Dissociative Superpowers. Bet you got one! 

(or two, or three…or ten!)

 

During a week when we’re hearing all about the Super Bowl in football, and the Winter Olympics with hundreds of superpower athletes, I have to think about those folks with dissociative superpowers.  

Yep, if you’re dissociative, you’ve got superpowers! 

Hopefully you’ve heard the term “dissociative identity gift” because yes, in many ways, the ability to be highly dissociative is exactly a gift.   Gifts, or superpowers.  Either way — the ability to create an incredible strength in extremely difficult circumstances.

I’m curious as to what you consider some of your superpowers to be.  A few come to mind for me.  I’m listing out 10 of your superpowers, but honestly, there are probably at least 100 of them.  🙂 

 

Superpower:  Super Ears! 

The ability to hear many different things at once.

Yep, if you’re dissociative, you may be able listen to inside and outside at the same time. 

You can hear numerous conversations at the same time, and while you might miss bits and pieces here and there, you can hear all that input, (all that noise), and still function.  You might even be used to hearing multiple conversations at one time.  For dissociative folks, what’s so unusual about that?! 

This is pretty amazing, really, because your ability to hear, contain, understand, and make sense of so many  conversations at the same time means your brain is able to handle that much input at once.  Even if you yourself aren’t hearing all the internal-external conversations at the same time, someone is hearing them. 

It’s impressive when that much activity can happen simultaneously, and you and your system as a whole can understand all that. 

 

Superpower:  Super Vision!

The ability to see many different things at once.

Just like being able to hear many things at once, dissociative folks can see many things at once, both inside and outside.  Being able to see more than one direction at once is pretty incredible.  You’ve got lots of people with eyes looking out.  You can see all kinds of things!  

For example, reading what’s in front of you, while also look over to the left or the right, seeing clearly what’s happening in those other directions, even on the other side of the room, without moving your eyes… wow. 

And also, simultaneously seeing inside, looking around in the internal landscape — seeing both the inside and outside world at the same time.  Seeing more than one world at once —  super cool.  The ability to be visually aware of so many different areas at the same time is pretty fantastic.  

 

Superpower:  Body Blocking! 

The ability to numb out or separate from the body, or parts of the body.

I realize this superpower was developed during traumatic, painful experiences, and I mean no disrespect here.  Despite the horrible ways you learned to block the body, you learned how to block off the body!  This can be so incredibly useful.  It was an obvious help during trauma, but now, even when not in such a frightening place, you can still separate from your body as you need to.  You can step back from the body, you can numb off certain areas, and you might even be able to stand fully outside of your body.  How cool is that? 

These are useful skills during times of illness, or uncomfortable medical procedures, or injuries.  Got a sore throat?  As long as you are in-touch enough to get adequate health care, it’s pretty snazzy-jazzy to be able to step outside of that body container.  You don’t have to feel everything if you can block much of that out. Kudos to you! 

 

Superpower:  Emotional Exit Strategy

The ability to separate those intense emotions away for a while. 

Oh yes, the ability to send all those difficult feelings over to another place, to another self, behind a separate wall, hidden to a secret place is an absolute superpower.  Big emotions are huge, and often feel impossible to deal with so having the ability to just scoot them over there for a while is a huge superpower. 

I certainly recognize this superpower probably can’t be (shouldn’t be?) used forever, but in certain places and times, this is awesome.  Having an excessively successful emotional exit strategy provides deep relief, space to breathe, a minute to relax, and the ability to something else for awhile. There are times in life when being overwhelmed by giant emotions isn’t helpful, so…. having that ability to push those big feelings away can be a superpower, no doubt.

 

Superpower:  Staying Forever Young

The ability to keep a child’s heart, the joy of youth, the wonderment of being a little one. 

So many adults, as they grow up, lose the ability to relate to children and childlike feelings, childlike wonder, childlike innocence.  Dissociative survivors don’t lose touch of that. The ability to connect with outside children, is truly heart-warming. 

It’s beautiful to see the joy that children hold, the freedom of expression, the energy when playing, the desire to have fun.  I understand that some of your traumatized child parts might be less adventurous than others, but most systems have at least a few kiddos who have big ol’ lovely bursts of joy, excitement, happiness, and fun.

