The Split No One Saw
Before I knew what dissociation was, I just thought I was broken.
I thought my body was weak, my memory unreliable, my emotions too much or too little. I thought my mind was the enemy — the part of me that refused to “just move on.”
But the truth was simpler and far more sacred: my mind had been protecting me.
For those of us who survived incest, dissociation isn’t a flaw in our design — it’s evidence of our genius. It’s how our nervous system pulled off the impossible: staying alive in a place that killed our safety.
I lived half-here for years. Smiling through silence, achieving through amnesia, functioning through fragments.
Then one day I stumbled upon the work of Dr. Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, and for the first time in my life, I understood why.
💡 The Man Who Mapped the Mind’s Escape Route
Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis — psychologist, psychotherapist, researcher, and quiet revolutionary — devoted over forty years to studying the mysterious phenomenon we call dissociation.
He helped the world see what survivors had long felt: that trauma isn’t just a story that lives in the past; it’s an ongoing physiological reality that shapes how we think, feel, and even inhabit our own bodies.
In the 1990s, Nijenhuis developed the Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaires (SDQ-20, SDQ-5) — tools that measure how trauma shows up physically.
Before him, “body symptoms” were often dismissed as hypochondria or hysteria. But Nijenhuis proved that the body itself dissociates.
He once wrote that trauma “creates splits not only in consciousness but in bodily awareness.”
For incest survivors, this sentence lands like a revelation. Because when your abuser lived under your own roof — or worse, shared your blood — there was no escape. The mind had to build one.
“When the body is a battlefield,” I often say, “dissociation is the ceasefire that saves your soul.”
🧠 The Haunted Self and the Incest Survivor
In 2006, Nijenhuis co-authored The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization with Onno van der Hart and Kathy Steele.
It remains one of the most influential works in trauma psychology — and one of the few that speaks directly to what incest survivors experience daily.
The book describes how the personality itself becomes structurally divided under chronic trauma.
When pain is too great to bear, the psyche splits into different “parts,” each carrying its own emotions, memories, and tasks.
The Apparently Normal Part (ANP): The part that smiles, works, raises children, attends therapy, and tells people, “I’m fine.”
The Emotional Part (EP): The part that holds the terror, the shame, the rage, the unbearable memories that cannot safely surface.
This is not multiple personalities. It’s multiple survival strategies.
For survivors of incest, this internal split often began in childhood.
We might remember coloring pictures with the same hands that later covered our faces to block what was coming.
We might recall eating breakfast with the same mouth that was forced to stay silent the night before.
So we learned to compartmentalize — not because we were weak, but because it was the only way to survive unbearable betrayal.
“If my inner parts had a group chat,” I once joked, “it would be chaos. One’s organizing, one’s crying, one’s hiding under the table.”
Humor helps — but the fragmentation is real.
🧬 The Science of Survival: When the Body Dissociates
Ellert Nijenhuis taught the world something that survivors already knew in our bones: trauma is stored in the body, not just in memory.
Through years of psychobiological research, he demonstrated that dissociative states produce measurable changes in heart rate, muscle tension, and brain activity.
In other words, dissociation isn’t “spacing out.” It’s the body’s version of pulling the emergency brake.
For incest survivors, this might look like:
Feeling numb during intimacy
Losing time or memory after emotional stress
Forgetting your own reflection in the middle of a panic attack
Freezing when someone raises their voice, even if you’re not in danger
These are not character flaws. They are evidence of a nervous system still trying to keep you safe.
Modern neuroscience, including the polyvagal theory developed by Stephen Porges, supports Nijenhuis’s conclusions: the body can enter a freeze or shutdown state when faced with overwhelming threat.
This response once saved our lives — but now, in adulthood, it can disconnect us from love, joy, and trust.
Long-term, dissociation can manifest as chronic fatigue, digestive disorders, autoimmune conditions, or unexplained pain. The mind that endured the unendurable leaves footprints all over the body.
“Survivors often think their bodies betrayed them,” I tell my clients. “But really, their bodies were the only ones who stayed loyal enough to keep them alive.”
🕯️ Ignorance, Fragility, and Control: Lessons from The Trinity of Trauma
In his trilogy The Trinity of Trauma: Ignorance, Fragility, and Control, Nijenhuis explored how humans respond to unbearable suffering.
He proposed that trauma pushes us toward three instinctive defenses:
Ignorance: I can’t see what’s happening.
Fragility: I can’t handle what’s happening.
Control: I must manage everything to feel safe again.
Sound familiar? For incest survivors, these are not abstract ideas — they are the blueprint of our survival.
We learned to ignore what our bodies felt.
We became fragile to avoid confrontation.
And when fragility failed, we clung to control — over food, emotions, relationships, even healing itself.
But Nijenhuis’s work gently reminds us: these defenses are not our identity. They were born from terror, not truth.
Healing begins the moment we can look at these patterns with compassion, not judgment.
🧩 The Phase-Oriented Model: A Map for Coming Home
One of Nijenhuis’s most influential contributions is the phase-oriented model of trauma treatment, co-developed with Van der Hart and Steele.
This approach recognizes that deep trauma healing must happen in stages:
Stabilization and Safety — Learning to regulate emotions, build internal trust, and manage dissociation before diving into memories.
