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Never do I consider dissociation to be either a primitive ‘defense’ or a passive coping ‘mechanism’. I consider dissociation to be a pattern of interaction between brain regions in concert with the nervous system-stress response system that is very simply ONE THING — its own pattern of processing information.
In light of the mention I made in my previous post concerning the difference between calmness and numbness I want to clarify my thoughts by adding that I can consistently count on one of two inner states within myself that, when I can notice them, alert me to the active operation of dissociation in my information processing and response patterns.
I believe these two inner states are actually one and the same. I notice them as being different only as I experience one AS IT IS HAPPENING and the second IN RETROSPECT after it has happened. It is, therefore, only how I notice dissociation IN REAL TIME that I am describing when I name these two separately.
Neither of these two states feels comfortable to me. Neither of these two states would be ones I would choose to experience — if I had ever been given a choice when dissociation was built into my body by severe infant-child abuse in the first place. Both of these states are equally real.
Because both of these states mean the same thing to me — dissociation is happening/has happened, I will simply pick one by the tail and describe it first. I will start with “dissociation is happening.”
When I experience dissociation as it is happening — and I mean at the millisecond it occurs — there is ALWAYS a ‘shift in the world’.
I experience this shift as a ‘split’, meaning that what was the millisecond earlier an ongoing, coherent, reasonable pattern of interaction suddenly, and I mean SUDDENLY simply ceases to exist. What was — comes to a stop, ceases to exist, breaks, shatters, falls apart — and changes into something else.
I NEVER anticipate such a break in my continuity of interaction with or understanding of my experience in the world. I never did beginning in infancy when these breaks were forced upon me due to my mother’s insanely abusive disruptions of my ongoing experience.
The single word I would use to describe this state of awareness of dissociation as it is happening is this one — BLANK. Yet as I write the word I also understand that it is not enough to document what I want to say. Blank implies that ‘there is nothing there’. In real time, in real life the experience is exactly the opposite. EVERYTHING IS THERE AT THE SAME TIME.
Some describe chaos as being a state where all things are possible. Everything is there at the same time.
I believe that survivors of severe early caregiver terror, trauma, maltreatment and abuse have had the awareness of the state of absolute chaos built into their entire body on all of its levels. Very few such survivors (I would say NONE) made it through their earliest developmental stages of brain-nervous system development without dissociation being built right into the circuitry of their body as a result of their experiences.
When dissociation happens, when the break in the continuity of millisecond-past experience STOPS and the state of BLANK appears, what we actually have happening is the experience of TOO MUCH INFORMATION. In other words, we are experiencing the state of being overwhelmed. That state is a familiar one to us on every level of our being — and it is the same experience as being in chaos.
I INTUITIVELY KNOW THIS IS NOT IN AND OF ITSELF A BAD HAPPENING! It absolutely is NOT a ‘bad thing’. It is not ‘sick’ or ‘wrong’. It is supremely (and I do not use that word lightly) creative. It is a miracle of life, has a purpose, and can come to good end.
So, what is the problem with dissociation? Well, for one thing, it can be dangerous. At the instant that dissociation is happening I am not ACTUALLY in full awareness of any world at all other than the full perception of all that is possible within my mind and being. That awareness does NOT keep me safe in my body in real time in a physical world — and hence, I believe, this instant of dissociation is an ACTIVE coping state and not a passive one.
What I know about this statement is that the exact instant of dissociation happens SO FAST it cannot be measured in any normal way. It happens this fast because the body knows whatever state is being left and whatever state is being created to move into happen in the physical world where body-awareness (certainly not required to be conscious) has to be connected as fast as possible to accomplish ongoing life should a physical danger appear during this time (which an abuse survivor is especially geared to anticipate).
Say you had a working lamp turned on and two extension cords. The lamp is plugged into one cord which is receiving current from being plugged into a wall socket. How fast could you disconnect the lamp from one extension cord, plug it into the other one, and switch the cords plugged into the socket? Could you do this fast enough that the lamp would not visibly flicker?
