I’ve often thought of dissociation as an extreme form of unblending, and basically find myself in a dissociative state when I unblend from everything (I think there’s a name for this state in IFS). I consider it an exceedingly useful move to be able to control and work with dissociating. I recall someone on the Tim Ferriss Podcast (maybe Jocko Willinck) talking about mastering dissociation as a tool to use in a firefight, to dissociate from the immediate feelings of the battle and be able to get a broad overview of the troop positions and movement in a battle. I’ve used it in a similar way in the context of rationality—dissociating from my immediate feelings in a situation, to get a more objective sense of what’s going on.
From this perspective, dissociation isn’t the thing to get rid of when healing trauma, as that would be discarding a useful skill. Instead, the thing to get rid of is your need to be in either a dissociated or associated state in any given situation.
I’ve often thought of dissociation as an extreme form of unblending, and basically find myself in a dissociative state when I unblend from everything (I think there’s a name for this state in IFS). I consider it an exceedingly useful move to be able to control and work with dissociating. I recall someone on the Tim Ferriss Podcast (maybe Jocko Willinck) talking about mastering dissociation as a tool to use in a firefight, to dissociate from the immediate feelings of the battle and be able to get a broad overview of the troop positions and movement in a battle. I’ve used it in a similar way in the context of rationality—dissociating from my immediate feelings in a situation, to get a more objective sense of what’s going on.
From this perspective, dissociation isn’t the thing to get rid of when healing trauma, as that would be discarding a useful skill. Instead, the thing to get rid of is your need to be in either a dissociated or associated state in any given situation.