Dissociation: A Short Story

The visible battle scars of her hurt and angry soul were carved in stripes across her forearms. The newer cuts were still red with inflammation, shouting at me about the despair and turmoil on the inside. Betty is fighting for her life, in fact she has been fighting all her life. Fighting to live and sometimes fighting to die. Betty is anxious, snapping her joints, bending her fingers hard, pinching herself and digging her fingernails deep into her skin, seemingly oblivious to the pain. I try not to be disturbed by the ‘coping’ taking place and focus on being calm, approachable and safe.

“What do you want from this day with me Betty?” I ask. “To get through it” is her response. “Nothing else seems to be helping, hospitalized, suicidal and

Not a demon, an altar part. Dissociation is a normal response to trauma. Dissociation levels vary, sometimes people can be fully dissociative and not able to be present because a part has come forward and taken over in response to a perceived threat. Mostly though, dissociation is not that strong in function, it is the feeling of unease you can’t quite pin down the source of. It is the fearful passenger who was in a bad car accident years ago, it is the voice of denial, “nothing bad ever happened to you,” when you wonder why you have few memories of young childhood. Dissociation is the stuff we excuse saying, “that’s just how I am” even though it really makes no sense. Some of you reading this just got uncomfortable at the thought that dissociation is common to all of us. Dissociation is common to all of us, because all of us have been overwhelmed in some manner as children and all of us have the physiological God given ability to separate from pain and emotions that are scary, by creating dissociative parts to ‘remember’ for us, so we can be OK. Car accidents, tornadoes , emotional and physical abuse, all can cause us to dissociate some or all of the memory. It is just not so obvious to most as it is in Betty. Children do not have the capacity to cope with fearful events, physical pain or emotional pain. To avoid being ‘stuck’ in it, children create in their brain dissociative parts to ‘distance’ them so they can get on with life. Have you

None. She has been diagnosed with PTSD, treated with medications, hospitalized when suicidal and no one can tell her why she is still struggling so much. Oh they can tell her she has been traumatized, and she can agree her Mum did some bad things to her, “but it wasn’t that bad, my Dad was wonderful, we were really close.” Betty rationalizes. Betty has NO MEMORY of being sexually abused. Can you imagine have such intense emotional pain and not knowing why? Dissociation keeps the truth from us. We cannot remember ‘what’ happened to us, therefore nothing bad happened. Denial is a powerful