Dissociation

I’m going to be honest, this chronicling of my journey into doubt and out of faith has been slow getting off of the ground. I’ll admit, I’ve been rather busy since the last time I checked in, but I also can’t deny that there’s been a struggle to get myself to write as well.

It’s not that I don’t want to write, believe me. Once I get started with writing, I have more trouble getting myself to stop. So much of me wants to lay all of my experiences into the open to be able to point to them, as well as others’ experiences that mirror my own, to say “see? Look at the damage these religious systems are causing. The bad outweighs the good. STOP FEEDING THESE OPPRESSIVE SYSTEMS.” When I think back on my experiences, I’m filled with pure rage.

The problem is, while I have suffered much at the hands of religion, so many of the people from my youth, including all of my family, are still submerged inside of those systems - so deeply so that just critiquing the system is taken as a personal attack. These types of people are not ones to take a critique of their faith without retaliating, and I’ve experienced enough trauma to want to deal with even more.

That’s why I am writing anonymously. I can’t help but want to share my experiences in hopes of inspiring others to escape their own suffering and to bring down those broken systems. Despite the fact that I’m writing anonymously, I am still finding it difficult to start writing. Those opposed to what I say would say that that is conviction or the Holy Spirit stopping me, but of course I disagree.

Trauma leaves one hell of a mark on a person’s body and mind. Only a couple of days after my last entry in this chronicle, I attended a funeral for an aunt’s husband’s mother. This was held at an evangelical charismatic church, to give context. During the funeral, there was a worship service as well as the traditional evangelical sermon to urge non-Christians to accept Christ lest they suffer an eternal suffering and damnation.

Knowing what I know now, all I could think was how toxic the message was and how much of it mirrored the behavior of an abusive partner or spouse. I went into the funeral thinking “I’ll be fine as far as anxiety goes. I know what I believe.” Of course, I wasn’t totally okay. It didn’t take very long into the service for me to become totally dissociative, and it took a while after leaving for me to fully come back down to reality. For those who have never experienced dissociation, here’s an overview based on an article from WebMD (https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociation-overview)

“Dissociation is a break in how your mind handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time.

When you have dissociation, you may forget things or have gaps in your memory. You may think the physical world isn’t real or that you aren’t real.

You may notice other changes in the way you feel, such as:

• Have an out-of-body experience
• Feel like you are a different person sometimes
• Feel like your heart is pounding or you’re light-headed
• Feel emotionally numb or detached
• Feel little or no pain

Other symptoms you can get are:

• Have an altered sense of time
• Not remember how you got somewhere
• Have tunnel vision
• Hear voices in your head
• Have intense flashbacks that feel real
• Become immobile
• Get absorbed in a fantasy world that seems real

—

The article goes on to list causes of dissociation with in depth explanations of each. The first on that list being trauma. The article fails to cover one thing when going over the causes of dissociation, however. While it explains the cause of dissociation, it does not explain the reasoning for the dissociation. When the mind dissociates due to trauma, especially complex trauma that was caused over an extended period of time, it does so as a survival mechanism.

Most people are familiar with the survival instincts in animals of fight or flight: when an animal of prey finds itself in a dangerous situation, it has the choice to either fight its predator or attempt to escape. Human society and relationships are much more complex than that of primal animals, however, and so we have evolved to have two additional options in the midst of dangerous situations: freeze and fawn.

In the freeze state, the mind feels like it has run out of options - it knows fighting is a waste of time and there is no where to flee to. So, it chooses to basically shut itself down in hopes that the source of danger will tire itself out and leave. This isn’t commonly found within animals, but one example of this that everyone is familiar with is when an opossum pretends to die - “playing possum.”

In the fawn state, the mind decides that the best bet for survival will be to try to soothe the source of danger by complying or agreeing with its demands. I know that this act is called fawning, which sounds like a baby deer, but the act of fawning here feels very much like a human instinct to me. I’m not familiar with any animals who may be predatory without the intention of killing to consume. Humans have plenty of reasons to be predatory without the desire to kill: to manipulate, to hold a position of power, etc.

Dissociation lies somewhere between the freeze and fawn state. When the mind finds itself in a familiar place of danger, the body will begin to increase its production of adrenaline and start to position itself to engage with whatever is the source of danger. It then begins to engage in one of the four F states of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, depending on what the source of danger is. In my case, that state is often a cross between freezing and fawning.

