THE BEGINNING
We arrived in this life “without a threshing floor or on the brink, with nothing in our pockets or hands”.
We still have no immune defense for our body and no emotional defense for our “ego/self” in formation.
We are very fragile!
We need a lot of protection (vaccines, clothes, breast milk) and we need love, affection, care, attention.
And above all, we need someone to “dream” about us.
If we are not dreamed, expected, desired, we can “psychotize” or even die of starvation!
And whoever nominated us could be that person who “dreamed” of us!
Therefore, knowing who chose our name can be a clue to know what kind of “expectations” or “gestational project” we have.
BELIEFS, DISBELIEFS AND VALUES
And then, as children, we still don't have our own values. We organized ourselves initially, through the values of our families.
We are “copies and believers”, since, at the beginning of life, we do not have the ability to make a “value judgment”.
Therefore, children are believers and teenagers in general are non-believers.
And one of the beliefs that human beings can “carry” throughout their lives is the belief in belonging and recognition.
We really need to belong (to a family, group, association, team…) and we need to be recognized – our primary narcissism.
THE PSYCHE
The human psyche – the anima or soul – can be didactically “divided” into conscious and unconscious.
The conscious corresponds to 5% of our psyche – it is “that which I know that I know.”
The unconscious corresponds to 95% of our psyche – it is “that which I do not know that I know.”
"What one day I will know, not knowing I already knew." Milton Erickson
THE IMAGINARY
In this psychological “trajectory” of the human being, it is also important to emphasize that, when the baby arrives in the world, he is already born imagining!
Several psychological theories claim that a developing fetus already has an imaginary, which connects to the imaginary of its mother and family.
Carl Gustav Jung, still in the 19th century, named this imaginary as the “collective unconscious”.
IMAGINARY, ILLUSION AND DREAMS
We were born imagining and we don't stop imagining even a minute of the day!
And when we sleep, this “imaginary production” of ours manifests itself in the incredible form of dreams or nightmares (also in sleepwalking, delusions, hallucinations, fantasies, imaginations, etc.).
Everyone dreams, every night! In black and white or in color!
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 socially appropriate manner. But when we sleep, we feel and act differently, more suited to our inner world, to our soul!!
That is, when our persona sleeps, our spirit (soul) wakes up and takes action!
The dream is the manifestation of our spirit!
In this state of consciousness, we experience, speak and feel things that, when we wake up, we say that we had very strange or crazy dreams!
THE 'SYMBOLISH'
A characteristic of dreams (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 she 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, remained “mute”.
Through dreams, our soul finally expresses itself – it speaks, cries, screams, fights, attacks, flees, fights, conquers, dies, kills, rejoices…
Therefore, a very experienced professional is needed to help the dreamer translate the latent content of his “soul”.
The same goes for those who are delirious or who “produce” psychological and/or physical symptoms, such as expressions of their pain, their conflicts, their traumas…
Every symptom is a lesser evil. Greater evil is something else...
PERSON AND CHARACTER
And then, when we wake up, we put our character/mask back on and go out into the outside world, work, social life, etc.
And our “person” (internal world or soul) is “guarded”, protected from the social world.
However, for many times, our soul can be abandoned and forgotten in our unconscious basements for a long time!
We can get too involved with work, with the struggle for survival, behind 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 the what we came to do in this life.
And when the night comes again, we sleep and our “soul” wakes up, appearing like a ghost to tell us about what is happening in our intimate life, with our feelings, our annoyances, our desires…
Our soul knows everything about us! For her, past, present and future are one time!
DISSOCIATION
Therefore, the human being lives his day-to-day in this continuous dissociation!
This dissociation, in many moments, can be very adequate, as a way to protect our intimacy.
Between the external world and the internal world, adequate dissociation or dissimulation will create possibilities for the persona or mask to represent in the social, which is the world of “importances”.
And at another moment, it will open space and time for intimate life, as a restorative pause, allowing the soul to manifest itself.
A clue that we disconnect too much from our soul is when we are ′′ discouraged ′′ - without cheer.
The problem is that we are more dissociated than we can imagine...
AFFECTIVE DISSOCIATION AND TRAUMA
Affective dissociation, as a disorder, is an acute pathological state of decompensation, in which certain thoughts, emotions, sensations and/or memories are hidden, as they are too traumatic and shocking for our psyche to be able to integrate.
Affective dissociation can manifest immediately after a traumatic situation or even many years later.
It can appear as a small “latch” in our personality (neurosis), or a crack (bordeline) leading to a major split (psychosis).
In psychosis, the individual is dissociated from reality.
Every madman has a great deal of pain – a madman is very “crazy”.
The psychotic, for example, when he freaks out (dissociates), is denouncing everything that has already happened, to him or to his family system.
It could be something that he experienced or watched, or something that was transmitted from generation to generation and that is not “integrated” into his internal world.
“Borderline” individuals, on the other hand, stand firm between splitting and not splitting – but they live on the “edge of the edge” between madness and sanity.
TRAUMA, PAIN AND SUFFERING
We know that humans have a cognitive capacity, which differentiates them from animals.
