Dissociation: The Protector Series

My inner conversation while sitting on a balcony in Maui over-looking the ocean on my honeymoon...

Me: I'm so bummed that my brother-in-law chose not to say congrats on our wedding day. Flowers are pretty. I wonder what those ones are called? A Monarch butterfly! I wonder what it's doing way up here. 

Dissociation is a powerful Protector. 

It can show up at a very young age when the feelings are just too big to process. It has our back - it wants us to 'be ok' and keep moving forward. 

With the situation above, I noticed the dissociation pretty quickly and thanked it for trying to protect me from feeling painful feelings on my honeymoon. I then let it know that I'm capable of feeling the feelings and that I have a lot of skills and tools that I didn't have when I was younger.

I told my husband I had some emotional processing to do in order to fully enjoy my honeymoon, and then grabbed a pillow and beat the crap out of the bed while yelling,

'I'm so mad he didn't text us. I'm so mad that he doesn't care. I'm so mad that he didn't show up for us in the way we asked when we showed up for his 4 day wedding in the ways he asked. I'm so mad he hurt my husband when he's been trying to rebuild their relationship. I'm so sad that I saw the truth of who he really is and that he may never support us.'

And then stepped away and filled myself back up, 'I'm ok, even if he didn't text. I'm ok, even if he does't support us. I'm ok, even if he doesn't like me. I'm ok, even if he never supports us or our relationship.' 

(3 rounds of that process, just like a workout set)

I was able to connect with the sadness under the anger and then connect back to the fact that I'm ok even if it didn't go the way I wanted it to, which brought me back to the present moment and allowed me to feel whole and loved and safe within myself and have an incredible honeymoon.

Inner freedom doesn't come for free. It required the work of grabbing the pillow and verbalizing and sharing the big feelings to come back to myself - empty out the inner crap to fill up with my pure essence and self-love.

This has played out in bigger ways when I was younger - over a period of years.

When I was 12, my mom got bacterial pneumonia and was put in the ICU for 3 weeks in an induced coma and then took 6 months to recover. During that period of time, I got straight As, got onto the advanced dance team, got onto the gymnastics team (I didn't do gymnastics) and the softball team (I had never played softball before), took art classes, took dance classes, made new friends. I was BUSY.

It took 2 years for me to finally start feeling the feelings of my mom's sudden illness. 

To this day, I thank my Dissociation Protector for helping me survive and thrive during an incredibly challenging time. 

I was able to feel the feelings in bite-sized pieces instead of all at once. 

It probably took me 15 years to really move through all of those feelings, because as I created more safety within, I was able to go deeper and heal at a deeper level. And even now, I may have a feeling pop up that's influenced by what happened so many years ago, and I can process it in real-time with my skills and tools. 

The tricky part about dissociation is that the feelings don't just 'go away' because I'm not feeling them.

They store up in the limbic brain, like watching a single snowflake become a snowball, which then becomes a snow-boulder. 

And that boulder of snow is just chillin' until something triggers it, which then causes an avalanche of big feelings that catch everyone off-guard and don't match the current situation (see below). 

Example: Years later, my dad turned on an Ocean Pure Moods CD (yeah, remember those?) at dinner and I just started SOBBING. Like, couldn't stop. Through the tears, I asked, 'Why am I crying??' It turns out that it was the same CD that was played in the hospital for my mom while she was in a coma. 

Oh, hey there, avalanche! 

My goal is to feel the big feelings in a thoughtful, safe environment while being supported so they don't show up during a dinner party, or at work, or at a birthday, or during an important conversation. 

Shoveling one scoop of snow at a time, thoughtfully working through the feelings.  

The best part, is that once the avalanche is cleared, my feelings are back real-time and not influenced by the pain of the past. The trigger doesn't have to be all-encompassing anymore.

And not every feeling has to become an iceberg - it can just be a snowflake that provides the message and then melts in 15 seconds.

My Step-by-Step Process for Working with Dissociation:

Step 1: Becoming aware of the dissociation when it comes up (this takes practice, because it's a very effective, well-practiced and sneaky Protector).

Step 2: Thanking the Dissociation for trying to protect me from feeling big feelings.

Step 3: Letting the Dissociation know that I'm an adult now, and I have a lot more skills and tools and am capable of feeling big feelings.

Step 4: Asking the Dissociation what feelings it's trying to protect me from feeling.

Step 5: Going into action to process the feelings. Finding a safe way to move through anger (hitting a pillow on the bed, ripping up rags, rage writing, hitting my punching bag). Or giving sadness tons of space and nurturing and patience. Or giving fear reassurance, 'of course we're scared, the brain doesn't like the unknown. We're in it together, side-by-side.'

(I repeat the process, as needed.)

There is no comparison to the moment I realized that my feelings were becoming 'real-time' and not influenced by icebergs of my past. Just a snow ball or snowflake, letting me know how to better take care of myself in the moment. 

Inner freedom isn't free, but to me, it's worth the effort. 

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions at kristin@kristinwald.com.

- Kristin

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