 

Superpower:  Intense Focus

The ability to dissociate and block distractions to hyper focus intensity on a particular area. 

When you have a busy internal world, and a hectic external world, it can be hard to focus on any particular “thing”.  You can succumb and swirl into the feelings of chaos, or if you go to the other end of the spectrum.  By using your dissociative superpowers, you can separate yourself away from all the many other distractions and get an intensely successful hyper focus.

When purposefully using your dissociative walls, your ability to distance from other emotions, your ability to block feelings, your ability to create space from noise, your ability to separate from other insiders, putting all those skills together mean that dissociative systems can have an incredible  ability to hyper focus on particular tasks.  You can get a whole lot done in a short amount of time with that ability to focus.  Super impressive! 

 

Superpower:  Memory Mammoths

The ability to remember so very very much.   

Yes, as much having DID equals bouts of amnesia and loss time, the truth is, from my perspective, the dissociative person who talks well with their insiders, has a much better memory than the average person.   

Memory might be divided up into different compartments, or layers, or people, but… the ability to remember is huge.  For example, asking different insiders to remember separate pieces of information individually, and then pulling it all together means each insider can remember something without getting overwhelmed.  Teamwork means you can put those pieces back together. 

After all, this is a skill you’ve already done, separating into separate selves, remembering different pieces of life, so when you purposefully work together to remember larger chunks of info, you’ve got it made!

 

Superpower:  Vocal Variations

The ability to speak in such a wide variety of voicings, vocals, vocalizations. 

This is actually more of a superpower than you might think.  So creative!

Ask someone who is not dissociative, who already doesn’t have 20 different voices, and ask them to create that many different voices and stay in character whenever they use each one of those unique vocals. Challenge someone you know.  It is much harder to re-create this than what you’d expect!

Of course, there are voice animators who have conquered this multi-vocal skill, but for the most of the population, it’s much more difficult to have as many different, and unique voicings as dissociative systems have.  Frankly, it’s pretty cool, and highly creative, so I’m calling it a superpower.

 

Superpower:  Pain Pusher

The ability to push pain away. 

Yep, this is a dissociative superpower for sure. 

Being able to block out the pain, or separate from the body sufficiently enough to not feel the pain, or float away far enough to not feel the pain — there are several ways that dissociative folks manage pain.  Obviously, this has it’s benefits! 

Sadly, of course, this superpower would have been learned the hard way, but still… now that you know how to do this, claim it as your ability.

This is your superpower, your skill, your strength. 

Hopefully, moving forward in life, you won’t need to use this superpower as often, and I hope that you are working on releasing the pain that your body has hidden through the years.

 

Superpower:  Be Anybody!

The ability to be whoever you want to be! 

Oh, you already have this superpower in spades. 

Being a dissociative system, you already know how to switch to be whoever you want to be.  Your mind is already creative, and chances are, your life story experiences have already taught you how to fit in and change to blend in among different sets of people.  Look around at your people.  They are all so very different from each other, right?  Isn’t that cool?

Of course, it’s always okay to be who you want to be, but when you want to have a variety in life, you can already think of all the unique ways to exist, and you have people who can do it!  You’re not stuck in a rut, and in some ways, it’s a beautiful life being able to be so many different people with such a variety of tastes, preferences, skills, and interests.  How can you ever get bored?

 

Superpowers Galore! 

Well, the Super Bowl is starting, so I gotta stop this list at 10, but you truly do have many, many dissociative superpowers! 

I do understand that some of those powers were achieved the hard way, and I’m very sorry about that.   You’ve been through far far far too much.  The world is full of too many cruelties, and I hope you’re making genuine gains in your healing.

However, today, I’m celebrating the fact that you really do and already have those abilities!  And now that you have them, they are yours to claim, yours to own, yours to use.  Reframe your pain.  These are your superpowers now!

You’ve done a lot of hard work in your healing — be sure to take some time to find the silver linings in what you’ve accomplished in life. 

It’s okay to celebrate and enjoy all who you are.

I wish you the best, in your creative, superpower-influenced healing journey.  You got this! 

Warmly,

Kathy

 

 

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