Consciousness is like water
When it comes to dissociative identity disorder and consciousness in general, I like to think of consciousness like water, rather than a single object or a piece of glass that can be shattered and fragmented into pieces.Ā
If you take a glass of water and you pour some of it into an empty glass you donāt end up with broken water. You end up with two smaller glasses of water. And even if you could, there is no real reason to pour the water back into the other glass to have the water be ā whole againā as both instances of water are just as real and just as valid and experience themselves as their own distinct glass of water. The water molecules donāt miss the āwholeā water it used to be, because the water is still water.Ā
I think most peoples consciousness is made up of a landscape (the underlying functioning and wiring of the brain) with a certain amount of water covering the landscape. For most people there might large body of water running through it. There might be little branches of streams running off here and there, but for the most part there is really only just one large body of water that is there And even if there are small puddles lying around they are still connected to the main lake by smaller channels.Ā
When it comes to trauma and disorders on the dissociative spectrum the landscape starts to look a bit different. Trauma can leave devastation in itās wake and severely alter the landscape. Leaving craters and rocks and such behind when there werenāt any before.Ā Ā And when that āwaterā of consciousness washes over the land, instead of creating just one big body of water in the middle of the scene, it ends up looking a lot more like many puddles that are separated by sometimes vast distances of land in between them. There is still the same amount of water as any other person might have, but when you look around you will see many ponds and puddles that are perfectly valid and real bodies of water.Ā
When dissociative barriers begin to break down, itās like digging small tunnels in between to try to connect the puddles and lakes to increase inner communication. So the separate puddles might now have a channel full of water connecting them, while there still remaining water in both sides. In this situation if anything happens that disrupts the flow of water between the puddles, it will cause them to become separate again. Sometimes any two bodies of water can entirely merge into one (analogous to integration) but can easily be separated again if itās needed for some reason.
When it comes to the big question of what consciousness even is or what it actually means, or what it means to be conscious, most people have a hard time separating the neurological framework of the mind that is made up of our genetics, experiences, memories, hormones, neurotransmitters, and neurons, and the specific āqualiaā that comes along with being a conscious being. Many people argue about whether free will exists because of this, or if humans are even conscious at all. But when it comes down to itĀ ā I think, therefore I amāĀ has never been more relevant.Ā
Consciousness is the ability to take memories, experiences, external stimuli, and internal feelings, and make sense of it to make decisions that are the best for survival.Ā For most people they have access to most of that neural framework since their consciousness is laid over it fairly evenly. But when you have a crater filled landscape sometimes a puddle of consciousness will only experience certain memories and experiences, shaping how it interacts with and perceives the world. Maybe one puddle of water will only take up the space of trauma memories, while another the ability to speak a certain language. And of course these bodies of water can naturally overlap at times.Ā
I think when it comes to consciousness, the internal landscape is the most important factor in how our personality(s) develop. Consciousness is a more abstract concept emerging from the complicated interplay of that neurological framework, and like water, it can morph and change drastically depending on the shape of the container it inhabits. The container of course, being our internal landscapes, which while they are something that can be changed to a degree in some cases, some formations that are laid down in childhood might never really be able to be changed very much.Ā
