The Unintended Journey to Integration

When "We" became "Me"

I never thought I'd wake up one day and suddenly be just one person. One sense of self. It wasn't something we planned for or even wanted. We were aiming for functional multiplicity, not... this. But here I am, no longer a "we," but generally identifying as "she," and grappling with an entirely new reality.

The brain is truly remarkable. When a young mind faces threats so severe that survival is in question, it can wall itself off, creating fully formed selves in silos. That's what happened to me. My brain, in its infinite wisdom and adaptability, split into distinct parts to protect us. Each part developed their own likes, dislikes, opinions - entire personalities, really, because of their experiences. It was our way of surviving, of functioning in a world that had become too overwhelming for a single consciousness to bear.

Everyone has parts. Think about how therapeutic it is to connect with your inner child. But for those without dissociated brains, these parts are woven together seamlessly. A natural function of the multifaceted nature of being human. For us, it was different. We were separate, distinct, a team working together to navigate life even if it was a dysfunctional mess at times.

Since April, I've been living a new reality. Imagine moving into a beautiful, ancient house. You feel this immense responsibility to preserve what you love while updating what needs work. But you've spent every resource just getting here, and now you're realizing you lack the time, energy, and knowledge to do all the updates and personal touches you'd like. That's how I feel now - overwhelmed by the shoes I must fill alone when before, I had an entire internal family to share the load.

It's normal to feel like I'm falling short when I compare myself to our best moments and what we were capable of. I'm trying to do alone what once took a team. But I know those gifts are still within me, too. They're all part of who I am now. My journey is about discovering this new self, understanding what truly aligns with my soul versus what existed out of fear or necessity.

The most profound change is in how I experience emotions. For the first time in this lifetime, I can feel the full force of my feelings without switching or triggered jumps. I can invite difficult emotions in, sit with them, breathe through them, allow the storm to engulf me fully so I can see the other side of it. I can have internal conversations that feel different now - it's all me talking to myself, not separated parts communicating. I can even sense where in my brain and body these feelings emit electrical impulses, like my amygdala lighting up with rage or my chest tightening with anxiety. These sensations aren’t new, but my perception of them is, and that seems to have made all the difference. The exact mechanics interest me less than the fact that I can simply observe what's going on instead of ONLY being overwhelmed. It's intense, but also liberating.

We spent years working on our internal communication, collaborating on big decisions and getting to know one another. The hardest part was typically loving and accepting every one of us, especially those holding the deepest and most painful experiences. Think of the biggest jerk you know, now imagine you have a copy of said jerk inside your head at all times who also is sometimes “Me” - it makes for a complicated life. But our agreement to love and accept one another allowed us to have these internal conversations. Each one built a synaptic bridge in our brain that, over time, got stronger. What once had been a series of chasms was now a landscape of fortified bridges, and we celebrated being the united parts of Charlie. This wasn't an overnight process and we didn't exactly nail it most of the time, but we tried. We tried because the only other option was to continue living life in pieces without regard for everyone else. We were tired of the often painful, chaotic life we led when it was everyone for themselves in here. As it turns out, collaboration is as useful internally as it is when you're interacting with other people. Even if you're not heavily dissociated, I encourage anyone reading this to spend some time talking to the parts of yourself you try to ignore, control, or just generally don't like. See what happens when you listen with love and curiosity, aiming for internal harmony rather than self-imposed restrictions. You might be surprised at how much more peaceful and fulfilling life can be when you work with all aspects of yourself instead of against any one of them. Yes, even the parts of you that evoke a feeling of hatred - in fact, especially those parts.

This integration is both awe-inspiring and heartbreaking. I celebrate my brain being internally connected while grieving the loss of my selves. We were a family; we learned to see, appreciate, and love everyone in here. It's a walking contradiction, I know. I'm amazed at what my brain has accomplished, grateful for this new perspective, yet I struggle to talk about it without feeling like a fraud or a hypocrite. If I'd read my own words a year ago, most of us would have been hurt or angry. Others might have remained neutral, but I doubt any of us would have agreed that a unified brain was the only way to heal. And to that, I fully agree - this was simply how I healed.

I've spent the last 5 months grieving heavily, too. A disenfranchised grief that's difficult to talk about because few in my life quite understand. But it's a kind of grief I'm familiar with and know how to hold space for, so I do. I think even starting this substack is my way of honoring who we were, working through that grief, and sharing that healing is full of contradictions. And hopefully showing that it's still worth it.

Parts of my brain continue to see the world with the same lens, make the same arguments, love and enjoy the same things. I simply am all of this now, and I can feel those arguments happening all around me. The argument that I'm centering single-brainedness, the guilt that I'm erasing my own selves, the criticism for being a hypocrite - it's all there, swirling within me. No part of who we were has actually died at all, we've just evolved. And that evolution brought a level of love and wisdom none of us were able to access before.

I now find myself drawing parallels to the life-death cycle and quantum entanglement, though I often stop myself from pulling that thread too far. This transformation has sparked an existential crisis that goes beyond just my personal experience. What even is a sense of self? It seems both real and imagined, much like our entire existence as humans. If we are all souled beings who are part of a larger and unified source of consciousness, then when our experience as a human is over, we simply go back to the whole of all of us. We don't stop existing; we bring all of ourselves along for the ride. But those aspects of humans - our sense of self - are no longer unique and individuated. It becomes one of the many, all connected. We both continue to exist and evolve into something new. It's mind-bending and sometimes overwhelming to contemplate. I usually feel okay exploring these ideas until I hit a point where the implications become too vast, too complex. That's when I find myself no longer interested in pulling on this thread any longer, at least for the moment. It's a delicate balance between seeking understanding and preserving my own mental well-being in this new, integrated state.

Look, I'll be real with you - life is fucking weird. Trust me when I say you can set out to do one thing and end up somewhere you never imagined. And when that happens, everything you thought you knew gets turned on its head.

I'm not here to erase DID or invalidate anyone's experience. My journey of healing looks different from what I've read about or heard from others. Yeah, I guess you could call it fusion, but it wasn't some neat and tidy agreement where we all decided to become one. It was messy, unexpected, and honestly, never our goal.

We never meant to be one person. Ever. The more we got to know and love each other, the more we appreciated our internal cast of characters. We were a dysfunctional yet loving family - something I never had growing up. I didn't even know having a loving family meant, but somehow, my brain created it inside without me consciously trying. We leaned on each other, helped each other, hurt each other, and grew together.

So here I am, integrated but still evolving. I'm grateful for the journey, even as I mourn what I’ve lost. It's a contradiction, sure, but aren't we all walking contradictions in some way? This path of healing isn't linear or predictable. It's full of surprises, grief, joy, and constant learning.

To anyone out there struggling with their own internal landscape - whether you have DID or not - remember that healing doesn't always look the way you expect it to. Be open to the journey, be kind to all parts of yourself, and trust that your brain/mind/soul/whatever, in its infinite wisdom, is always working towards healing - whatever that means for you.