Managing dissociation – becoming more aware

by Tom Cloyd, MS, MA – Counselor / Psychotherapist – Bellingham, Washington (360) 920-1226 – email: tc (AT) tomcloyd.com (please read about content licensing)

((ROUGH FIRST DRAFT – I’ll likely move this along to a more polished version Saturday, 11/1, in the evening.)

(This document presumes that one has read its antecedent: Managing dissociation – an introduction)

The critical first step: stopping

All interventions begin with awareness of some current situation or state. We do have to start somewhere, after all. In a real world intervention, there’s only ONE starting point: right now.

So, all we’re going to do in this “becoming more aware” process is stop our forward flight through time and catch up with our current state of mind, and most particularly with our degree of dissociation. Since dissociation can often be triggered by something we’re feeling, we’ll also try to get a sense of that as well.

The goal: automatic noticing of our state of mind

Once our mind learns to make a useful distinction, it will often tend to do it spontaneously, but first we must learn the distinction. The desired outcome, nevertheless, is make the distinction spontaneously. It can often take surprisingly little time to accomplish this.

Preparation

We are going to momentarily stop our activity and simply assess our degree of dissociation. It will be adequate for our purposes for us to simply do this subjectively. We can make good use of simple measurement device: a subdivided line – which functions very much like a measuring stick or ruler.

0——-1——-2——-3——-4——-5——-6——-7——-8——-9——-10

One can draw something like roughly on a sheet of paper, if desired. It’ll work just fine.

We’ll use this measuring to produce an answer to this question:

DISSOCIATION QUESTION – At this time, how dissociated or “spacey” you you feel?

With this measuring device we will specify that “0” equals “not at all” and “10” equals “completely”. In reality, most people’s normal state of mind will fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Training

First two days

Probably the best way to start is to allocate two days for initial training. Set a timer, if desired, so that approximately every hour or so, for approximately four hours or more, you stop whatever you’re doing and ask yourself the “dissociation question” given above.

Obtain your answer to the question by moving a pen or pencil tip alone the line from 0 to 10, until you find the spot one the scale that FEELS about right. You’ll find that there IS such a spot, but you won’t find it by thinking. You can only find it by feeling for it. It’s a very simple process, and quite easy once you try it a few times.

Write down the time of day and the number you produce with this process. You may put down numbers like 5, 3.4, 7.6, and so on. The scale is divided, you’ll note into segments that are 20% of the distance between the main points on the scale, but don’t worry about being too exact. An approximation will work just fine.

Then ask yourself: Am I feeling any noticeable degree of any of these feelings:

• fear – terror
• anger – rage
• distress – anguish (what we feel when we lose something)
• shame – humiliation
• disgust

An alternative way of doing this is to do the stopping-and-noticing process every hour for 6-8 hours, and only write down the number and feelings every other time.

Concluding days

It is recommended that for at least two more days you continue this process, but to do it at less frequent intervals – say every two hours. This will be easier, and less intrusive, but will still keep asking your brain to stop and notice. If it hasn’t already happened, it well may be during this time that you start noticing yourself spontaneously stopping and noting your state of mind, without any prompting by an alarm or other device.

It is also at this time, at some point (your choice), that you can begin phasing in the Structured Response Protocol (SRP) to which there is a link at the bottom of the page.

Assessment of outcome

This step is virtually effortless, and all but unstructured. Just do this: in the days following the “concluding days” segment of the structured training, just notice to see if you are spontaneously checking your degree of dissociativeness – you don’t need to take a measurement. The question simple is: Are you pausing at times to notice. When you’re more dissociated than you wish to be, do you respond with the SRP?

If not, redo the training, but in an abbreviated version. By then, things should be working more or less to your satisfaction. You may need, at times, in the future, to refresh yourself with an even more abbreviated “refresher training” cycle. To have to do this would be in no way unusual, and should not cause you any concern at all. But…different people’s brains may be expected to respond in different ways, so you’ll simply need to see how your responds, and go forward form there.

Next step: Managing dissociation – a structured response protocol