How exactly does dissociating (DID) help one process trauma?
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Generally, disassociating means that you no longer process things as happening to you. It’s pretty common for people, and usually is very brief and not necessarily even from something traumatic. That’s usually what’s talked about, but you can also disassociate via meditation.
DID occurs when the disassociation is extremely frequent and extremely early. It’s thought that it forms as a result of fractured personality development – children aren’t born with a fully formed personality, but gradually grow into one (this process is life-long, but most prominent in children). If you interrupt it via disassociation and trauma you might end up with several different personalities that handle specific things – one personality might be better at handling trauma, so appears when trauma appears. Another might form that holds certain memories so other personalities can function better.
It’s very hard to study given that most occurrences are in an environment that is not going to produce the child for study and intentionally provoking it is extremely immoral and unethical and would largely be useless as a study because of it. But at its core it is a protective measure that the brain uses to function when trauma would otherwise shut you down.
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