Phantom Limb

by Lucinda Berry

He accepted much sooner than her that Emily and I had some wounds no amount of love would erase. He was content to focus on what he could give us and didn’t try to change us into something we weren’t.

I understood why Emily spent so much time sleeping. It was the closest you could get to death without physically dying.

“When children are young, there are critical periods of development where important tasks take place. One of the biggest tasks is the attachment to a primary caregiver. As psychologists, we know this is one of the most important things to happen during the first five years of life. Sometimes when it doesn’t occur, children grow up unable to form attachments with other people, or they form what we call disorganized attachment.

“We’ve diagnosed you with a dissociative disorder. Dissociative disorders are on a spectrum much like most mental illnesses. They range from mildly impairing to severely impairing. Your disorder is what we would classify as being severely impairing because it’s negatively impacting your life on multiple levels.

The particular name for your disorder is a Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified.”

The person becomes fragmented from themselves in some way. They disconnect or disassociate from themselves and the environment around them.”

“Maybe this will help. Have you ever lost periods of time? Has there ever been an occasion where you were awake and did something you weren’t able to remember you’d done or where you were?”

“Losing time is a big part of your diagnosis. Your psyche is disconnected and fragmented into different parts. Sometimes in dissociative states, people function very differently from the way that is typical for them. When this state becomes very severe, some people develop other states of being or might even act as if they’re a different person.”

“People’s brains are powerful. Extremely powerful. You’d be amazed at what they can do.

When girls are sexually abused, they tend to behave in one of two ways—they either become extremely promiscuous, or they end up avoiding all forms of sexual behavior and become unresponsive to sex. I