I have encountered a handful of child abuse survivors who split into an adult and a child alter part. They would not be classified as having dissociative identity disorder (DID) because there is no loss of time or an interchange of personalities. My guess is that they would receive a label of dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DD-NOS), but the label is irrelevant for the purpose of this blog entry. I want to provide a place where people who experienced this split have a place to be recognized.
The people I encountered in person, online, and through books who experienced the type of split I am talking about explain their experience along these lines … They might have experienced some level of abuse or trauma in their early years, but the trauma that caused the split seems to have happened in the age range of five to eight years old, with age six being the most common age for the split to have happened. Admittedly, I have only been able to observe the experiences of a small sample, so this is definitely not written in stone.
At the time of the split, the person “buries” the wounded child part and continues on with the part that grows into an adult. The person has two parts, but the child part does not come out, which is one reason this person would be unlikely to be diagnosed with DID.
Someone who split this way might remember some or all of the abuses experienced by the now-adult part. When some talk about the abuse, they might seem detached, such as explaining something horrific that they know happened to them without attaching emotion to this experience. Also, at least one person I know who split this way succeeded in dissociating away some particularly traumatizing abuse that happened after the split, storing the memories of these experience with the buried child.
As we have talked about many times on this blog, I don’t think this form of splitting or healing from this type of split is “easier” or “harder” than other reactions to abuse, just different. From what observed from one person who invited me into watching some of her healing process, “unburying” the wounded child seemed to be more daunting than what I experienced in integrating one of many alter parts because of the depth of the pain. Because my pain was fragmented into many different parts, I seemed better able to pace myself whereas the other person would feel as if she was drowning in the unmet needs of this one huge needy inner child.
I would encourage anyone who split this way to try different tools that have been useful to other child abuse survivors, such as reaching out to your buried child and inviting her out. Love her. Accept her. Heal her.
I would recommend doing this healing work alongside a qualified therapist with experience working with child abuse survivors who were severely traumatized. From what I have observed from the outside, dealing with the very deep pain of the wounded buried child can be overwhelming at times. A good professional therapist can help you along the process.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
Oh, Faith! Thanks for writing about this. This makes so much sense with my experience! I lived a “normal” life for almost 40 years before I realized there was an inner child buried deep inside of me! A bit over two years ago, I started working with a skilled therapist (on something unrelated, but it didn’t take him long to get to the real problem). The following 18 months were the most painful of my adult life. After a while I had described it to my therapist as feeling like there was a little girl buried deep inside, locked away with several paddlocks on the door.
Since I found your website (sometime within the first few months of this unfolding), I felt so understood on the one hand, but on the other hand, I knew it was not quite me…there was no time loss…so now, this explanation of “burying” makes so much sense! I definitely can relate to the tremendous pain that was unleashed when I finally began to open up to that little girl! Over time, we realized that she had several “sisters” as well. There were the 4 year old, the 8 year old, the 12 and 14 year old. Getting to know the 4 year old was the most painful, the others slightly less prominent but still very much a real part of me. So, in light of your explanation today, I can see it two ways – either as I described it as the little girl and her three sisters or as the little girl and then smaller splits with abuse that happened at a later time and were buried with her. I think, my explanation fits my situation best, but I can relate it so much to what you wrote, this is definitely going to be another piece in my healing.
Thank you so much for being willing to share!
(I hope this post will go through, I’ve had trouble posting for quite a while now, just haven’t had the time to look into it. But even if i didn’t post anything, I am reading every single of yours – most resonate and I come away with some new understanding/appreciation for myself/the situation/the hard work I am doing, some posts don’t click and I just read them and move on. But for the most part, it’s been a huge blessing to have found this site, knowing that I am not alone in this journey!)
Thank you, thank you, thank you for posting about this! I’ve been feeling for some time that I’m pretty fractured, but not to the point of developing DID–I just buried most of the trauma, and the weak little girl who experienced it, so deep that most of the time, I can’t get at it. Even the age seems about right.
