trauma that comes from a single event; instead, complex trauma arises from a persistent absence of empathy and enduring neglect, leaving a lasting imprint on your soul.

As a vulnerable child, escaping the pain wasn’t possible.

Leaving wasn’t an option, so the coping mechanism became a psychic withdrawal — not physical, but a hidden and invisible retreat.

Without realizing it, forming this internal “split,” locking away a part of yourself with all the pain and anger, was an essential yet unnoticed act.

Even if you don’t remember, that pocket of memory silently exists within you, frozen in time.

Psychologists refer to this unconscious act of psychic splitting as “structural dissociation.”

It was your mind’s way of building walls within your psyche, separating pain into different parts to protect you from being overwhelmed by a floodgate of emotions.

It is not that you completely lose touch with reality, as in schizophrenia; and you are still conscious that you are ‘one person’. However, certain triggers — usually those associated with humiliation, abandonment, and rejection — can make you feel taken over by foreign “parts” of yourself, each with its personality…