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Integration is on a continuum, with everyone having some degree of integrative impertfection in life. However, not all integrative failure results in structural dissociation. As noted before, trauma-related structural dissociation specifically involves an undue division of or failure to integrate the biopsychosocial systems that together constitute personality. An essential element of this dissociation entails a fragmentation of the sense of self. We normally experience ourselves somewhat differently at work than at play, and very differently as a lover than as a mugging victim, and differently as a child than as an adult. We must integrate these discrepant experiences of ourselves and our world and fashion a rather unitary history from them: "I am the same person who works, plays, loves, and was mugged; I amd an adult and am no longer a child, but am the same person: All these experiences are mine."

A dissociative person does not engage in this degree of integration, at least to an extent. Sometimes structural dissociation may be restricted only to a single traumatizing event, as in simple PTSD, with one extensive ANP and one very limited EP. But the integrative failure may be more extensive for those who were chronically traumatized as children. These children are often deprived of the very developmental tools necessary to develop self-coherence; namely, a sense of self that is unified and singular. [..].

Generally we speak of our "self" as the active agent of integration: "I integrate my experience." But in fact, our "self" does not integrate experience, but rather is the result of integrative actions. [..]. A unified sense of self emerges when we have unconsciously and consciously integrated the many "selves" or "self states" that are a part of normal development [...], and which we suggest are based to a large degree on various (constellations of) action systems and their subsystems and modes. Patients with trauma-related structural dissociation have not been able to engage adequately in the integrative actions that generate and maintain one cohesive sense of self and a cohesive personality.

— The Haunted Self by Kathy Steele, Onno van der Hart, Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis (Page 143)

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is a synthesis of two paradigms: the plural mind, or the idea that we all contain many different parts, and systems thinking. With the view that intrapsychic processes constitute a system, IFS invites therapists to relate to every level of the human system -- the intrapsychic, familial, communal, cultural, and social -- with ecologically sensitive concepts and methods that focus on understanding and respecting the network of relationships among members. IFS therapy is also collaborative and enjoyable. And because we view people as having all the resources they need rather than having deficits or a disease, it is nonpathologizing. Instead of seeing people as lacking resources, we assume people are constrained from using their innate strengths by polarized relationships, both within and with the people around them. IFS is designed to help us release our constraints and, in so doing, also release our resources.

— Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard C. Schwartz, Martha Sweezy (Page 5)

Let's start with the exiles. These are often the yonger ones that have frequently been called inner children in our culture. Before we get hurt, they are the delightful, playful, creative, trusting, innocent, and open parts of us that we love to be close to. They are also the most sensitive parts, so when someone hurts, betrays, shames, or scares us, they are the parts who take in the extreme beliefs and emotions (burdens) from those events the most.

After the trauma or attachment injury, the burdens these parts absorb shift them from their fun, playful states to chronically wounded inner children who are frozen in the past and have the ability to overwhelm us and pull us bac into those dreadful scenes. They move from feeling "I am loved" to "I am worthless" and "No one loves me", and when they blend with us, that belief becomes our paradigm and we feel all their burdened emotions. It feels unbearable to reexperience those emotions and to believe those things, and often, those burdens impair our ability to function in the world. I've had clients who, when their exiles took over, couldn't get out of bed for a week.

This is why we try our best to lock these parts away, thinking that we are simply moving on from bad memories, sensations, and emotions -- not realizing that we are disconnecting from our most precious resources just because they got hurt.

[...]

Even when they are exiled, their burdens can exert an unconscious effect on our self-esteem, choice of intimate partner, career, and so on. They're behind the overreactions that seem mysterious to us and leave us perplexed as to why certain small things hit us so hard.

— No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz (Page 73 - 74)

When you tell a person they are sick and ignore the large context in which their symptoms make sense, not only do you miss leverage points that could lead to transformation, but you also produce a passive patient who feels defective.

— No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz (Page 60)

The idea that we're asking our young people to go out in the world completely alone and call themselves independent is crazy. We need to teach them how to be interdependent, which means teaching them how to have relationships.

— The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Bessel A. Van Der Kolk (Page 341)

A major challenge in recocering from trauma remains being able to achieve a state of total relaxation and safe surrender.

— The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Bessel A. Van Der Kolk (Page 271)

When people are chronically angry or scared, constant muscle tension ultimately leads to spasms, back pain, migraine, fibromyalgia, and other forms of chronic pain. They may visit multiple specialists, undergo extensive diagnostic tests, and be prescribed multiple medications, some of which may provide temporary relief but all of which fail to address the underlying issues. Their diagnosis will come to define their reality without ever being identified as a symptom of their attempt to cope with trauma.

— The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Bessel A. Van Der Kolk (Page 266)

The fundamental issue in resolving traumatic stress is to restore the proper balance between the rational and emotional brains, so that you can feel in charge of how you respond and how you conduct your life. When we're triggered into states of hyper- or hypoarousal, we are pushed outside our "window of tolerance"---the range of optimal functioning. We become reactive and disorganized; our filters stop working---sounds and lights bother us, unwanted images from the past intrude on our minds, and we panic of fly into rages. If we're shut down, we feel numb in body and mind; our thinking becomes sluggish and we have trouble getting out of our chairs.

As long as people are either hyperaroused or shut down, they cannot learn from experience. Even if they manage to stay in control, they become so uptight [...] that they are inflexible, stubborn, and depressed. Recovery from trauma involves the restoration of executive functioning and, with it, self-confidence and the capacity for playfulness and creativity.

— The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, Bessel A. Van Der Kolk (Page 205)