Disassociations from the Body
I hear this phrase used a lot. “disassociated from the body”
And in many different contexts. Often I hear it so much that I just gloss over it, without even thinking about the specifics of what body and what are the reasons from disassociating from it, unless specifically given.
I also often don’t think of myself as being one of those people.
But I am. I have been for several years.
I now recognize that I have had to be. I had to survive and get shit done, finish my doctorate, dissertation, take care of my mom, get a job, etc.
And so all the intense grief that I needed to feel and to process from the deaths of my entire nuclear family and my miscarriages, I did not. I shoved it aside.
I disassociated to push through.
It doesn’t help me now, no, but—
At the time, it was a survival strategy.
My former partner used to say to me, how can you not realize that or feel it? When something like a shirt was on the wrong way, obviously less comfortable, or I had a tag sticking into me, that others would have noticed immediately that it was poking into their flesh.
Not me.
I was just on the go, on auto-pilot, onto the next thing that I had to do.
My former partner often times put me down for my lack of attention to detail for reasons that speak to her character and personality disorder. Though it is true that I am not the most organized, clean person. I am a broad strokes person. I think some of this is my nature, while I am well-suited to my profession as a professor.
But moreover, this was an adaptive survival strategy.
I had no time to properly grieve all of my losses.
And because of that, my work now is that I have now to learn to slow down and stop doing, stop thinking and overthinking and worrying, and to breathe, meditate, and return to my body.
To trust that I don’t have to rush and that I can feel my body.
It sounds so basic. It is.
And yet, it’s also complex in our culture that emphasizes productivity, labor, glorifies being busy, doing-doing-doing.
And it’s challenging because I spend much of my day and my life in my head with my thoughts. I do a lot of thinking and reading. It’s both my work and hobby and passion. And that is good and it is important. And I enjoy it.
But it’s not all there is: I can’t live always in my mind, at the expense of my body.
I am/have been disassociated from my body.
I think many of us are, in varying levels of extremeness. This is why many drink and smoke pot and do other drugs. Some keep ourselves so busy with work that we can’t notice our bodies. Some veg and disassociate by binging on food.
So, I am making efforts to do more things that put me in my body: yoga and meditation. To practice mindfulness and to spend moments considering what my body is feeling at any given time:
Can I recognize how I am feeling? Am I bodily comfortable? Can I adjust to be more so? What does my body need right now?
As I ask these questions, I am reminded of my mother’s response to being asked how she felt:
Whether it was answering the doctor or me, she would frequently answer:
“I don’t know how I feel.”
When I pressed her further, she would say—
“I don’t know what I feel. I can’t distinguish between the depression (so mental pain) over physical pain.”
I remember not understanding that. I still don’t. I am glad that I don’t.
I can’t imagine being in such a place, so traumatized and so disassociated from your mind/body connection that you could not understand mental and physical pain.
I have known the torments of deep depression, but never physical pain—thank God—and never one so much so that I couldn’t parse them out.
But I think that this is an extreme example of disembodiment and disassociation for survival.
Disassociation is a trauma response and a survival tactic. And that’s important to emphasize and for all of us to remember.
If we are checking out from our bodies and unaware of how they are feeling or what is going on with them, we are probably disassociating.
There is probably a reason for it.
Our work is to investigate the why and work to integrate the mind and body again.