THE BEGINNING
We arrive in this life ‘without a roof over our heads, without anything in our pockets or in our hands’.
We do not yet have immune defences for our bodies or emotional defences for our developing ‘ego/self’.
We are very fragile!
We need a lot of protection (vaccines, warm clothes, breast milk) and we need love, affection, care and attention.
Above all, we need someone to ‘dream’ with us.
If we are not dreamed of, expected, desired, we can become ‘psychotic’ or even die of starvation!
And the person who gave us our name could be the person who ‘dreamed’ with us!
So, knowing who chose our name can be a clue to understanding what kind of ‘expectation’ or ‘gestational project’ we carry with us.
BELIEFS, SKEPTICISM AND VALUES
And so, as children, we do not yet have our own values. Initially, we organise ourselves through the values of our families.
We are ‘copiers and believers’, because at the beginning of life we do not have the ability to express a ‘value judgement’.
Therefore, children are believers and adolescents are generally non-believers.
And one of the beliefs that human beings can ‘carry’ with them throughout their lives is the belief in belonging and recognition.
We have a great need to belong (to a family, a group, an association, a team…) and we need to be recognised: it is our primary narcissism.
THE PSYCHE
The human psyche – the soul – can be didactically ‘divided’ into the conscious and the unconscious.
The conscious mind corresponds to 5% of our psyche – it is ‘what I know I know’.
The unconscious mind corresponds to 95% of our psyche – it is ‘what I don’t know I know’.
"O que um dia eu vou saber, não sabendo eu já sabia." Milton Erickson
THE IMAGINARY
In this psychological ‘journey’ of the human being, it is also important to emphasise that when a child comes into the world, it is already born imagining!
Various psychological theories claim that a developing foetus already possesses an imagination, which is connected to the imagination of the mother and her family.
Carl Gustav Jung, as early as the 19th century, defined this imagination as the ‘collective unconscious’.
IMAGINATION, ILLUSION AND DREAMS
We are born imagining and we never stop imagining, not even for a minute of the day!
And when we sleep, our “imaginary production” manifests itself in the form of incredible dreams or nightmares (but also sleepwalking, delusions, hallucinations, fantasies, imaginings, etc.).
Everyone dreams, every night! In black and white or in colour!
In dreams, we experience a kind of ‘healthy dissociation’.
Let me explain this idea better: when we are awake (waking state), we think and act in a way that is appropriate to society. But when we sleep, we feel and act differently, more in tune with our inner world, our soul!
That is, when our person sleeps, our soul wakes up and springs into action!
Dreams are the manifestation of our soul!
In this state of consciousness, we experience, say and feel things that, when we wake up, make us say that we have had very strange or crazy dreams!
“SYMBOLS”
A characteristic of dreams (but also of delusions and hallucinations) is that they are difficult to translate.
The translation of dreams is very difficult because our “psyche” does not speak Portuguese, Italian or English.
The language it speaks is “symbolese”!
In our dreams, everything is “narrated” in the form of images and symbols, used to represent our feelings, our desires, our pains and our traumas, which for various reasons have remained “silent”.
Through dreams, our soul finally expresses itself: it speaks, cries, screams, argues, attacks, flees, fights, conquers, dies, kills, rejoices…
Therefore, a highly experienced professional is needed to help the dreamer translate the latent content of their “soul”.
The same applies to those who have deluded themselves or ‘produced’ psychological and/or physical symptoms as expressions of their pain, conflicts, traumas…
Todo sintoma é um mal menor. Mal maior é uma outra coisa...
PERSON AND CHARACTER
And then, when we wake up, we put on our character/mask again and go out into the outside world, to work, to our social life, etc.
And our ‘persona’ (inner world or soul) remains ‘hidden’, protected from the social world.
However, many times, our soul can remain abandoned and forgotten in our unconscious basement for a long time!
We can become too involved in work, in the struggle for survival, in the pursuit of our ambitions, in the search for social recognition, in the creation of our myths of heroes or bandits, sacred or profane, forgetting who we are, our soul and what we came to do in this life.
And when night comes again, we sleep and our ‘soul’ awakens, appearing like a ghost to tell us what is happening in our intimate life, with our feelings, our sorrows, our desires…
Our soul knows everything about us! For it, past, present and future are one and the same!
DISASSOCIATION
Therefore, human beings live their daily lives in this continuous dissociation!
This dissociation can be very appropriate in many moments, as a form of protection of our intimacy.
Between the external world and the internal world, dissociation or appropriate dissimulation will create possibilities for the person or mask to represent themselves in society, which is the world of ‘importance’.
At other times, it will open up space and time for intimate life, like a regenerating pause, thus allowing the soul to manifest itself.
One clue that we are disconnecting too much from our soul is when we are ‘discouraged’ – soulless.
The problem is that we are more dissociated than we can imagine…
EMOTIONAL DISASSOCIATION AND TRAUMA
Emotional dissociation, as a disorder, is an acute pathological state of imbalance, in which certain thoughts, emotions, sensations and/or memories are hidden because they are too traumatic and shocking for our psyche to integrate.
Affective dissociation can manifest itself immediately after a traumatic situation or even many years later.
It can appear as a small ‘jam’ in our personality (neurosis), or a crack (borderline), up to a major split (psychosis).
In psychosis, the individual dissociates from reality.
Every mad person has great pain – the mad person is very ‘painful’.
The psychotic, for example, when they have a breakdown (dissociation), is denouncing everything that has already happened to them or their family system.