Believe me, that would not be a passive action. It would be a very very active one just as I believe dissociation is. While no human can physically manipulate cords and plugs at or near the speed of light, I (as a lay person) have the image that these interactions, transactions, manipulations and actions as they happen on the level of electrical pulses and impulses within the brain DO happen that fast.
Pretty sophisticated if you ask me, no ‘primitive defense mechanism’ here, even though this ability has been built into the human brain since we began to advance the development of our brain untold centuries ago. There is nothing shabby or accidental about dissociation. It has a purpose and a natural intention — to allow us to survive under conditions that are ORDINARILY un-survive-able.
Trauma is, by definition, an experience that is outside the range of ordinary experience. Trauma is extraordinary, beyond the ordinary, and so are the people who survive it.
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I am going to carry my lit lamp and cord switching image on with me into my description of what I call the second state of dissociation. If I imagine that the information that has been transpiring just prior to a dissociation being triggered as the body-knows overload has been approached, I imagine that the first cord this lamp has been plugged into has instantaneously become one that is too wimpy, too light to carry the load. A much heavier duty cord is required — and the body-nervous system-brain of trauma survivors just happens to have one handy.
If the heavier cord is suddenly required, and the survivor just happens to have one at hand — why not use it? Believe me, we do.
What’s the problem? The switch to the heavier cord designed to carry the full current of what is happening in the real time present moment — AND the load of past traumatic awareness associated with it that lie outside the range of consciousness — does not happen through conscious free choice.
This results in what I call the second state of dissociation — THE DETOUR.
Experience of the first state, the switch that leads THROUGH the experience of blankness is very seldom consciously identified. Time moves on so fast we cannot actually measure it, and as it does so we are now following a detour. We are NOT on the same path in the same world in the same way that we were before the millisecond split of dissociation occurred.
Being able to recognize that we are on THE DETOUR path varies by individual and by each dissociated experience we have. I believe we can live not only seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months IN THE DETOUR, we can live large portions of our life on these altered pathways. This is a huge topic, and certainly too vast for this post.
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Someone on the outside watching dissociation occur can very possibly SEE the blankness when it happens. Very few people are knowledgeable enough to actually recognize what they are watching, but this does not mean they don’t see it. My hope is that bringing discussions about dissociational experience out into the open will help all of us understand both our own self and also other people better as we all learn more about what dissociation is, what it feels like, why it is possible, how it happens, what creates the ability within humans, how it is helpful and how it is disturbing.
As I work to become increasingly aware of dissociation when I experience it, I find words that help me connect to my self in both my past and in my present. This leaves the playing field of the future wide open. I have two complications currently in two of my main attachment relationships that both involved dissociation when the ‘rupture without repair’ (so far) happened. I am not free to really talk to either of these two people about my experience.
People who are not severe abuse and trauma survivors seem to want to rush right on past any dissociation-related conversation — because the experience of serious dissociation is NOT a part of their reality and is therefore NOT truly important to them. They do not want to truly listen to us — and they don’t. This is NOT OK TO ME.
Yet at the same time when others react this way, and cannot be honest with themselves about the basis of their reactions to a ‘dissociator’ they are in relationship with, they are discounting not only our experience, but OUR SELF at the same time. Dissociation has been built into us. It is a part of our body. It is a part of our patterns of operation and of being alive in the world. Dissociation is a part of US!
And as a consequence dissociation is BOUND to appear in our interactions with others — both those who mean a lot to us as well as with those who are passing folks in our life. There will come a time when the dissociations cannot be ignored. They have to be talked about like any other fact of life. If these open, honest, compassionate, exploratory, learning conversations do NOT take place, there will be ruptures in our lives that cannot possibly be repaired.
Dissociation is something we are supposed to be curious about. Dissociation is ALWAYS connected to something extremely important — something that has to do with life and death, with threat of death, with trauma. As we continue to treat dissociation as something flawed, pathological, wrong, inconvenient, mysterious, troubling, or inconsequential, we are missing out on some of the most important lessons that life has to teach us all: How do you survive the un-survive-able? What gifts and abilities enable that to happen? What are we supposed to learn from trauma?
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Stop the Storm 
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