Re:non-traumatic splits and EMDR

First, there is no research on this, but there are many good books on dissociation. The ISSD website at www.issd.com is a source of information too.

There are certainly non-traumatic ego states within dissociative clients as well as non-dissociative clients. The point about "hard edges" is interesting - by that I understand you to mean that the boundaries between these states are relatively impermeable, and maybe the person doesn't remember being in one state or another.

This can happen for many reasons, becaues many ego states are functioning for purposes aside from containining trauma. They can also hold whole belief systems and ways of being. This happens when a person holds a conflict of any kind, but especially those created by a double bind in the home. Example: Daddy loves me/Daddy hurts me. But also things like, "I'm a good girl/I'm worthless" or anything else where there is tension between the two poles of a double bind (I always see an sideways infinity symbol here, an infinitely looping double bind). The child resolved the double bind by creating one ego state to hold one end of the bind, and another to hold the other end of it (and there can be more than two "poles" of the bind, really).

EMDR often starts by targeting one end of a double bind. In a non-dissociative, the EMDR will naturally pull in the other issue, or maybe get stuck or loop on the other conflicting issue, but a gentle cognitive interweave will pull it in for spontaneous resolution in EMDR. The more dissociatve a person is, the more serious the conflict and the more resistance there is to the simultaneous perception of the two poles. They can't initially be in conscious mind at the same time. Ego state therapy is a way to finesse allowing these disparate poles of the bind representation in conscious mind simultaneously. Insight and compassion can come from that upleveling of awareness. Considerable medication and education is often necessary to get alters to loosen their grip on their end of a double bind.

In short, EMDR or EMDR and ego state therapy can often help resolve non-trauma related disparate ego states.

Replies:

Re:non-traumatic splits and EMDR, by Anonymous, 12/21/02 Re:non-traumatic splits and EMDR, by Imperfect, 12/21/02 Re:non-traumatic splits and EMDR, by Diane, 12/24/02 Re:non-traumatic splits and EMDR, by Imperfect, 12/26/02 "core" selves, by Anonymous, 12/26/02 Re: in relation to EMDR...., by Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PhD, 12/26/02 Re: in relation to EMDR...., by Anonymous, 12/27/02 ...in relation to EMDR...., by Diane, 12/27/02

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