Trauma Processing — Gradually facing the pain that was once unbearable, often through therapies like EMDR, somatic work, or IFS.
Integration and Reconnection — Reuniting the fragmented parts of the self, rebuilding relationships, and reclaiming agency.
Too many survivors rush into trauma processing before they have the internal scaffolding to hold the weight of their truth.
Phase-oriented work honors pacing as sacred.
“You don’t rush a flower to bloom,” I often remind people. “You create the conditions for its safety, and it opens when it’s ready.”
For incest survivors, this slow, layered approach is essential — because our trauma was not a single event, but a lifetime of violations entangled with love, fear, and silence.
🧠 From Controversy to Compassion
Like many pioneers, Nijenhuis’s work has not been free of controversy.
Some clinicians criticize his theories as too rigid or “medicalized.” Others argue that the phase model can feel overly clinical for survivors who crave relational repair more than structure.
And yet, within these critiques lies the essence of what he taught: the importance of integration.
We need both — the science and the soul, the model and the mystery.
“No theory can capture the sacred mess of being human,” I wrote once. “But when held with compassion, a good framework can light the path out of the dark.”
Nijenhuis may have mapped the mechanics of dissociation, but it’s survivors who live its poetry — the daily rhythm of disappearing and returning, of remembering and forgetting, of breaking and rebuilding again.
🌿 Why His Work Matters to Incest Survivors
Understanding dissociation changes everything for incest survivors.
It reframes symptoms not as weakness, but as wisdom.
It helps us replace the old question — “What’s wrong with me?” — with the real one: “What happened to me?”
When survivors learn about structural dissociation, they finally realize they’re not “crazy” for feeling both numb and hyper-emotional, or for having conflicting impulses around intimacy and trust.
We begin to see our fragmented selves not as evidence of madness, but as proof of miraculous adaptation.
“The mind that fractured to survive,” Nijenhuis reminds us, “is capable of integration through understanding.”
For me, learning this was like opening a door I didn’t know existed. I started noticing the subtle shifts inside me — the child who panics at raised voices, the teen who craves love but fears touch, the adult who wants peace but still runs from softness.
And instead of silencing them, I began to listen.
Because integration isn’t about becoming someone new — it’s about becoming someone whole.
💗 Returning to the Body: Somatic Healing and the Art of Re-embodiment
If dissociation is the art of leaving the body, healing is the art of returning.
Nijenhuis’s research paved the way for somatic approaches to trauma — practices that honor the body as the key to integration.
For incest survivors, whose bodies were once battlegrounds, this return can feel terrifying.
But small steps matter:
Feeling your feet on the ground when you talk about something painful.
Breathing into your belly for ten seconds longer than feels comfortable.
Letting your shoulders soften without apologizing for taking up space.
These moments of embodiment are not trivial — they’re revolutions.
They tell the nervous system, “We are safe now.”
You don’t have to face the flood all at once.
Healing isn’t about diving into the deepest memory — it’s about earning trust with the parts that once had none.
As survivors, our work is to make our bodies feel like home again — not by erasing the past, but by teaching our nervous systems that the present is different.
🔄 The Enduring Legacy of Ellert Nijenhuis
Dr. Nijenhuis received countless honors for his contributions:
The Morton Prince Award for Scientific Excellence (1998)
The Pierre Janet Writing Award (2000)
The David Caul Memorial Award (2005) for groundbreaking neuroimaging research on dissociative identity disorder
And even knighthood in the Order of the Dutch Lion (2004) for his service to psychological science and humanity.
But his true legacy isn’t the medals — it’s the millions of survivors who finally had language for their invisible pain.
Because of his work, dissociation is no longer dismissed as “attention-seeking” or “imagination.” It’s recognized as the body’s sacred defense against annihilation.
🌺 From Haunted to Whole
I used to think “The Haunted Self” meant I’d always live haunted — forever chasing pieces of my lost self through nightmares and flashbacks.
But I’ve learned that haunting is just what remembering feels like before it turns into integration.
Every time I ground myself after a trigger, I call back a piece of me.
Every time I set a boundary or tell the truth, I re-inhabit my own skin.
Every time I choose connection over dissociation, I reclaim territory once occupied by fear.
We are not haunted — we are remembering.
And with every breath, we are becoming whole.
🕊️ Gentle Closing: For Those Still Fragmented
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in every line — the numbness, the lost time, the longing to be real again — please know: you’re not behind.
You’re healing in a body that once had no map, and that’s holy work.
Dr. Nijenhuis gave us the science. Survivors like you give it soul.
Together, we’re turning dissociation from a diagnosis into a doorway.
💌 A Call to Healing
If you’ve ever wondered why you disappear when things get too close, or why your body reacts before your mind can explain — you’re not broken, you’re surviving.
But survival isn’t where your story ends.
At Holey House, we believe in the sacred art of reassembly — of helping survivors turn fragments into form, and pain into purpose.
Visit holeyhouse.com
to explore survivor-centered resources, trauma-informed guides, and healing tools created by those who’ve walked this path.
Because your healing is not just possible — it’s inevitable once you start walking toward yourself.
“Dissociation saved us,” I often say, “but connection will set us free.”