Hello today, 🙂
As a follow up to yesterday’s reblog about the DES, Dissociative Experiences Scale, this post is about how to score the DES.
And thank you to those readers on Twitter who have been talking about these blog posts, and interacting with the Discussing Dissociation blog online.
Much appreciated!
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2017 Kathy Broady MSW and Discussing Dissociation
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Dear Kathy,
I have NEVER smoked, drank or even tried drugs, so there is little to throw off my results, but I am not seeing therapists remotely coming to understand why I am as I am, and they always seem to view it as a bad thing.
I disassociate because it is a coping mechanism. All my life, when something good happens to me, it is followed almost immediately by a huge loss.
I helped a nation in time of need (ground zero) and sister was killed in a car accident
Wife abandonment with divorce followed by an even worse 2nd marriage
Retirement at age 42 followed by (3) rounds of cancer
Financial ruin followed by humiliation of a town meeting explaining why
Cancer survival and recovery followed by 3rd wife abandonment
Those are just a few things that occurred in my life…
Unlike a drug addict that uses chemicals to keep emotions in the happy range, I have just learned to not feel at all. It stands to reason, if I have no happiness, then life experience has proven that there will be no devastating loss. By having no feelings I can control my life because negative stuff no longer has any meaning.
Its not a horrible way to live. I don’t get the “happy” times of life granted, but yet I do not get the sad times either. Everything to me is thus utilitarian. Not bad, just life in pure practicality.
For instance when my son died, I never cried…the world is made up of 7 billion people, and a lot of parents lose infants, that is just my lot in life that other parents may not be subjected too. What is there to cry about? Infant loss just happens to some parents. Yet it also happens in better times like sex; generally a euphoric feeling, but not for me. Its a release, but not pleasurable. And thus the woman that I date say the same thing: “I just don’t feel a connection with you”. Why would they? I take care of their needs because that is the expectation, and I always give 110% of what I do at home or work, but a connection between us? Whether a week later or ten years, they will leave me anyway so how could there be a connection between us? She cannot predict the future so she cannot say she will love me forever as she does not know how she will feel down the road. I do not tell her that, but she picks up that “there is no connection”.
So you see it is really a great way to live because while I rob myself of the good moments in life, I also save myself from the heartache of the bad moments.
I always live in the moment: tomorrow is a new day, and I will approach each moment then with practical thoughts and move forward without emotion playing into my decisions. But its great because with a lack of emotion getting in the way, I can do things that a lot of people just would not do.
I am not mean: I may not have sympathy or empathy, but I am smart enough to know that it has to be conveyed to a society that does not look at things the way I do, so I might tell that, “I am so sorry your father passed on”, and its convincing words, but again, aging parents pass on. To me, it is nothing to get upset about.
So being disassociated is not a bad thing at all. I have learned to embrace it, and just wish I could explain it to a society that has feelings.
Travis