What is Structural Dissociation?
Most of us are familiar with the concept of dissociation, we might even joke about dissociating when we’re bored or irritated or stressed. But dissociation is actually a complex process related to neural networks and how our brains and bodies communicate.
When we talk about dissociation we’re often talking about what happens during or after major Trauma.
This can be depersonalization (I feel like I’m watching from outside my body), derealization (I don’t know that I exist, everything feels foggy), or dissociative amnesia (I don’t remember that it happened). An experience is so overwhelming, your brain literally adjusts to help you survive the experience. This can happen in the moment or afterward as your brain and body try to minimize exposure to something overwhelmingly threatening. What most of us don’t know about is “structural dissociation”.
Structural dissociation happens when the overwhelm happens while our brain is still developing. In other words, the trauma literally shapes the way our brain develops.
As children, our brains rely on our right brain and what’s known as procedural learning and emotional processing for the first few years of our life. Think about all the things you have to learn how to do as a kid (walk, talk, ride a bike, brush your teeth…). Procedural learning creates shortcuts to automate everything we’re learning so we can do more and learn more efficiently.
While the right brain uses these shortcuts to efficiently help us learn a lot of things really fast, eventually, the left hemisphere of the brain also kicks in and we learn to use logic and reasoning, we learn about the fact that time exists, and we start to develop discrete memories (first, I went to school, then I ate lunch, then I played with my friends, then I rode my bike home from school…)
In normative brain development, as we grow, the left and right hemispheres of our brain rely on a bridge known as the “corpus callosum” to relay information back and forth between the two sides. Now we can use all that automated procedural learning (I’m riding my bike without having to think about how) AND our logic (I’m remembering the specific directions for how to get home from school and that I need to be home by 4).
When children experience trauma, their corpus callosum is less fully developed which means that the left and right sides of the brain have more trouble integrating and communicating.
What this means is that our perception can become fragmented. We can develop distinct selves or parts who respond to cues of safety or danger in our environment. This fragmentation can exist on a spectrum from very subtle shifts (feeling like you can’t control your sadness after a breakup), to dissociative identity disorder (different parts are not aware of one another and can “switch”, without much or any awareness, between these perceptions).
In structural dissociation, your brain is using that same process of procedural learning to rapidly fire a specific set of neural pathways based on what kept you safe in the past.
This is unconscious, unintentional, and deeply, deeply protective. Most of us notice it when we have powerful emotional reactions: rage, helpless, overwhelming sadness, terror. The old shortcuts that helped to protect us and keep us alive as children have come online to try to protect us now. Except that it misses the most important piece of information: you might not actually be in any danger right now.