It may be something they have experienced or witnessed, or something that has been passed down through generations and is not ‘integrated’ into their inner world.
‘Borderline’ individuals, on the other hand, remain firmly between separation and non-separation, but live ‘on a knife edge’ between madness and sanity.
TRAUMA, PAIN AND SUFFERING
We know that human beings possess a cognitive ability that differentiates them from animals.
Thus, when they suffer trauma, unlike animals, human beings often do not attack or flee, but choose to remain motionless, silent, ashamed, while their soul screams in pain.
When they suffer severe trauma, in order to endure the pain, human beings will initially use the defence mechanism of emotional dissociation.
By dissociating the emotion from the event that occurred, they ‘preserve’ that experience in their emotional ‘freezer’ for days, months, years or even a lifetime.
The trauma may have been abuse, aggression, humiliation, lack of consideration, betrayal, anything that was experienced as violent, disrespectful and without the possibility of processing, understanding or compensation.
THE CRY OF THE SILENT
Thus, the path of this trauma can be emotional dissociation: the person disconnects the emotion from the event, does not speak, does not cry, does not argue, and may even deny or forget what happened.
A person who has experienced trauma, being dissociated, can recount the event without any emotion. In general, the emotion being disguised is the anger felt at that moment of humiliation.
A person can spend a lifetime denying a story, an event, an abuse, an anger!
They may also resort to many defence mechanisms to achieve this: working hard, drinking heavily, using drugs, praying a lot, cleaning a lot, hoarding things.
Compulsions, in general, are symptoms of affective dissociation.
‘DISOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER’
Dissociative identity disorder is a mental disorder in which the person suffers from a psychological imbalance, with alterations in consciousness, memory, identity, emotions, perception of the environment and control of behaviour.
In most cases, dissociative amnesia occurs: an inability to remember everyday events, important personal information, or traumatic events in a way that cannot be explained by normal forgetfulness.
The different personality states manifest themselves alternately in the person’s behaviour, although their presentation may vary.
In many cases, the condition is associated with other disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse disorder, self-harm or anxiety.
Some of the symptoms:
difficulty recognising what one is feeling, for example, in a situation of sadness, manifested by disconnected laughter.
living as a very powerful ‘myth’ (at work, in the family, in religion, in politics, etc.), not allowing one’s ‘person’ to present itself for what it is. For example, very funny people who mask their sadness; very strong people who mask their fragility; courageous people who hide their fears; people who appear very kind or charitable, but when they are alone they hurt others; etc.
nightmares, sleepwalking, night terrors – talking, swearing, screaming, hitting, crying.
Feeling that there are two or more people inside oneself who want to express themselves.
Experiencing emotional situations in a cold manner, dissociated from the event.
Depersonalisation – referring to feeling unreal, detached from oneself and disconnected from the physical and mental processes of the self; the individual may feel like a spectator or observer of their own life and may see themselves as if watching a film. Derealisation – referring to the perception of familiar people as if they were strangers or even unreal.
DIAGNOSIS OF ‘DISASSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER’
The diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder can take time.
It is estimated that people with dissociative disorders spend years in therapy or in the mental health system before obtaining an accurate diagnosis.
This is common because the list of symptoms for a dissociative disorder is very similar to that of many other psychiatric diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dysthymia, borderline personality disorder, Alzheimer’s, among others.
In fact, many people who suffer from dissociative disorders also have coexisting diagnoses of borderline personality disorder or other personality disorders, depression, and anxiety.
TREATMENTS
There is currently no specific treatment for dissociative identity disorder.
However, we know that the most effective treatment includes psychotherapy and other therapies such as Bach flower remedies, herbal medicine, microphysiotherapy, art therapy and many others.
There are no specific psychotropic drugs for the treatment of dissociative identity disorder. However, the treatment of concomitant illnesses, such as depression or substance addiction, is essential for overall improvement.
Since the symptoms of dissociative disorders often occur alongside other disorders, such as anxiety and depression, medication to treat concomitant problems, if present, is sometimes used in addition to psychotherapy.
“THINGS CHANGE IN THE SLOW PASSAGE OF TIME.”
This quote from Guimarães Rosa reminds us that life is short.
And that childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age are interconnected stages of life.
Therefore, many of the dementias that appear in old age are the result of dissociations that have occurred throughout a person’s life.
They are the ghosts of a lifetime telling the elderly person: “I’m here! I’m here!” Please listen to me, include me!
THEY ARE SILENT SCREAMERS!
Starting at age 40, either a person encounters their soul, or they become depressed, fall into depression, become ill, or begin to ‘decline’.
According to the vision of Psychogenealogy, if a person leaves this life in a fragmented way, that is, without making the necessary emotional inclusions, they will leave the next generation with the task of integrating that dissociation or exclusion.
In Psychogenealogy, this phenomenon is called Crypts and Ghosts.
Therefore, we should devote more time to talking to our elders as a way to help them integrate their stories.
Above all, we must devote time to therapy, as well as sharing our emotional lives with those who are dear and close to us.
Finally, we must seek out what is valuable, balancing what is excessive and what is lacking in our lives.
Have a good life, everyone!
Sugestões: Leitura do livro ou assistir ao filme de Deepak Chopra - "O efeito sombra". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfbxbihSsQ Mais informações técnicas sobre o tema, clique no link: https://amenteemaravilhosa.com.br/dissociacao-fenomeno-mente/
Psicóloga - CRP 04/7521 Psicoterapeuta Familiar Sistêmica (Brasil) Psicogenealogista (Itália)