…her mother
jabbed her with a lead pencil. Her therapist asks ‘How did you feel about
that?’ Truddi answers ‘Nothing. I felt nothing.’ Phillips writes “’Distanced.
Removed.’ All victims, to one degree or another, distanced themselves from
their feelings. (When Rabbit Howls see BOOKS, ARTICLES)
DISSOCIATION IS …
-
pushing some parts of what we are experiencing out of our conscious
awareness; and
- intense focus on something else.
DISSOCIATION AND MULTIPLE PERSONALITY
If we are experiencing
some kind of trauma we will most likely dissociate some parts, or maybe all, of
the experience. This is what happens to people with physical injuries when they
go into shock. Sometimes people don’t really feel a lot of pain because they
are dissociating the physical sensation. If we are repeatedly traumatized we
will most likely keep dissociating. Our dissociation may become more and more
severe. If we are young enough and able to (not everyone can become multiple)
we dissociate until we begin to create other identities to handle the trauma.
THE CONTINUUM OF DISSOCIATION
Dissociation
actually occurs along a spectrum of intensity.
All of us
dissociate mildly on a day-to-day basis. Remember my example of being
completely absorbed in a book so that we are not paying attention to other
things going on around us.
The continuum of dissociation has points all along the way, from very mild to extreme forms.
Mild is what
we all experience.
- derealization
where things feel dream-like and unreal; and
- depersonalization
where we feel detached from ourselves.
Multiple personality is much
further along the spectrum.
Even there is
not the end but something called Polyfragmented Multiple Personality Disorder
is further on. This is when a person creates a great number of personalities,
usually more than 100, and has a very complex way of structuring the whole
system of alters
