Take anorexia or bulimia, for example. When someone is triggered, their hypothalamus (the part of the brain that controls hunger) can hijack them, making them feel like a different person entirely. They’ll crave high-calorie, sweet, fatty foods, not because they’re just hungry, but because their brain is desperately signaling to them that it’s starving. But it feels like someone else’s impulse, a part of them that feels so disconnected from the "real" person, it's almost like a sub-personality.
This disconnection happens in other ways, too. Like with Capgras Syndrome, when a person believes someone close to them has been replaced by a duplicate, even though they can recognize their voice. It's all about how their brain processes emotional connections and faces, getting messed up by a stroke. The brain can even lose specific functions, like the ability to talk but still sing, or identify things but not name them.
The craziest part? We all dissociate constantly. Ever imagine what you’d say or do in a situation before it happens? That’s you rehearsing in a little “fantasy world.” If we didn’t have that ability to distance our thoughts from actions, we’d just act on every impulse, no filter. So, yeah, the brain is designed to work in layers, with some parts almost like hidden sub-personalities, all tangled up in our emotions—anger, lust, guilt, etc. And if you’re caught up in one of these sub-personalities? Your perception, goals, even your actions might be shaped by them without you even realizing. Wild, right?
so if you're under the grip of a sub-personality, and its possible and highly likely that the way that you're perceiving the world and the way you're acting in it, and even what you state as your goals are influenced in ways that you don't understand by the action of these unconsious systems.