I was abused by many different people, in many different ways (father-PA, RA, SA, EA; father’s extended family-RA, SA; mother’s brother-in-law – SA; father and uncle together, father and uncle bringing friends, and so on). When I first started recovering memories, I thought my uncle (mother’s bro-in-law) was my own abuser, and he started grooming me at age 4 and abusing at age 8. I now know that he and my father abused me together starting sometime before I was 4. Uncle T didn’t start abusing me on his own until I was 8. The RA at the hands of my father’s extended family started when I was barely 6. I haven’t recovered many memories of that yet, which leads me to believe that it’s the stressor that caused me to split into child and adult.
It makes so much more sense to me now. I thought it was just me who felt this way, not DID, but not fully integrated, either. Thank you for shedding light on this aftereffect.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for talking about this. I always knew I didn’t have DID, but I also knew I was fragmented, and I don’t remember feeling as though I was a child, or even really playing, from age 5 onward. I was abused by many family members in different ways, so I’m not sure what trauma made me bury my child-self, but your description fits me perfectly. Thank you for helping me understand a little better.
What about if the trauma occurs at age 10? I had a reasonably normal childhood until one day when our whole family was in a car accident and my mother was killed. Thrown from the car, she lay unconscious on the ground and that was the last time I saw her.
My father was a tyrant, yes, but that wasn’t apparent until later when I began to exhibit twinges of independence.
Skip ahead about 45 years and over several other therapists who never really addressed this to the time when my last therapist, through a series of missteps cleared the way for me to become dependent on her. This experience in itself filled me with shame for years, that a hyper independent woman could feel like she couldn’t survive without another particular person. A friend of mine, a grief therapist herself, described it as giving my power away.
The way it felt to me is very closely superimposed on to what you are describing. A part split off never to be heard from again until it felt very sure that it was safe to come out, that she’d gotten her mother back again. I still speak of her in the third person. She doesn’t feel part of me.
I have, many times, described the scene and sequence of the car accident we were in to others. They became blown away after hearing it, while I just rationalized that I knew about it, so it wasn’t new to me, and their depth of emotion was from this sudden and new connection. I know our family went on without skipping a beat. Add in that I, the oldest of 3 (10, 9 and 7), understood on some level that my father felt horribly guilty because he had caused it, and therefore unconsciously went along with the unspoken pressure to never mention it because I would hurt him. Plus the family needed a new “mother” and one or two attempts at hiring a housekeeper failed. I was cooking dinner most nights by the time I was twelve. I never questioned any of this. More recently I learned that the process was different for my little sister who consciously was bewildered by why the world wasn’t saying anything about this.
Now I have another therapist and we are working on the mess created by my last therapist. And the primary mess. Especially when it was happening but still now, too, I would have given a great deal to find someone who could help me, who had an inkling what this phenomenon going on in my psyche was about. Still it was fascinating to watch, even with all the pain.
I think one of the differences (and I am with you, Faith, no comparisons about which experience was easier or harder) for me was that I had a decent connection with my mother for the first 10 years and then suddenly, she betrayed me big time. I know that when I saw her on the ground, I knew that despite the obvious to anyone else, she was fine. Mothers are gods and the concept of death for them is unfathomable. It never crossed my mind. I think that from speaking deeply with some of my friends and reading these blogs I have been following, in the case of abuse it is apparent from the earliest times in childhood that a parent cannot be relied on. This spawns a whole host of conflicts which the child can’t understand. Why is mommy nice sometimes and mean sometimes? (Understatement, I know). These go into the brain wiring from the earliest age and sometimes the psyche splits into pieces. This has to be different from going along for 10 years, knowing the sun will rise every morning and one day it doesn’t…ever again. The wiring gets severed abruptly, fully and with no time to prepare. My grief therapist friend knows her mother loved her in spite of the abuse (I know this is not true for many abused children, though). When I analyze what transpired with me, it seems my unconscious, the part that split off, feels like it was set up. All was fine the first 10 years, then wham, she hated me so much she set me up and left. (Because mothers can’t die and they have perfect control over everything.) This is the unconscious explanation I think I lived with for decades. It steeped for a long time.