When I’m forced to be around people who are being very intense and aggressive with pushing their beliefs and I’m not able to just walk away, my brain just shuts down. It knows that in that moment, there is no point fighting back, even if it’s by trying to have a civil discussion of opposing viewpoints – those types of people are not ones to practice active listening. That leaves it with two options: just stay quiet in hopes that the aggressors think that I agree with them so they go away, or lie and actually claim to agree with them just to deescalate the situation.

Regardless of which I choose, dissociation is sure to be there. My vision will start to get out of focus. My brain will begin to tune out the voices and noises around me and tune into the noise in my head. Sometimes if it’s heavy enough, I forget where I am until something jarring happens that puts me on alert, or until I try to actively bring myself back (which is often very difficult to do). I’m on autopilot and can even have normal conversations with people who don’t suspect anything.

Some people might think that sounds like a “fun” experience - it sounds similar to what people attempt to trigger with the use of drugs. I can assure you, however, that it is not fun. It’s all out of necessity in an attempt to feel safe again. It feels like someone or something else is controlling my body for me. On top of it all, it can linger for days, or even weeks depending on who I have to be around or what I have to be doing during that time.

While I still considered myself a Christian, I reached a point in my mental health journey where I realized that attending church services caused me to dissociate, more often than not. This was before my faith began to completely unravel. At that point, I knew evangelical Christianity just wasn’t it, but I was trying to hold out for more liberal streams of belief. Here’s the thing, though: when I decided to quit attending church, I was already attending a more liberal congregation.

My therapist at the time was actually my pastor’s wife, which I thought this wouldn’t be a big deal since she wasn’t in an evangelical belief system. I actually worked through a lot of my anxiety and learned a lot under her, which is why I thought that she and her husband would be understanding of my need to temporarily remove myself from the weekly church services to be able to heal from whatever was causing my dissociation.

She was a bit hesitant, but was more understanding than her husband. He tried to pressure me to set a deadline for when I would resume attending services, and he thought it should be sooner rather than later. I’d be lying if I said that that reaction was not a major factor in why I just never started attending church again. It was definitely what caused me to never be part of that faith community ever again.

I left that church in 2021. It’s been two years and a half years since then. While I don’t have a weekly church service to induce dissociation, I still experience it whenever I have to set foot in a church, which I only do for two reasons: weddings and funerals. In that span of two years, I’ve attended 5 funerals and 1 wedding, which is a lot more than expected in that short of a period of time.

Church services aren’t the only places I experience dissociation, however. I’m still within close proximity of very adamant relatives who aren’t fully aware of how far removed from Christianity I am, but know enough to know I’m not quite the evangelical I once was. They won’t hesitant to aggressively voice their beliefs and how “correct” those beliefs are.

I also have other sources for dissociation stemming from non religious childhood trauma such as living under narcissists (learn more about narcissism in my last post). This dissociation can rear its ugly head at times when, compared to the sources of my religious dissociation, I’m not in any danger at all: misunderstandings with my partner leading me to believe they hate me or are angry with me, situations at work where I fall short on an assignment and wrongfully assume I’m going to lose my job, and so on.

I’m trying to learn that my mind means well when it dissociates because it is trying to protect me, but it’s hard to not become exhausted by it. A few days ago I drove down the road seeing the changing colors of the leaves and was a bit disheartened because I was in the middle of a dissociative episode and couldn’t truly experience it. It was like seeing the leaves from a memory even though they were right there in front of me.

Tying all of this back into where we started, I think a lot of the reason I’ve not been able to get myself to write lately is because I’ve been experiencing dissociation semi regularly since I last wrote. What like free time I’ve had, I’ve spend trying to get back inside my own body - trying to do things I enjoy that can convince my brain that I’m not in danger. I’ve actually been dealing with a bit of dissociation yesterday and today, but I found myself with free time and nothing else to do, so I was able to work my way into writing this.

I think that is a good place to land this dissociative plane, though. I hope you’ve learned a bit about dissociation and the difficulties it brings. While I pointed to religion as a big source of my dissociation, I know I didn’t make my case fully for why it causes my dissociation or why it is in need of critique. Maybe next time. Until then…