DISSOCIATION
May 16, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“Because we shut out our parents when we were children, we tend to shut out people as adults.” BRB p. 187
Surviving childhood in a dysfunctional household required many of us to use a number of coping mechanisms to maintain any semblance of sanity. One was our ability to dissociate (separate mentally or emotionally) from what was happening around us or to us. Although dissociation helped us survive then, as adults it closes us off from the possibility of having healthy relationships.
Sometimes fear of rejection motivates us to dissociate, so we distract ourselves because if we don’t feel, then we hope we won’t experience any pain. But dissociation also deprives us of healthy joy.
Sometimes our hypervigilance causes us to constantly monitor our surroundings for signs of trickery or slights. But it can also deprive us of the opportunity to make good friends.
With these dysfunctional filters, we can misread the words or actions of others as an assault, causing us to become defensive, go on the offensive and shut down completely.
In ACA, as we peel back the layers of our childhood survival traits, we learn to sort out what no longer works in our adult lives. We leave behind traits that no longer serve us. We gratefully see how this program gives us the strength to change and the courage to be open to others. We no longer wish to be alone.
On this day I will be kind to myself if l find myself dissociating. I will be open to people and new experiences.
My Experience:
I got very good at disassociating. I was numb to the world and developed traits such as intolerance, impatience, vengeance, mistrust, score keeping, suppression of emotions and unforgiveness. These traits helped me survive my childhood. What I didn’t know is that as I grew older, I no longer needed to survive and thus did not need the survival traits. However, they were so ingrained in me, they were just who I was. I could not separate me from them. What I did not know until I walked into the rooms of recovery is that these traits, while helpful as a child, were hurtful as an adult as they closed me off from the possibility of having healthy relationships. Fear in and of itself drove these traits, and I am now tackling fear. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, etc. When I feel fear now, I accept that I am fearful and try to understand why. I know that I can process the fear and decide what to do about this fear instead of letting it overwhelm me and turn to the traits that I developed over a lifetime. It is not easy, but it is worth it.
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