Posted by Dinah on July 25, 2002, at 6:10:28
In reply to Re: Holding rage in a cage » Dinah, posted by judy1 on July 25, 2002, at 1:57:31
I do dissociate, but not involuntarily exactly. So I don't lose time. (OK, I lose seconds here and there,like I don't remember the seconds immediately before I impulsively SI, but no longer than that). I can use dissociation to forget things, but I see it more as a skill.
It took years before my therapist believed that I wasn't abused as a child. And even now, he wouldn't be at all surprised if he learned I had been. But I actually learned my dissociative skills as a depressed and nearly out of control adolescent. I didn't like the negative attention I was drawing. Dissociation helped me "act" OK even when I wasn't inside. And since that's all that mattered to anyone, I practiced those skills until they were second nature, until they were really beyond my conscious control.
The SI this time happened because my husband can't see when I'm using dissociation as a coping mechanism and in anger and frustration (during a verbal disagreement) disrupted the process. My therapist is the only one who has figured out when I am doing it. Like yesterday at the end of therapy, when I had to go sit in a stairwell for 45 minutes (as near as I can make out) to come out of it.
Sigh. It's complex, because without better coping skills in place, he doesn't want to interfere with these "skills".
poster:Dinah
thread:547
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20020702/msgs/725.html