Have you ever felt like parts of you aren’t quite working together—like your thoughts say one thing, your body feels another, and your emotions are somewhere else entirely? You’re not alone. Many people who’ve gone through something overwhelming or painful feel this way, often without knowing why. What you’re experiencing might be the effects of trauma—and more specifically, fragmentation. In this post, we’ll gently unpack what that means, why it happens, and how healing is possible.
Let’s start by breaking it down. When you go through something distressing or traumatic, your brain doesn’t just store it like a simple memory. Instead, that experience gets broken up into five different parts:
- Your thoughts — what you were thinking during the event
- Your emotions — what you were feeling inside (fear, shame, confusion, etc.)
- Your physical sensations — what your body was feeling (tight chest, racing heart, numbness)
- Your impulses — like whether your body wanted to freeze, fight, or run away
- What you saw — the images your brain took in at that moment
Trauma and Fragmentation
All of these pieces are processed in different parts of the brain. When everything’s working well and you’re not under intense stress, these five parts are integrated—connected in a way that helps you make sense of what happened. But when trauma hits, that integration often doesn’t happen. Instead, the experience gets fragmented.
Imagine a puzzle that suddenly explodes. The pieces go flying, and now you’re left trying to make sense of an event that feels broken and scattered.
This is why someone might say, “I remember everything, but it’s like I’m not really there,” or, “I can’t stop seeing it in my mind, but I don’t feel anything.” Others might feel panic in their body without knowing why. These are signs of fragmentation—when the parts of a memory exist but aren’t connected.
As trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk puts it:
“Dissociation is the essence of trauma. The overwhelming experience is split off and fragmented so that the emotions, sounds, images, thoughts, and physical sensations related to the trauma take on a life of their own.”
That last part is important—take on a life of their own. When traumatic experiences are stored in a fragmented way, they can come back randomly or get triggered by things that remind us of the original event, even if we don’t realize it consciously. This might look like emotional outbursts, panic attacks, zoning out, or feeling disconnected from your body or reality.
It’s easy to think something’s wrong with you when this happens. But really, this is your brain and body doing their best to survive something that felt unsafe.
The good news is that fragmentation doesn’t have to be permanent.
Healing from trauma often involves bringing these scattered pieces back together—gently and at your own pace. In therapy, this might look like:
- Learning to notice and name what’s happening in your body
- Creating a safe space to explore memories without being overwhelmed
- Reconnecting with your emotions in manageable ways
- Making sense of your story with support and care
Feeling Disconnected from your Body
Over time, the brain can begin to integrate what was once fragmented. You might still remember what happened, but the pieces will feel more connected. You won’t feel as hijacked by triggers or thrown off by emotions you don’t understand.
Here’s something worth holding onto: fragmentation is not a flaw—it’s often a sign of what you’ve had to survive. But healing is possible.
You’re not broken. Your system is intelligent. And with the right support from a Kansas City therapist or counselor, those scattered puzzle pieces can start coming back together.
