A Love Letter to Dissociation
Dissociation is misunderstood, stigmatized, and pathologized. I think this is wrong and does a great disservice to ourselves and our healing. The truth is dissociation is one of my favorite parts of people’s inner world to encounter in my trauma specialist work.
Understanding how to navigate dissociative parts unlocks our ability to create safety for ourselves in relationship. We learn to stay present with ourselves in high-conflict situations where we need to advocate for our needs. We figure out how to voice our desires and preferences powerfully — and how to be heard.
Dissociation is Not What it Seems
Dissociation is a safety move, pure and simple.
It's an exquisite survival strategy that all animals use to keep themselves safe. It's the equivalent of a fish going belly-up to distract a barracuda, or a mouse going limp in the jaws of the neighbor's cat.
Our nervous systems know how to take us out of our bodies to keep us safe and stop us from feeling too much. When things get too frightening, our bodies decide that it's better not to be there.
Dissociation is a last-ditch survival effort.
When all else fails, dissociation can be trusted to reliably step in and take us out of awareness. It's the rescue party who pulls up to the situation in a fast car and screams, "Get in! I'm getting us out of here," when no one else is coming.
Dissociation is learned.
We needed it as a tool because we didn't get enough safety in the past. When things get dire, it pushes the ejector button on the crashing plane and pulls the rip cord on our parachute.
Dissociation, Overwork, and Urgency
Overwork is probably the most common form of dissociation. It’s the most socially rewarded because it makes us phenomenal achievers. But it comes at a cost.
High performers are rewarded for accomplishing a superhuman amount of work in a short period of time. We thrive on overwork and the heady buzz of urgency.
We get used to the rush of adrenalin in our bodies, the lurch in our stomachs, our breath shallow from the excitement of trying to do it all.
Overwork and urgency orient our focus to the external world to such an extent that there is little awareness of our bodies or our needs. We sacrifice ourselves for speed and achievement.
We don’t notice the cost to our quality of life when we’re dissociated.
Our hyperfocus on external performance means we don’t have much left for ourselves. We postpone our self-care and downtime to a future date that never seems to come. It’s only when our bodies start to complain loudly that we realize we haven’t been paying attention.
Dissociation as a Trauma Symptom
There is nothing disordered about dissociation. It is one of the most common trauma symptoms and trauma is a natural and adaptive response to perceived life-threatening situations.
The dissociation is a hangover from the original or ongoing events that overwhelmed our nervous systems.
When the overwhelm happened, our nervous systems and the oldest parts of our brains decided that the experience was too much, and it was better not to be here.
This is phenomenally adaptive. It's genius of our bodies to know how to take us out, without going anywhere.
The backlash happens only when our bodies continue to use dissociation as our go-to strategy for stress, whenever we are reminded of anything similar. Anything that brings up memories of the original traumatic event will likely activate dissociation.
Dissociation is the trail that leads us unfailingly back to where we need to heal. It is a trustworthy companion in the trauma healing journey because it will reliably point us back to where the nervous system needs support, if we know how to listen.
What Most People Get Wrong about Dissociation
Most of us go to war with dissociation and treat it like an enemy. After all, the medical model of psychotherapy looks at dissociation as a symptom of a disorder. If we aren't present, they reason, there's something deeply wrong with us that needs to be fixed.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Treating dissociation like a disorder does an immense disservice to the parts of us that learned, through experience, how to create safety the only way they knew how.
Why would we go to war with such a deeply intelligent part of ourselves? Why would we take a switchblade to the life raft? It makes no sense.
When we pathologize dissociation, we treat this ancient survival strategy with disrespect. We antagonize the parts of us that are trying their best to keep us safe. And we unconsciously create inner antagonism when the dissociation becomes wrong and must be resisted through force of will, which is an exercise in futility.
When we see dissociation as something wrong with us, we blame ourselves for a brilliant survival mechanism, instead of learning to work with it.
Dissociation is an ancient elder who knows when it's best not to feel. Instead of going to war with this part of ourselves, why not learn to work with it? After all, if the antagonism was working, it would have worked already.
How to Work with Dissociation
1. Respect your ability to dissociate. Treat dissociation as an ancient guardian who carries a survival instinct that we all share. Instead of going to war with it, we can learn to work with dissociation as a tool to notice when we don’t feel safe. Choosing how to respond, when you notice dissociation, is a change from our usual antagonism towards it. This step might seem small, but it’s a paradigm shift.
2. Start to track when you dissociate. Notice what happens in your body. Do you start to feel spacey? Do your arms or legs start to feel icy? What happens to your breathing? Your feet? It’s different for everyone, but once you track what happens in your body, you will have a map.
3. Don't try to stop it. Notice it. Acknowledge it. Even welcome it. Instead of shaming it, blaming it, or making it wrong, get to know it. Invite gentle curiosity and welcome any awareness that arises. This is hard because we’re taught to oppose dissociation, to white knuckle the steering wheel and force our awareness back through force and effort.
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If we don't learn to work with dissociation, the war within escalates. Our self-esteem suffers. Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, we loop in a vicious cycle of trying harder while the dissociation digs its heels in and only gets stronger.
But when we learn how to befriend dissociation as the ancient guardian it is, we can navigate it as a powerful ally as we create a deeper and more embodied sense of safety.
It's often a safety that we've never experienced before. And it feels amazing.
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