Thank you for bringing it up and sparking discussion, Faith. You might be right that this happens much less frequently on the dissociative spectrum, although perhaps it is more common in countries that have experienced great strife.
Hi, Freasha1964.
“What about if the trauma occurs at age 10?”
My observation about age six being an age of importance is based on a very small sample of stories as well as Maria Montessori’s observations about a phase of development that closes forever around the age of six. It is much too small of a sample to base anything upon, so don’t get too caught up on that number. :0)
~ Faith
My therapist told me last week after discussing this blog a bit that I have a component of DID. I don’t loose time, at least as far as I know. But she does see the little girl come out during therapy. Not as much as she used to see it. I just over the last year or so started recognizing the parts. There is a 12 year old, a toddler, the adult “work” me and the adult “non work” me. And the suicidal part. I finally realized that part that wanted to die was not me, just a very triggered part of me. She has not surfaced for awhile. There is also a very very needy part of me that surfaces when there is someone that will feed that need. Right now she is boxed up and out of the way. I don’t like myself much when she is out.
I like the concept of giving away your power.
This happens when an authority ie mental health processional knows more about you and you do. Most therapist explained me to me rather than letting me create a relationship that dared explore and discover.
Some therapists will Dx someone from my description. That is a red flag. Some therapist will say all survivors ….That is a red flag. Some therapists say you can heal and that is a red flag, Some therapist say you are limited to coping and that is a red flag. Any time a professional makes a declarative statement about you or all people that experience trauma that is a red flag.
As always I have yet to find any credible connection of any value with the experience of reading a book and getting lost in it and trauma. Dissociation is getting lost in a book.
Right now I am not an advocate of therapy I was and believed that it was needed. I knew it was very hard to find therapists who could work with extreme trauma. There are many who think they can and many who have worked with such therapists and think their therapist is effective and I do not agree.
I now know many people who heal to a greater extent without therapists. I have always known many who I feel are limited by what their therapist believe is possible for them.
I think the psychoanalysis with expressive therapy can be the most effective treatment. Note the “can” there are many therapist who practice psychoanalysis and expressive therapy and are not effective. This is not just based on my personal experience and observations.
Reducing symptoms as an end goal is not valuable to me and does not even come close to how effective I was before therapy.
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Just stopping by to say this is an excellent post Faith and also the comments…Freasha1964 I know you are not looking for sympathy but your post so eloquently describes the loss of someone essential and loved, it is heart-breaking material and I understand your deep confusion. I hope to be posting in comments again here soon, just busy being pregnant at the moment and grieving the loss of isurvive as it was not the place I had so hoped it would be (whilst I know for others it is). Take care…
Ax, thank you for expressing your understanding.
Also, it has been comforting to read that there are others who have had similar aftermaths or comparable protective reactions to mine. (But of course, I am not glad that these things happened to anybody.)
Best wishes for your pregnancy and for the next 18 years and beyond. May you be a wonderful, long-lived mother.
I know we split off at three; then 6 and 7 and nine. Each ‘knew’ of or remembered ‘the other’ – and never realized they had been ‘born’. Except the one at 7; that we all knew had been ‘born’ because we had ‘created’ him.
We’ve had 3 hosts down the line. But many splits and fractures along the way, happening ‘inside’ of each host.
We have created persons ‘on-the-fly’. Many don’t stick around for long. Some do. It seems the longer they are ‘stuck’ or use, the more apt ‘they’ are to become ‘real persons’ (to me, anyway, or us).
