Orientation doesn't stick

We have a part whose job it was to be at school and manage all that.
She must have fronted on the way to school, basically she only knows the school building and classes, teachers, people from school...
We have great difficulty introducing her to the world we live in now. We explain things, that time has passed, how our life is today and all that
but she moves inside pretty quickly, probably overwhelmed, and when she comes closer to the front again she forgot everything and expects school-related things to happen. she gets a bit frantic about not knowing what the next class will be or which room she has to go to.
all the exercises we do to help her arrive in the Today are not working, she just moves inside and when she returns we start with zero understanding again.
the time she keeps refering to is when we were about 16-17 but she seems younger than that and super limited in her knowledge about the world. like, she really only knows the fragments about school.
Our T said to do everything to introduce her to more of life, make it a point not to do school-related things so she gets a chance to realize that today is not back then. we do what we usually do with the Littles but she seems to go inside pretty fast and I am running out of ideas.
she doesn't even come close to the front enough to have more realization. she might be overwhelmed. And I am not sure about her mental capacities and if she is even able to understand anything outside the small fragment of the world she knows. it's not like she is a very developed part, more like a bigger fragment with a very specific role and very limited action tendencies.
her passive influence makes us really confused and desoriented.
any ideas how we could approach that?

I don't know if these ideas are backed-up by science, but this is what comes to mind:

- Is there a way to make the steps smaller?
That way she could build up more tolerance for being faced with a different reality.

Maybe she can be involved in school-like tasks in the present. What comes to mind is perhaps learning about a new subject that you didn't have in school (e.g. astronomy, a new language); being involved in measuring out stuff for recipes (cooking); perhaps helping to plan out a route on the map to go for a walk?

Are you able to have conversations with her? Maybe you could ask her about school first, and then slowly expand the questions to other things, stopping/slowing down when you notice disengagement.

Or let her make a drawing about all that she knows and then make another drawing next to it where you highlight similar things in the present, but also tell her that there are differences and slowly introduce small differences?

It sounds like maybe there is something protective or very important in being at school and noticing something different is very threatening.

smaller steps, like in titration, seems to actually be the scientific way to approach things that are overwhelming when its done all at once.
We just don't know how to practically do it in this case.

think of her less as a fully developed part and more like a fragment. she has enough first-person perspective to have a name and enough knowledge in one area to navigate school. but in her world, school is the whole world. she doesn't know anything outside that school. If you tell her that normal people live in houses or that they sleep that is already beyond her. she only knows being awake and being at school. think of it like the matrix. everything our life is today is like a red-pill experience. she is panicking and unable to understand. she wasn't made for life, she was made for school.

The T advised us to not use school-related things. I don't know if that is the right instruction but everything school-related we tried didn't work either. she doesn't seem to have the capacity for a life outside the little fragment she was created to deal with. she is not like me, learning is not her focus. being in the right room at the right time, knowing the names of students and teachers and how to interact with them is what she does. now all that isn't there anymore.

there isn't any long conversation ever. she realizes she is not at school, she gets confused, then scared and no matter what we do or how L tries to engage her she withdraws.
I am honestly not sure if maybe she is just not developed enough to take part in life. With extremely low capacity to even understand what is going on now it might be best to build her a place inside and try to keep her there. when she is closer to the front it just gets too confusing for her. Then we still don't know how to keep her inside...

Take up a class in the present and let her do that?

it's not like she is coming close to the front regularly. If we take a class it would probably be just me going there. especially since it would not be in our old school building.
and, as I already said, the T said to get her away from school-related things. She is supposed to learn more about the world today, possibly in a way that is not overwhelming her.

Oh. Ok. My thought was that if this part was in a learning environment it might encourage them out. Because the environment would be learning but current that perhaps they'd learn something new and maybe start to feel more comfortable and part of everyday life. It's what I'd try but if you don't think that'd work then I don't know.

What I do with parts is sort of what you've done - find any connection they had to the outside world and try to use that to help them now to connect with them.

I have a part who has only one outside memory that I have zero personal connection to and I've never heard of this part. He also has an individual internal world experience which makes it more awkward and there aren't other parts that connect to him or know him. He's angry generally but not frightened of connecting with present life. I don't think I would have ever met him if it wasn't for this pandemic.

Your part sounds like she had quite a big amount of time in the body at one point so I wouldn't rule her out as a shallow type of alter, she may have some depth. Amount of time in the body is time to develop with the body, more "normal" The less time mine have in the body the more fanciful their internal lives are. I wouldn't rule it out that she does have an internal life either though because of the amnesia, she could be living a whole life internally so doesn't have space to remember anything other than when she was most useful at school. Loosing school memories isn't ideal. Not being able to bring her to the present I think my next course of action would be to try to find out what goes on with her when she's not in the body, if she has an internal life that's more important to her than this external life. That'd be my next step.

Right now is not a good time to be coming out. Why not let her stay inside?

Help her stay there with some containment exercises. Think about the end of her school day. What were the cues that said the school day is over?

I will have to think about that. giving her cues that it is not the time to front.
right now we don't have control over when she comes closer to the front. we'll have to check if maybe there are cues that tell her it's a school day. So far she just shows up at seemingly random times every couple of months. We really want damage control more than we are actively working on integrating her into an every-day team. thanks for pointing out a different angle

I think that's a really good idea, Una+.

Maybe you could also find out if there is anything that is triggering her out/to the forefront - but that seems more of a second step.