Re-Fractaling Origin
So what does re-fractaling actually mean?
Well, the idea came to me in my third year of college. I was starting fall semester, and we had just gotten our first assignments for a new painting class called “Contemporary Practice”. The class focused on a lot of discussion of deeper topics and making art based on very open ended prompts. It was also the first semester after I started therapy with a DID specialist and really started to accept and work on that aspect of my life.
I like to work in themes and while researching for the first project I stumbled across the mathematical system ”fractal”. A fractal is a complex, never-ending pattern that repeats itself on all scales. Some leaves are fractals. Snowflakes are fractals. My system is a fractal, or at least it was at the time. While I dove into my art I also was fascinated by my own brain and how it worked. I reveled (and still do) in sitting and analyzing the structures of my system. In it I saw repeating patterns. We had a main group that had basic continue-on-with-life parts that don’t know much about trauma or anything, a protector, a communicator, and a trauma holder. Throughout the system, we saw that same pattern repeated over and over with various focuses and for various stressors all with dissociative barriers between them, meaning they couldn’t talk to each other very easily or access memories between groups. Near the end of our time in school the smallest stresses would cause us to split (form new parts) with the same pattern. We’d work in therapy to process and work through these stresses and fuse or integrate which means lowering dissociative walls in between parts to be able to have access to memories and feelings. But no matter how much we processed we’d re-split in those same patterns. Therefore, we were re-fractling. Becoming complex again and repeating the same pattern throughout the levels of the system. It wasn’t until the last few months that we’ve been able to maintain a stable small group without any new parts splitting. There’s always the possibility to split again no matter how far along in recovery and remission a person with DID gets. That’s why it’s a disorder. But I’m optimistic. I think we’ve learned a lot through our time at school and through therapy and I hope that our plans for this next year bring fresh new ideas to the table.
Re-fractaling, to me, is about learning more about myself as a collective. It’s about being complex even as we heal and enter remission. It’s examining the layers and repeated patterns in myself even if they’re not as visually apparent. Because we all have these repeated patterns within ourselves, things that reinforce our beliefs over and over. The patterns that make us, us.
12/16/25
Meridian