ABSTRACT
Dissociation is a survival strategy that enables one to tolerate the intolerable and survive the catastrophic. When overwhelmingly painful traumas occur, threatening to disturb the surface, dissociation separates and contains the memories and emotions, as if in a bubble or balloon, which is then weighted down out of sight on the bed of the lake, far away from consciousness. Daily life goes on, the secrets of both the abuser and the abused protected. Professional and survivor opinions vary greatly as to whether full integration of all the fragmented parts should be the eventual goal, or whether stable coexistence may sometimes be preferable. Therapy is hard work and is complicated by real-time events and traumas. Slow and steady works more quickly in the end than a re-traumatizing roller-coaster ride between being completely off-the-scale overwhelmed and moribund with numb amnesia.
