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I have something to say today, so I am braving the dangers of cyber virus crimeland to write this.  I have to write this because I can feel my passion within this thought.  What I am going to say has roots deep in very important personal relationships that I will not speak about directly.  My truth within my words is no less meaningful even with this most personal omission.

Dissociation is very real.

Today I am very clear that the way this term is used, and especially as it is used within the ‘mental illness diagnostic category’ of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is only half true and half accurate.

I believe that every time we, as individuals and as a collective human global society, choose to use the term ‘dissociation’ to describe very real physiological brain and nervous system patterns of operation, we are at the same time neglecting to speak about the whole picture, the entire truth of what we are referring to.

Dissociation is so intimately connected to its other half that these two processes CANNOT BE DISCONNECTED OR DISSOCIATED from one another.

The other half of the whole is — ASSOCIATION.

When I personally experience ‘dissociation’ all that is REALLY and ACTUALLY happening is that my brain-nervous system is connecting myself within my ongoing experience of being alive in a body in a DIFFERENT way than what either I or those around me might WANT or EXPECT or even DEMAND of me.

Dissociation is NOT understood.  So called ‘professionals’ continue to use this word without any REAL understanding of what it IS.  Dissociation is most often used in the negative, as if it is describing what DOES not exist rather than what DOES exist.

When dissociation happens what is ACTUALLY happening is that an ASSOCIATION is being made within the brain-nervous system of a person in a way that appears unusual and unique.  Human social connectiveness happens to the most part because most people have an unspoken, unarticulated understanding that humans behave (and this includes on our neurological-physiological level) in certain common ways.

People (like myself) whose earliest development was changed because of early severe abuse, neglect, trauma and malevolent treatment simply experienced Trauma Altered Development.  Most simply put we were wired as our young body-brain developed for DANGER and unpredictability within a terrible, terrible world.

I have no doubt that nearly ALL of us, or ALL of us, were created from conception with the same abilities everyone else has to form a best-case scenario body-brain-nervous system.  We were deprived of that luxury within our terrible infant-childhoods.

Our body-brain simply HAD to grow itself differently.  We had no choice.  We are wired differently.  There is nothing WRONG with this fact.  It is a fundamental natural LAW that a developing infant (or anyone at any other age) either be able to adapt to traumatic environments — or DIE.

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All simple until it comes to very real every day interactions with other people.  I am coming to realize as a FACT that very, very few people — even among those closest to us — are going to be either able or willing to take the time needed to understand us the way we actually ARE (the way our brain-nervous system-body ACTUALLY operates).  Either we operate the way the want us to, expect us to, or — WHAT?

Rupture without Repair.

Yes, our case is about discrimination.

Yet because we might not ‘look’ any different than ‘normal and ordinary’ it is highly likely that the lack of communication and understanding that causes so many of our interpersonal problems is NOT going to be resolved (repaired).

And today?  Yes, I feel pissed off!

I feel helpless and hopeless.  I feel like I am at a dead end.  I did not choose to be a hated, terrorized, terrified and abused infant — or child.  Yet one cannot maltreat especially an infant from birth and very young child and expect that the ASSOCIATIONS formed within its tiny, rapidly growing and forming little body-brain can POSSIBLY come out the same as it will for nonabused, loved infant-children.

We will ALL end up with what ‘looks like’ dissociation when what we REALLY have is a changed — and yes, different — associational process that was the natural and logical — and very real consequence — of the treatment we received from our earliest caregivers — that formed us the way we are!

Say we have an Association Disorder?  Who ever heard of THAT?

There is nothing ‘disordered’ about either my ‘association’ or my ‘dissociation’.  What I am is a terrible trauma from birth survivor and THIS is the way I was made!

Don’t like it?  Don’t like me?  Discriminate?

What do YOU know about trauma?

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