Dissociation

From the ACA ((Adult Children of Alcoholics and Disfunctional Families) Big Red Book,  p 344:

"What is Dissociation?

Dissociation is a survival tool from childhood.   Adult children can dissociate from themselves in a variety of ways that can be difficult to recognize until we get help.  In addition to drugs,  work,  sex or food,  we dissociate in other ways that can include:  compulsive cleaning,  compulsive exercising,  obsessive reading,  fantasizing about sex or romance,  telephone sex,  pornography,  compulsive masturbation,  workaholism,  or harmful thrill seeking.   There is also compulsive spending and cluttering.   Dissociation responds well to honesty about our behavior and a willingness to do program work."

So,   I dissociate ALL the time.   I have done this for as long as I can remember. How do I dissociate?  Let me count the ways….

Out of the fifteen dissociation "avenues" listed above,  I can personally relate to about ten.    Anyway,  well above half of them I have experienced at one time or another.      The most common is my just getting spacey and not being fully present with myself or anyone I'm with.    I "check out".   Where do I go when I dissociate?   

On page 87 of the Big Red Book,  the ACA authors describe dissociation as a child repressing their true feelings in order to survive in the face of abuse, neglect or other traumas.   They further describe three distinct methods of dissociation.   

1)  The person represses,  projects or rationalizes the feelings which are causing him/her pain.

2)  The person uses a substance (such as alcohol,  sugar,  nicotine, caffeine)   to alter the painful feelings.

3)  The person uses negative excitement to keep him/herself unaware of deeper fear.   By focusing our attention on phobias,  obsessions,  dreams and taboos,  and compulsively tensing in response to these fears,  we force the body to build a protective physical armor and to produce adrenaline,  endorphins,  and melatonin to chemically block the perception of pain.

"All three forms forms of dissociation keep us imprisoned in a narrow and familiar range of behavior,  never reaching the extremes of panicked exhaustion or of collapse into suicidal despair"  (BRB,  p 88).

I believe that I,  and all people,  are spiritual beings.   I believe that my spiritual nature joined with my earthly form which comes through my parents' biological lineage.   In an ideal setting of childhood,   the spiritual nature of a person can join with the material in a lawful and harmonious way.   What happens is an integration of spirit and material which leads someone to have ideas,  feelings and behaviors which are closely aligned with their highest ideals for themselves.   

For those of us who got kicked around a bit,  we have more work to do.    We have to identify,  to whatever extent we can,  with our higher self,  and try to gradually empower our higher self to be increasingly in control of our thoughts,  feelings and behavior.

So the answer to the question,  "Where do I go when I dissociate?"  probably goes something like this:   As a child I wanted to flee the circumstances which were around me.   But where does a child flee to?   Where was I to go? 

I think that my spiritual nature,  what ACA calls the "inner child" tried to flee out of of my body.   When I was being molested,  when my dad abandoned me,  when my mom was chronically unaware of my needs,  my inner child,  (sometimes acutely,  sometimes gradually),  separated from my every-day consciousness.   While I was going about my business of being a kid,  part of my consciousness was often hovering over my body,   not wanting to "integrate" with my material form because it seemed too damn dangerous.   And because my inner child was "out of the building",  there could be "other stuff" that was more than happy to come in.   The "other stuff" includes the ten out of fifteen of the behaviors listed above.

It is a quantum level easier to "integrate" when one is a kid.   The recovery of the human species can be achieved only by doing a better job of raising children.   I firmly believe that.   But,  we can still recover as adults even when the road behind has been rocky.   It is  a lot harder.    But what's the alternative? For me,  the alternative to recovery is years of confusion and misery.

No thanks.

Your comments are welcome.

Warmly, Ben