We have figured out our catagories: the “ghosts” (persons created from other persons); the hosts (there are 3); the imaginary beings (mostly those have been made for our inner children); and some others. One part of me has figured this one out; I am unable to access that right now (too early in the morning; ‘we’ don’t all wake up at one time, LOL! Drowsy children, LOL).
We know we can create a new personality if need be; that the person is not real, but can be over time. This comes as a result of our moving around as a young child. We’ve noticed the ‘strength’ or dominance of a ‘person’ inside of us is dependent upon how long we were in/at the place where that one was created (for instance, we have a very weak ‘9’; however, “13” is much more stronger since ‘he’ had 3 years of running and control).
We need to do some more work on this. A LOT of work. But it’s hard because it is a *dynamic* system, just like people are – hard to paint a butterfly when he won’t hold still his wings, lol.
I don’t really switch into different personalities or lose time… but I have memories where I see myself getting abused but it’s not me. It’s someone else. Like completley different and she’s obviously a child but it’s like she represents me. Then I can see her at different ages like a teenager mostly and how it affected her…
I know it sounds like I was molested and just like in denial but I honestly just can’t believe I was abused when I was a kid.
She was abused up till she was like 10 and I feel like I would have known.
It’s just so wierd and hard to explain.
I relate to this. I think I’ve mostly integrated the child self now, but when she first came out she very much felt like a separate person, not in a ‘not me’ sense, but in a sense like I didn’t already know what she wanted, thought or would say. She had very different needs from my adult part and my adult part didn’t want to give in to them. When I learned to mother her, won her trust and listened to her is when I had the most productive healing. I also had clearer memories of the earliest and most severe incident of abuse, which was around age 5 or 6 (based on how old I felt when I was reexperiencing it). I literally had to win her trust over time, and reassure her that I wouldn’t shut her down, something I very much wanted to do at first. The typical ‘inner child’ work advice that was fashionable back when I started healing was helpful to me, but I think the separation I felt between the two of us was a lot more profound than that model.
Hi Faith –
Thanks for bogging. It has really been a blessing to me. I am am a very normal and sucessful person. I am well educated a wife and a great mom. Yet I still struggle with my severely tramautic childhood. From the outside you would never know I lived through such horrific abuse. The way I have made it this far is breaking into a child part and an adult part. The child part I locked up and kept her from contaminating my life. This allowed the adult me to start fresh and be healthy. I have now been in therapy for one year. My question to you is what do the call this in psychology? Where can I learn more about what I have? Does this mean I have DID? I need to know how to help the child part but she holds all the pain. Her pain, anger, confusion, and hurt will be too much for me.
Hi, w.
I am not a mental health professional, so my knowledge about labels is limited. I called this a “buried child” because that’s what it sounded like when others told me about it. That’s my own term, though, because I have no idea what to call it.
From a layperson’s understanding of the DSM IV, I don’t think what you describe would qualify as DID because the adult part does not lose time while the child part takes over. I don’t know if this would qualify as DD-NOS?? This would be a good question for your therapist. :0)
If you get an answer, would you mind letting me know? I try to use the mental health profession’s terminology when I can. :0)
~ Faith
Hello Faith,
a few months ago I was quite obsess with the idea of organizing a funeral for my inner child.
I even discuss an idea of an online memorial for survivors’s inner child at my survivor talkgroup. To have a place to grieve.
But when I talked about it with my therapist, he used this notion of buried child. I thought it was funny that during my denial’s years (and still now) my worst fear is to be burried alive.
I do feel that I died back then, but somehow my inner child came back and is very much alive.
She talks through me sometimes. Sadly my actual reaction is to shush her when I realize it is her talking.
But my memorial idea changed a little. While I still think there is a death to mourn, maybe the act of burying would better be an act of planting a seed on earth and taking care of whatever being comoes out of it.
It sounds silly as I xrote but I still processing the all thing…
Hi, Kali.
I don’t think it is silly at all. I think it is a beautiful metaphor! :0)
~ Faith
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