"Unreachable" Trauma in those with Dissociative Disorders

A Redditor on r/adultsurvivors wrote: "...some wounds never truly heal. Some people, no matter how they set their mind to it, never truly heal. That's not a reflection on their character, but it is a reflection of how deep the experiences cut into their souls." I responded:

I can verify your assertions. AND explain that they have a physiological basis.

Traumatic experience that occurs either before the age of five (when the brain is not yet "complete') or later but during self-protective states of dissociation is often extremely treatment resistant. (Even to all the methods listed in section seven of this earlier post.)

I've come to accept a sort of "law" about this:

In general, the earlier the onset of the terrifying abuse or neglect, the less accessible the trauma's resulting default mode network is to verbal forms of psychotherapy, though it may be somewhat accessible to non-verbal forms. Because there wasn't much if any language there to pair the trauma with when it occurred.

This, btw, is especially the case in people with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who develop Borderline Personality Disorder and any other form of dissociative disorder as a compensatory, protective / defensive scheme. Emotional "home base" for the borderline is virtually always pre-natal to no more than late pre-verbal, in my experience.

The problem with the "non-verbal" psychotherapies is that every one of those I know of has a potential to influence somatic memory in ways that may be very difficult for the treatment team to see as connected to such therapies, not to mention misleading and counterproductive.

The best stuff I have run into thus far to try to deal with that are the Stuck in the Freeze Response? and 10 StEPs + SP4T components of Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing.

Once conditioned, instructed, imprinted, habituated and normalized that system at least empowers the survivor to quickly escape from any spiral into regression, dissociation or decompensation... and provides a way to expose oneself to the affects to accomplish a but more "emotional bloodletting" with each re-exposure without any re-traumatization.

But does it truly wipe out the pre-verbal memories and their sequalae? Not in my experience. The best it does is move the patient a little closer to The Promised Land each time he or she has a flashback and reuses those components.

Resources & References

See Farmer, A. Schwartz, and Walker in section one; Briere, Cayoun et al, Courtois, Courtois & Ford, Dana & Porges, Fisher, Herman, Kurtz, Levine, Lynn & Rhue, Ogden & Minton, Ogden & Fisher, Putnam, Shapiro, Van der Hart et al, and Van der Kolk in section two; and pretty much everyone in the remaining sections of A CPTSD Library.