Social Media can be seen as still a favourite way of feeding our dissociation addiction.
Social Media can be seen as still a favourite way of feeding our dissociation addiction. As an alcoholic has bottles hidden all over the house, We have Facebook,twitter, Instagram etc. What will happen if there is an empty moment, and we did not have a phone or tablet to whisk our mind away from actually living in the present? What would happen if we actually had to ‘be’ instead of constantly dissociating???
The only way we have learned to deal with our difficulties is to dissociate. The idea of their being any other option is foreign to us. We have even trained our children to deal with their difficult emotions by dissociating. When our children are very young and having trouble managing their emotions, We would tell them, “Go into the next room and do not come out until you have changed.” We have learned to become very obedient; we leave the room in a tantrum state, but soon will emerge, smiling, pleasant, and happy. Any vestige of a problem is gone without a trace.
Having dissociative parents, you learn dissociation from them – both by being taught it directly, and by example. Parents who
dissociate are unable to help a child go through their emotions. They are unable to help the child learn that an emotion is nothing to fear, but
something that is very valuable and precious, helpful in living life. We sincerely believe that switching off an emotion is the best way to deal with it. We had never heard of the concept of self-soothing, it was pleasant to do some so-called ‘self-soothing ‘ activities, and I felt mildly better when I did them. But the concepts of staying with an emotion, sitting with it until it changes, and using a self soothing technique instead of switching, are all foreign to us. We are too terrified of emotions to ever do this. We are afraid of fear itself, and will go to immense means not to experience the emotion of fear, or any other emotion, without ever realising that we are doing this. We have control of ourself. We feel we can handle anything.
We become careful with organised groups of people, and with individuals who might not be safe. We learn what to look for, how to tell whether or not something was safe, how to tell whether or not we are accessed. Eventually, we realise we are safe, our children are safe and well on their way to healing, we all have our safeguards in place.
We have no reason not to live in the present, We are relatively free from harm from external sources, so there was no longer a need to dissociate, so we are DONE with dissociation, right? we lived happily ever after, end of story? NOT SO......Obviously WRONG! Related articles
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