Dissociation is a physiological response to not feeling safe.

It can look like spacing out or being hyper-productive.

Sometimes it's a way to self-edit ourselves into silence.

We hide our anger or rage or grief to keep the peace.

In doing so, we may dissociate to help us maintain peace around us at the cost of peace within us.

We self-edit ourselves into silence.

This can become something we learned to do a long, long time ago, as a way to adapt to fear.

When we know we are in a safe space, we can start to rewire our brain not to automatically holding everything in.

Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to change, remodel and
reorganize for purposes of bettering our ability to adapt to new situations.

Neuroplasticity refers to our brains ability to continuously change over the course of our lifetimes in response to our environment and injury. We can harness this power to begin to shed behaviors that were previously adaptive but no longer serve us. It's never too late...

During challenging times we may want to be too busy to think about things. After a substantial loss, taking time to reflect can spark pain and feelings of emptiness.

Dissociation involves a continuum of experiences, ranging from a mild emotional detachment from immediate surroundings, to a more severe disconnection from physical and emotional experiences.

All levels of dissociation involves a detachment from reality. That is different from the   loss of reality as occurs in psychosis.

Dissociating is to separate our mind and thoughts from what's happening in our reality.  Our heart's voice may be muffled during difficult times in a relationship. We may fear we do not have the strength to hold the pain ourselves.

Victoria was devastated when her husband of 20 years chose to leave the marriage and began living with another woman. Victoria felt she could not cope with thoughts of the reality of her life in her mind.  With evidence of her loss everywhere and three...