The phobia of fusion is not specifically mentioned in the professional literature that talks about the classic phobias in DID treatment or it is mentioned as a phase 3 problem. I believe it is one way that the phobia of other parts and the phobia of traumatic memories shows up in our life. I will talk about it at this point in the series because the stabilization phase is when the phobia of fusion is the worst. It gets resolved over time when we process memories and share more of our life with other parts.
The threat of treatment goals
A good DID therapist will include us in some way when it comes to our own treatment plan. But inexperienced therapists are often thinking too far ahead and try to pin down the end goal of therapy early one. They bring up the question ‘integrated functioning or final fusion?‘ at an impossible time. We don’t have to decide that at the beginning of our therapy. We can’t. It is part of the recovery journey to see who is even present inside, how it fits together and how we will function together best. It will not become visible until after trauma is processed for individual parts. They will be different afterwards. We don’t know what the results will be. It is utterly impossible to tell which goal is most suited to the system when we haven’t even started treatment yet. The final goal is irrelevant for early treatment planning. All the steps are the same. The only difference is how far we can take it towards the end. It is better to answer that when we get there. Therapists can point out the general direction of therapy, moving towards more integration, without the need to declare a fixed end point.
Integrative capacity
Therapists who bring up the choice of final fusion early in therapy just trigger the hell out of a system that is phobic for a very good reason. We cannot think about how we might all fit together when there is no capacity to think of ourselves that way and when the barriers are still desperately needed because they manage the overwhelm of trauma that is spread across the system. Without dealing with the trauma memory, even just the imagination of being connected must freak us out. It is beyond our ability. We are too scared and we also have no experience of inner connection that could give us a hint of what it could be like. Stabilization is not the time to think about the final boss questions of identity and existence.
The fantasy of fusion
When systems hear about fusion they imagine it wrong. It is impossible to imagine something that is so far beyond our experience and so much bigger than the reality we experience right now. Usually, what we imagine will be more dissociation because that is the only thing we know. We imagine loss, death of alters, parts vanishing from existence. We tend to always imagine losing something instead of gaining or integrating something. And we can’t imagine it any other way. How else could we be? Without the lived experience of a greater space, an overarching way of being that is big enough to hold all kinds of experiences, we must believe that something will be lost. We feel it intuitively: there is no room inside of me to also hold a different part. If we had to literally merge, some things have to be lost because 2 parts don’t fit into the space of one part. We are unaware that there is a bigger space and we don’t have to fit into one part at all.
Outdated ideas of fusion
In the early days of DID treatment, therapists used the imagery of fusing or merging parts together. When using hypnosis, they told a story of parts moving closer and closer together and then stepping into each other to melt together. That is scary as hell. With unresolved trauma, that equals getting traumatized at once. Even when trauma is resolved, the dissolution of identity is super scary. Everyone would feel scared if you told them they would get dissolved. I don’t use the word merging at all because I find it misleading. While the imagery of stepping into each other works for a minority of people with DID, it is usually just unnecessarily scary and doesn’t match the lived experience of many. Please note that you can still always use this imagery if it feels helpful and fitting to you personally.
Better imagery: The pitcher
Mike Lloyd explains fusion in one of his videos using glasses of water or juice. Every part holds their own glass full of liquid. They are full. There is no way to pour one glass into another, it would just run over. And that wouldn’t feel nice for anyone. Instead, all the glasses of liquid get poured into a big pitcher that can easily hold it all. The contents will get mixed and the result will taste different from a single glass. There is also not one drop lost and the personal taste of a part can still be discerned when trying the new mixture. This imagery is a lot better because it introduces a bigger space that is capable of holding a lot more than a glass could. That is much closer to lived experience.
My personal imagery: The blanket fort
In my own therapy, I don’t feel like juice. I am not that flexible and fluid. Based on how all this feels for me in my lived experience, I developed the image of a blanket fort for myself. As a part, it feels like I am wearing a trench coat that is my size and covers me perfectly, my personal space. We can play ‘3 parts in a trench coat’ but it won’t really work long-term. Then I discovered the bigger space of being, like a mental state that exists somewhere just beside my usual sense of myself. It feels like a number of blankets were put together to create a space that can hold more than my own trench coat can. Parts can slip into the blanket fort and mingle there. The whole fort acts as a unit and the person who is doing life. The main point is that there is a state of being that goes beyond everyone’s trench coats. It isn’t available early in therapy but it can become more available in a late phase when it is easier to share a space with the others. How much things get mixed up underneath the blanket is an individual matter. There might not be a lot of mixing because the states we have fit certain roles well and we just navigate the fort while the shape of parts underneath stays relatively intact. Acting as one fort is already more integrated than switching between adapted and functional trench coats. Over time, what is in the blanket fort might get a lot more mixed up because it is useful, and abilities or memories are handed from one corner to the next fluidly. The way that our existence mingles with itself feels a lot gentler and more gradual than pouring juice into pitchers where they get rapidly mixed. There is still a spectrum of how mixed up things really get even while staying under the bigger cover of the blanket fort. It starts to feel more normal that we are covered by the blanket fort than stepping outside it in a trench coat. The shape of it all together fits us better and we start to feel more comfortable inhabiting that space.
That is one lived experience with the integration process. Others might have different experiences. But maybe you can notice how this is a lot less scary than the idea of somehow melting.
A practical approach to the phobia of fusion
If we are too scared to think about fusion, it is way too early for us to think about fusion. And then there is no point in thinking about it at all. We will just imagine it wrong. Fusion becomes more thinkable as our capacity grows and creates a bigger space for us. It might start like the idea of moving to a different country. It starts to feel interesting and something draws us in that direction. As we explore the new experience, we gain certainty with our choices and maybe we end up moving to Ireland and maybe we realize that our resources are not going to get us all the way there and we move to Boston instead. We will probably feel the urge to move on, some way or another, when we are ready for it.
Don’t let anyone force you into thinking about fusion prematurely. It makes no sense. Don’t agree to anything other than a general direction for your therapy early on. Some systems are structured in a way that makes them less functional if they fuse all the way and their best option to have a happy life is partial integration without fusion. There is no one-size-fits-all end goal. And it is way too early to understand what you will need before you get there. Just wait. It will become clearer. You have permission not to think about fusion at all until you have processed most of your trauma memories. That is when it can begin to become a relevant topic.