Where's My Body, And What Am I Doing To It?

 Whenever I tell someone that I suffer from dissociation due to my childhood trauma, they usually ask me if it really is some kind of an out-of-body experience, like you're looking at yourself from the outside. And usually, I tend to reply to this question with 'no'. 

The way people typically conceptualize out-of-body experiences are nothing like what dissociation feels like. I would even go as far as to claim that the way an average person understands the idea of "seeing yourself from the outside" is not all that close to any out-of-body experience. Near-death experiences on the hospital bed might be something akin to that, but dissociation, at the very least, is a whole 'nother story.

I don't have a driver's license. I'm an adult, but I still haven't got my license, partly because living in Finland, I don't really need it and partly because it is so stupidly expensive. So I don't know what it's like to drive a car from personal experience, but a lot of people have said that when they're driving and the road they're on is very familiar to them, they don't really notice themself turning the wheel, switching the blinkers and hitting the brakes. And then, at some point, they become aware of their surroundings again, and they see that they're back home. 

"How did I get here? I didn't even notice."

That is what we call healthy dissociation. Your brain sort of switches off when you're doing something you're really familiar with and don't have to be aware of doing, to save energy. You're doing things without being conscious of doing them; that is your brain dissociating from your surroundings, kind of detaching itself from reality for a minute. It happens to all of us in various situations, and it is completely normal and healthy.

Dissociation itself isn't the problem. There is a very good reason for your brain to do it, so the mechanism in which dissociation happens is not to blame here. What makes dissociation problematic for trauma survivors, for example, is that it is constant, uncontrollable, and it happens when you shouldn't be dissociating. 

Another reason for your brain to dissociate along with familiarity is immense amount of stress. When you're faced with massive stress and pressure and various kinds of threats, your brain shuts itself off to protect itself. It is a defense mechanism the brain uses when situations get too stressful to handle, too threatening for the mind to process. When you are continuously abused over the time span of several years, your brain learns that by dissociating and shutting off it can protect you from any further damage. 

In principal, this is a very good strategy. But usually, it ends up turning against itself – if not right at the moment the abuse happens, then later down the line in years to come. Living in constant state of dissociation leads to amnesia, which is why trauma survivors don't remember everything about their trauma afterward. It also teaches your brain that dissociation is the new norm, a state of mind so common that it almost becomes the default setting. And because of this, your brain continues to dissociate even when the traumatic events are over and you're free of the dangerous environment. "Just in case something happens again", your brain thinks and shuts itself off even when you're completely safe.

disconnect.

I dissociate a lot. That tells me that I used to do that a lot as a kid too, which makes sense because it is just now that I am finally remembering the very early stages of my trauma. Those memories had been blocked by my brain in an attempt to protect me from the harm the events had caused me. Now, I am dissociating almost every single day, and it is by far one of the most terrifying feelings I have ever experienced. 

I find it strange just how rarely dissociation is talked about in the context of borderline personality disorder. A disorder so heavily connected to childhood trauma, which is known to be one of the main causes of dissociative disorders. And even if it is talked about, I think it never gets the attention it truly deserves. But maybe that is because only those of us who know what it is like first-hand can really tell how bad it actually feels and how badly you want someone to help you with it. 

A lot of the times, dissociation gets so unbearable for me that I need to ground myself somehow. I've tried every grounding method under the sun, read every pamphlet doctors have given me, and none of them has helped me get out of that terrifying feeling of disconnect from myself and the rest of the world. There is only one thing that has ever helped me out of that haze.

Self-harming causes a lot of physical pain; pain that the brain cannot ignore, pain that it has to react to, to acknowledge. That is why cutting is something I do very often in the state of dissociation. That moment is very interesting, because I can see myself doing something to my arm, but I am not the one moving my hand and applying pressure onto the blade. My arms are not mine, my pain is not mine, but I am hurting myself and I can see it. 

I like to think of it as dissociation being the one who's moving my hand instead. It is this impulsive compulsion, and act I cannot stop or interfere with, even though I am the one responsible for it. And because I am so detached from myself and the situation as a whole, sometimes accidents happen and I cut too deep. At least that is when I am forced to be grounded so that I can help myself from bleeding to death through a wound I did to myself because I wasn't really there to tell myself otherwise.

It gets the job done though, so who gives a fuck.

Happy birthday to me,

ichigonya