Dissociation is Normal... Sort Of ($)

First, you have to understand that we are not one person. After that, who knows?

"Dissociation is when a person experiences a temporary separation from their thoughts, actions, surroundings and even memories."
— Jocelyn Solis-Moreira (2023)

This vague definition dissolves on examination because it reminds us we’re never entirely connected to ourselves. If we’re never entirely connected, then are we ever not disconnected?

Dissociation is the separation of parts of yourself. It can be usefully defined, but you must distinguish between focus and separation. Dissociation can be so normal that many psychologists deny it’s unusual. It can also be so subtle and abnormal that poorly connected people—many of whom have gone into the field of psychology to find themselves—deny that it’s real.

“On the mild end, you can feel as if you’re in a trance or foggy state of mind and not consciously aware of your surroundings... On the other hand, a person may ‘split’ off from certain experiences or an entire part of their identity where the mind does not recognize its sense of self.”
— Jocelyn Solis-Moreira (2023)

This description highlights the fundamental misunderstanding. Dissociation is not about being disconnected from the outside world, it’s about being disconnected from yourself. Being disconnected from the external world is being in a trance. Spacing out in reverie or concentration is not dissociation.

It’s a psychologist whom Solis-Moreira is quoting who is confusing dissociation with trance. The field has a history of this confusion because it pretends to be objective when the object of its study is manifestly not. This is why psychology’s entrance into the field of psychedelics can be dangerous. Until there is a psychology of the subjective, trance states will continue to be seen as pathological.

One must be careful around psychologists and psychotherapists. They tend to be unusually personally involved with the disorders they study, and this leads them to both insight and blindness. The key to distinguishing a competent voice is a lack of pride: if a person is prideful, aloof, and acts in a superior manner, then suspect their advice is self-serving.

What is Dissociation Really?

You are not one person. Those different moods and urges that sometimes dominate your personality are rooted in your different personalities. They are not complete personalities, there is no complete personality, they exist to respond to such situations as require them.

You have built these personalities in response to emphatic, dramatic, or traumatic situations that required some autonomous action on your part. These autonomous actions, when thoroughly connected with events around you, into the past and into the future, become personalities. They are your attitudes about the world and your coordinated response to it.

Your multiple, normal personalities are a group of specialists tuned to respond to different calls. Some put out fires, others are aggressive, loving, curious, reckless, or innocent. There is no limit to one’s possible personalities, but most people consist of a dominant few, and those few work collaboratively to keep each other informed. In the best of cases, your rumination represents the meeting of your minds. They compare notes, revise opinions, and recast memories. You are an ecology of mind and, in a healthy ecology, certain species stabilize in the canopy while others populate the ground.

Dissociation is not a problem, it’s isolation that’s the problem. When factions of your mind cannot communicate with others, then they cannot collaborate, share, inform, or adapt. These parts of your personality are isolated and unprepared for most situations. They have developed in response to only one.

Most of us are thoroughly dissociated, but our dissociated parts are in such close communication that it causes no problems. The definition of a relaxed state of mind is one in which the whole family is welcome: no personality is excluded, there are no fractious issues, and no adversarial relations.

The Benefits of Separate Parts

Besides the reality of separate parts, they offer many benefits. First, they offer separate opinions based on different memories and reasons. It’s important that we have opposing points of view to help us recognize differences and clarify distinctions. We normally think of differences in terms of opposites, but this is too limiting. Our different personalities can bring nuance to various points of view and establish more than two possibilities.

Because these different “opinions” have personalities behind them, they have advocacy. They are not simply a few talking points, they are heritage attitudes. When one of our personalities argues a point, it can address personal and cultural memories, emotional attitudes, future hopes, and everything in between. We could not do that if we came to decisions based on dryly academic arguments or an attraction to immediate gratification.

Not all our parts are comfortable in each other’s presence. This can lead to problems, but they’re problems that would not be obvious to us. The problems that arise from a failure in the communication between our dissociated parts are subtle forms of personal distress. We’ll find ourselves with ambiguous feelings, compromising decisions, and uncomfortable conclusions. We might identify a few incongruous issues or unjustifiable points, but without a personality to advocate for another point of view, we won’t gain access to the full scope of our reservations.

The therapeutic technique of “parts therapy” involves inducing a hypnotic trance that pushes aside the dominant voices of one’s personality and invites the marginal voices to be heard. It gives the bullied, banished, and normally unwelcome personality full rights and respects, and invites them to speak audibly so that the rest of your mind—your present but now quieted personalities—can hear.

For a person with normal levels of conflict, this opportunity to give audience to one’s recessive parts feels liberating. Balanced people can hear their minority parts without harming themselves. There is a kind of a familial relationship between the parts. The dominant parts may dismiss and overrule the minority voices, but they are not hostile to them.

The external facilitator, who is me, can arrange a conference. To assuage the domineering attitudes of the dominant voice and create a dialog between a client’s deep internal feelings. However, there are people whose parts are hostile, or which work toward such different ends as to be adversarial.

When Dissociation Becomes a Disorder

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If you recognize yourself or someone you’re close to as being dissociated to an uhealthy degree, schedule a free call and we can talk about it.

https://www.mindstrengthbalance.com/schedule15

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