🎙️ DID Is a Brilliant Adaptation-With Sally Maslansky, LMFT — author of A Brilliant Adaptation
Episode Description
What if dissociative identity disorder is a brilliant, life-saving strategy?
In this moving and grounded conversation, therapist and author Sally Maslansky shares her lived experience of DID and the therapeutic relationship that changed everything.
Diagnosed in the 1990s (when it was still called MPD), Sally entered treatment during a cultural moment steeped in fear and shame. But her therapist, Dr. Dan Siegel, offered something radically different:
Not “What’s wrong with you?”But “What did your mind do to survive?”
From disorganized attachment to learned secure attachment.From fragmentation to fluidity.From terror without context to memory with meaning.
⏱ Timestamps
00:04 – Romania, terror, and the shock of not remembering childhoodAdoption awakens something she can’t ignore.
08:58 – The diagnosis in the 90sFrom “Am I crazy?” to “This is a brilliant adaptation.”
11:33 – Disorganized attachment: fear without solutionHow the brain fragments to survive.
14:37 – Parts as verbs, not nounsWhy dissociated states are processes — not separate people.
21:46 – What healing actually feels likeMemory intact. Suffering over.
33:55 – Implicit vs. explicit memory“If I’m hysterical, it’s historical.”
If you’ve ever feared that healing means losing your parts, this episode offers another picture.
Memory intact.Suffering over.Safety carried securely from the inside.
Links & Resources
Sally’s Book A Brilliant Adaptation
Sally at the Psychotherapy Networker Symposium March 20th
Sally & Dr Dan Siegel Speaking March 11th
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