Thus, when experiencing trauma, many times, unlike animals, human beings do not attack or flee, choosing to remain quiet, mute, ashamed, while their soul is screaming in pain.
When experiencing a major trauma, to endure the pain, human beings will initially use the defense mechanism of affective dissociation.
Disassociating the emotion from the fact, he “keeps” that experience in his emotional “freezer”, for days, months, years or a lifetime.
The trauma may have been abuse, aggression, humiliation, disregard, betrayal, anything that has been experienced as violent, disrespectful and with no possibility of elaboration, understanding or compensation.
THE SCREAM OF THE MUTE
Thus, the path of this trauma may be affective dissociation – the person disconnects the emotion from the fact, does not speak, does not cry, does not fight, and may even deny or forget what happened.
A person who has experienced a trauma, being dissociated, can narrate what happened without any emotion. In general, the camouflaged emotion is the anger he felt at that moment of humiliation.
A person can spend a lifetime denying a story, a fact, an abuse, an anger!
You can also use many defense mechanisms to achieve this – working a lot, drinking a lot, using drugs, praying a lot, cleaning a lot, gathering things.
Compulsions, in general, are symptoms of affective dissociation.
“DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER”
Dissociative Identity Disorder is a mental disorder in which the person suffers from a psychological imbalance, with changes in consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception of the environment, control of behavior.
Dissociative amnesia is found in most cases: the inability to recall everyday events, important personal information, or traumatic events in a way that cannot be explained by normal forgetfulness.
The different personality states alternately reveal themselves in the person's behavior, although their presentation may vary.
In many cases, the condition is associated with other disorders such as borderline personality disorder (borderline), post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance abuse disorder, self-injury or anxiety.
Some of the symptoms:
difficulty recognizing what he is feeling, for example, in a situation of sadness, he has disconnected laughs.
live as a very powerful “myth” (at work, in the family, in religion, in politics, etc.), not allowing your “person” to present itself as it is. For example, very funny people who mask their sadness; very strong people who mask their fragility; bullies who hide their fears; people who show themselves to be very kind or charitable, but when they are alone, they do bad things; etc.
nightmares, sleepwalking, nocturnal delusions – talking, cursing, screaming, hitting, crying.
feeling like you have two or more people inside you, wanting to express themselves.
experience emotional situations in a cold way, dissociated from the fact.
depersonalization - which refers to feeling unreal, removed from oneself and disconnected from the physical and mental process of the self; the individual may feel like a spectator or observer of his life and may see himself as if he were watching a movie; derealization—which refers to perceiving familiar people as if they were alien or even unreal.
DIAGNOSIS OF “DISSSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER”
Making the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder can take time.
It is estimated that individuals with dissociative disorders spend years in therapy or in the mental health system before an accurate diagnosis is made.
This is common, because the list of symptoms of a dissociative disorder is very similar to that of many other psychiatric diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, bipolarity, dysthymia, borderline disorder, Alzheimer's, among others.
In fact, many people who have dissociative disorders also have coexisting diagnoses of borderline or other personality disorders, depression, anxiety
TREATMENTS
There is currently no specific treatment for dissociative identity disorder.
But we know that a more effective treatment includes psychotherapy and other therapies such as Bach Flower Remedies, Phytotherapy, Microphysiotherapy, Art Therapy and as many others as possible.
There are no established psychopharmaceuticals for treatments of dissociative identity disorder. But treating co-occurring illnesses, such as depression or substance addiction, is critical to overall improvement.
Since symptoms of dissociative disorders often occur with other disorders, such as anxiety and depression, medications to treat concomitant problems, if present, are sometimes used in addition to psychotherapy.
“THINGS CHANGE QUICKLY SLOWLY.”
This phrase by Guimarães Rosa reminds us that life is short.
And that childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age are interconnected phases of life.
So, many of the dementias that appear in old age are consequences of the dissociations that occur throughout a person's life.
They are the ghosts of a lifetime saying to the elderly – “I'm here! I am here!" Please listen to me, include me!
THEY ARE DUMB SCREAMING!
From the age of 40, either a person finds his soul, or he will become depressed, fall into a cesspool, get sick or begin to “lapse”.
In the view of Psychogenealogy, if a person says goodbye to this life in a fragmented way, that is, without making the necessary affective inclusions, he/she will leave, for the next generation, the task of integrating that dissociation or exclusion that occurred.
In Psychogenealogy this phenomenon is called Crypts and ghosts.
So, we should take more time to talk to our seniors, as a way to encourage them to integrate their stories.
And above all, we need to take time out for therapy, in addition to sharing our emotional life with those who are dear and close to us.
Finally, we must seek what is valid, balancing what is in excess and what is scarce in our lives.
Happy life everyone!
Suggestions: Reading the book or watching the movie by Deepak Chopra - "The Shadow Effect". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfbxbihSsQ For more technical information on the topic, click on the link: https://amenteemaravilhosa.com.br/dissociacao-fenomeno-mente/
Psychologist - CRP 04/7521 Systemic Family Psychotherapist (Brazil) Psychogenealogist (Italy)
