Identifying Your Patterns Of Disassociation
You are not lazy because you procrastinate.
Sometimes we shut down and this can occur in a variety of situations. This is an instinct.The immobility response when your body perceives fear and there is no way to escape the situation. Including domestic partner violence, assault, neglect, abuse. This response of immobility can be catalyzed in acute traumas which severely shock your mind, your body. Those are the layered traumas, the complex, the compounded traumas, the other traumas include car accidents, falls surgeries, emotional distress, injuries, and loss.
We are working with The Body Awareness Workbook For Trauma by Julie Brown Yau, phd to transform trauma with body awareness and move toward post traumatic growth so you can live with vitality, purpose, and joy by building your calming box for your sustainable foundation.
Here is an exercise to try.
Questions to reflect on:
Identifying Patterns of Disassociation
Perhaps you are becoming aware of the way you experience disassociation. Use the following questions to bring more awareness to your experience:
- Are you aware you have a pattern of disassociating or feeling like you emotionally or physically shut down in a stressful situation?
- Are you aware you disassociate, but are unsure what triggers the dissociation
- In challenging situations do you feel spacey or sometimes dazed?
- Do you stare fixedly, not really looking at anything?
- Do you zone out easily?
- When asked to notice sensations in your beautiful body do you zone out?
- Do you disconnect from your body and become intellectual, in order not to feel anything?
- Do you use humour to deflect ito avoid feeling vulnerable or intimacy
- Do you disappear to avoid feeling
If you are journaling, this is a time to describe your patterns of disassociation. To describe them, to get to know them, without judgment.
If you are aware that you disassociate and you know what triggers it you can describe it in your journal
Remember these patterns initially emerged to protect you and are normal.Considering some of the things you have lived through, the way that you grew up, and the way things happened in your life. It makes sense for your body to respond.
However, you can teach yourself to manage them by practising and trying each day. Or work with a healthcare professional to guide you.
You can keep going, you can keep trying. It’s okay to try again tomorrow if you were not able to try today.
Credit; The Body Awareness Workbook For Trauma by Julie Brown Yau, phd