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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents... some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.H.P. Lovecraft
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I was not descending in a plane, coming Home. I was watching an alien world as it ascended towards me - and one that I could never begin the process of readjusting to, because I knew that I would just as soon be returning to another world, whose normality was as alien to this home as I now was.Jake Wood
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Isolation of catastrophic experiences. Dissociation may function to seal off overwhelming trauma into a compartmentalized area of conscious until the person is better able to integrate it into mainstream consciousness. The function of dissociation is particularly common in survivors of combat, political torture, or natural or transportation disasters.Marlene Steinberg
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A child who is being abused on an ongoing basis needs to be able to function despite the trauma that dominates his or her daily life. That becomes the job of at least one A N P [apparently normal part of the personality], whom the child creates to be unaware of the abuse and also of the multiplicity, and to “pass as normal” in the real world. The ANP is just an alter specialized for handling the adult world–in other words, the “front person” for the system.Alison Miller
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Dissociation is numbness and nothingness; it is a feeling of being lost; it is floating on a cloud that threatens to suffocate; it is automatic speech and action without awareness or control; it is looking at the world and blinking to try to remove the blurry fog; it is hearing and seeing the immediate world and simultaneously feeling very far away; it is raw fear; it is unfamiliarity in familiar places; it is possession; it is being haunted everyday by unknown monsters that can be felt but not seen (at least not by others); it is looking in the mirror and not knowing who is looking back; it is fantasy and imagination; and, above all else, it is survival. Dissociation is all of these things and none of them at once.Noel Hunter
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The unconscious mind always operates in the present tense, and when a memory is buried in the unconscious, the unconscious preserves it as an ongoing act of abuse in the present of the unconscious mind. The cost of repressing a memory is that the mind does not know the abuse ended.Renee Fredrickson
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As survivors and procreators, we unravel stories that at their root are not dissimilar from the habitual behaviors seen in nature. But as beings who know they will die we digress into episodes and epics that are altogether dissociated from the natural world. We may isolate this awareness, distract ourselves from it, anchor our minds far from its shores, and sublimate it as a motif in our sagas. Yet at no time and in no place are we protected from being tapped on the shoulder and reminded, “You’re going to die, you know.” However much we try to ignore it, our consciousness haunts us with this knowledge. Our heads were baptized in the font of death; they are doused with the horror of moribundity.Thomas Ligotti
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As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of fiery rage. My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens. I hear my shirt ripping. I am startled and again jump to the vantageof an observer hovering above my sprawling body. I watch uniformedstrangers methodically attach electrodes to my chest. The Good Samaritanparamedic reports to someone that my pulse was 170. I hear my shirt ripping even more. I see the emergency team slip a collar onto my neck and then cautiously slide me onto a board. While they strap me down, I hear some garbled radio communication. The paramedics arerequesting a full trauma team. Alarm jolts me. I ask to be taken to thenearest hospital only a mile away, but they tell me that my injuries mayrequire the major trauma center in La Jolla, some thirty miles farther. My heart sinks.Peter A. Levine
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We can think of dissociation as psychological disconnection from one or more of three major spheres of experience: (a) the here and now, i.e., orientation to time and place; (b) other people, i.e., interpersonal communion; and (c) one’s own subjective experience, e.g., visceral sensation, physical pain, affect, or sense of identity. The various manifestations of pathological dissociation e.g., amnesia, depersonalization, identity fragmentation—can be understood as manifestations of these dimensions of disconnection.Steven N. Gold
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Shamed and enraged, I sit by the side of the road and cry. Eclipsed by a sense of disgrace, my emotions feel momentarily stifled and disconnected. Instead of anger, I feel dishonored and exposed. I cannot even formulate my thoughts, much less speak them. My integrity and humility have been violated. I have only my own indignation to spur me on.Holly A. Smith
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Fear and anxiety affect decision making in the direction of more caution and risk aversion.. Traumatized individuals pay more attention to cues of threat than other experiences, and they interpret ambiguous stimuli and situations as threatening (Eyesenck, 1992), leading to more fear-driven decisions. In people with a dissociative disorder, certain parts are compelled to focus on the perception of danger. Living in trauma-time, these dissociative parts immediately perceive the present as being "just like" the past and "emergency" emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight, fight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more rational and grounded parts may be overwhelmed and unable to make effective decisions.Suzette Boon
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Dissociation gets you through a brutal experience, letting your basic survival skills operate unimpeded… Your ability to survive is enhanced as the ability to feel is diminished… All feeling are blocked; you ‘go away.’ You are disconnected from the act, the perpetrator & yourself… Viewing the scene from up above or some other out-of-body perspective is common among sexual abuse survivors.Renee Fredrickson
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Dissociation, a form of hypnotic trance, helps children survive the abuse… The abuse takes on a dream-like, surreal quality and deadened feelings and altered perceptions add to the strangeness. The whole scene does not fit into the 'real world.' It is simple to forget, easy to believe nothing happened.Renee Fredrickson
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You are no longer human, with all those depths and highs and nuances of emotion that define you as a person. There is no feeling any more, because to feel any emotion would also be to beckon the overwhelming blackness from you. My mind has now locked all this down. And without any control of this self-defence mechanism my subconscious has operated. I do not feel any more.Jake Wood
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The door suddenly jerks open. A wideeyedteenager bursts out. She stares at me in dazed horror. In a strangeway, I both know and don’t know what has just happened. As the fragmentsbegin to converge, they convey a horrible reality: I must havebeen hit by this car as I entered the crosswalk. In confused disbelief, I sinkback into a hazy twilight. I find that I am unable to think clearly or towill myself awake from this nightmare. A man rushes to my side and drops to his knees. He announces himselfas an off-duty paramedic. When I try to see where the voice is comingfrom, he sternly orders, “Don’t move your head.” The contradictionbetween his sharp command and what my body naturally wants–toturn toward his voice–frightens and stuns me into a sort of paralysis. My awareness strangely splits, and I experience an uncanny “dislocation.”It’s as if I’m floating above my body, looking down on the unfoldingscene. I am snapped back when he roughly grabs my wrist and takes mypulse. He then shifts his position, directly above me. Awkwardly, hegrasps my head with both of his hands, trapping it and keeping it frommoving. His abrupt actions and the stinging ring of his command panicme; they immobilize me further. Dread seeps into my dazed, foggy consciousness: Maybe I have a broken neck, I think. I have a compellingimpulse to find someone else to focus on. Simply, I need to have someone’scomforting gaze, a lifeline to hold onto. But I’m too terrified tomove and feel helplessly frozen. .Peter A. Levine
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You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. ‘How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped, ’ you tell yourself.Renee Fredrickson