Mental Musings
Our therapy team shares their thoughts on creativity, psychology, human behavior, and living better

Dissociation Nation: The Pros and Cons of Being Checked Out

Friday, April 26 9:32 AM

In the days after the Boston bombings I had been obsessively reading every headline and article to get to the bottom of all of our questions surrounding the attacks. Then a kind of numbness and despair took over, an overwhelming feeling that none of my questions would ever get satisfactory answers. I started to avoid reading more about it, as I felt that my quest started to increase my anxiety rather than relieve it.

I thought about the way the younger suspect's friends described him as a person, so friendly, kind, easy going. I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be him. To have this big secret that he was hiding, this plan that he was hatching, and how even in the days after the events, he continued to maintain a calm, carefree demeanor. How could this be? How does someone compartmentalize a part of themselves so thoroughly? But at the same time I was feeling myself doing the same: separating from the upsetting events, turning my attention back to my day-to-day life, my work, my family, the things that need to get done.

It occurred to me that the ability to compartmentalize and to disassociate from feelings, thoughts, and events is both a great strength and a great liability for us humans. It behooves me to try to parse out the pros and cons of being in a state where mind and body are not aligned.

Dissociation
Dissociation is the ability to disavow any part of our experience, thoughts or feelings. To become unaware or numb to them, to be unaffected. It is a primitive response that we often use to manage upsetting experiences. It allows us to carry on in an automatic way, going through the motions that are required to maintain functioning, and not give in to the distress or distraction that the cut-off experience would cause.

A benign example of this may be being lost in your thoughts about something on the way home from work. You are driving along a familiar route, rehashing a conversation you had with your boss, and suddenly you are home and you have no recollection of how you got there. Your body was able to go through the automatic motions of your regular drive home, even though your mind was thoroughly somewhere else, absorbed in an alternate experience, place and time.

The increasing presence of virtual media has increased our propensity to disassociate in this way. We can now carry on conversations with people across the city or the globe while walking down the street. We can sit with our families in the same room but everyone is elsewhere engaged. We can run on the treadmill while watching a talk show. The mind-body split has become so normalized an occurrence that we barely even marvel anymore at how radically different is is from the rest of the course of humanity.

At the same time, it is this very proliferation of media that causes us to need to retreat from the overwhelming amount of information that we are exposed to every day. So while we know more and more about what is happening in the world, almost in an omniscient kind of way, we struggle to manage our sense of agency and empowerment in response. Some days, it feels like the more you know, the less you know what to do about it.

On the other hand, it was this same proliferation of media that allowed the public to join in and successfully track down the Boston bombers, in one of the most compelling manhunts in recent history.

In clinical terms, dissociation is often listed as a symptom of trauma. The body and/or mind is shutting down in the face of events too horrific to bear. No doubt many of the bombings victims will experience this symptom in the days and months to come. There can be a numbing of the body, the feeling of being outside of yourself looking in; or a numbing of the mind, the inability to recall events or feel any feelings associated to them.

The same mechanism, though, would allow someone to project an outward appearance of calm and normalcy, while hatching a plan to act on some very violent and destructive impulses. There are countless examples of criminal acts where there were no apparent signs that there was anything wrong with the perpetrator, until the deed was discovered.

Clinical evidence leads me to believe that for someone to perpetrate such atrocities in a dissociated state would suggest that they too, were attempting to compartmentalize a part of their own experience that was too distressing to tolerate. Perhaps if they could have allowed themselves to express some of their more destructive urges or feelings before they became so big and consuming, if they could have shared their distress with someone else, who could have made them feel safe and okay, they could have left their dissociated state and tackled the problem that was plaguing them without resorting to violence.

The Art Therapy Solution
It is no wonder that we often fear aggression in our children, in our youth, especially in our boys. Many of us feel the need to restrict even playful aggression, like toy guns, play wrestling, or fighting. We are often alarmed by artwork that contains violent imagery and are sometimes quick to be punitive or try to shut it down. But perhaps a better response is to allow small expressions of anger and aggression, to teach our children that we can handle their upset, that we understand them, that they are not alone. Allowing for playful aggression shows kids that we can contain them, we can disarm them, we can help them regulate the intensity of their feelings. They can express their upset and be whole again.

It is important, too, to do this while they are still small enough for us to really be able to contain them. If we wait until they are big, we may not really be as able to keep them,or ourselves, safe from their angry impulses.

So if you see your child engaging in aggressive play, don’t just shut it down. Step in and play along. Find out who is fighting, what is their mission? Who are his enemies and who are his allies? Help him find a resolution to the conflict at hand and help him manage the intensity of his feelings. Remind him that it is play. Help him be creative around the narrative and its resolution. By doing this you will be adding words and meaning to his aggression which will allow him to understand and diffuse it.

If your child creates images that are violent or aggressive, don’t get alarmed. Just get curious. Find out what the image is about. Wonder aloud how things got so bad for these characters, ask who could have made it better. Help him create an alternate image of a place that is safe. What would it look like? How would it feel to be there instead? In the words of Mr. Rogers, look for the helpers, and remind your child that you are one of them.

Finally, if you feel overwhelmed or distressed by what your child is communicating, or how aggressive he or she is, seek out your own helpers. Often the perpetrators of violence are not that different from their victims: they are suffering and helpless to find a way out of their pain. They will do better if they are not left alone.