A project about our, or specifically my, relationship with reality, physical life and relationships and experiences of light forms of dissociation or the disconnect with life.
I called this 'To be here' because it is about, what it does to me, to be 'present'.
For this page, I'm giving a 'trigger' warning, because of mentioning mental disorders, although nothing too big i.m.o., for sensitive people it might be 'heavy'. Also I'm sorry, it's quite a lot of text.
During my course on coaching, some years ago, one of the coaches mentioned that sometimes I come across dissociated. I did not hear of that term before that, so I did some reading and research on it. I discovered there are different definitions of dissociation and disconnection. There seem to be mainly two definitions, one being used in NLP (as a term for what I think is 'light' disconnection with feelings and others) and one in the DSM (a more serious sign of mental disorder having to do with for example trauma or other things, when you really aren't 'here' anymore).
I think my coach meant the first definition, but I discovered I do sometimes experience lighter symptoms of the latter one (luckily not too severe..). I do not mean the daily stuff that happens when you're sort-of absent when riding a car or watching TV, because we all have that...
Sometimes I feel disconnected from life, for example like feeling my life is not 'mine', that I'm not in control, that I'm detached of the way(s) it is going. I can still express myself and I'm absolutely aware of living and stuff around me, but I still feel detached. Sometimes it manifests as that, often on days full of activities and input, when there is no space or time for myself.
Other people could have this and 'call it a day' and drop on the couch to watch TV, for me it manifests as what I think I can describe as a feeling of emptiness and not feeling I belong here, even though I might have had meaningful moments (in some way) during that day. I sort of dissapear from the inside.
I've learned to deal with it though, I don't 'zone out' as often anymore, it seems easier to be present because I started focusing more on what I want and need in life. However the trade-off is that, when I'm present for almost the whole day, it feels like paying for it at the end of the day (or two), so I need my rest.
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I learned to take time to be alone to rest to compensate. However (besides the rest not being possible all the time)..it can feel lonely, it often feels like an isolated experience. The translation in my head, visually and feeling-wise, is like a passing wind through your body or the pressure of water around you when you're underwater.
Mental healthcare
It wasn't really a surprise to me that somebody told me about dissociation. To tell you a little bit about more background of my mental state of being during my life: I had an eating disorder in my first year of being a student (2007). Although it wasn't the classic 'I want to be thin' kind (I was underweight though), it still had to do with 'not being in control' and 'not have a place in the world' and the way I dealt with that. During those days, the healthcare that I got was very much focused on the physical part and superficial standards. And it's not like healthcare professionals never asked about how I felt, but they never went 'digging' and it felt like they weren't actually that much interested in helping at all. Meanwhile I had somewhat of an existential depression.
Whoever tried to help me from that general mental health care in the past, they weren't really present. Not for me. Or sometimes they would not connect with me as a person, as if they were just empty robots themselves. My latest experience with a psychologist was one that belittled my experiences. Because I could still get out of bed and take care of my kid and do my work quite well, I was apparently not serious enough of a case to her, yet she didn't even dive deeper with me more than a shallow questionnaire and a check about daily tasks.
The 'care' I got in the end, in general from these health practicitioners, made me feel even more disconnected and my faith in mental healthcare is low, aside from more specific coaches and coaching in general.
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Another person would just put that aside and let it be, but to me it hurt a lot because the 'not being there' for my problems, was exactly the issue that I had to deal with, and god knows how much presence and the relationship with the client means in a healing process.
In the end, after a lot of reading and several sessions besides the general health care, I've made some conclusions myself, because nobody else did and I'm smart enough to make conclusions in the end. I'm not going to talk about that in-depth, except telling you it's a mix of things like (emotion-lacking) upbringing, high sensitivity and the general contrast between what the western world seems to ask and what I need and experience in life.
During these years I question a lot what it means for other people 'to be here', to be present. Some people have an easy time being present the whole day, others seem to be more quiet and also don't connect as much. Because of my experiences, I am kind of fine-tuned now with how people connect and communicate and can often recognize, like a sixth sense, when other people are similar, if I am present myself that is.
Seeing as a lot of people are 'in their head' nowadays, for example because of the use of social media, I'm not sure if what I have is 'different' or not and I find that fascinating enough to do more research on.
I've started to express my feelings about this topic more visually since about 1,5 years or so. One of the results of feeling disconnected and not feeling safe or 'seen' is that for a long time I felt discouraged to express myself about my own life.
But sometimes there is no other way to communicate my feelings, to me. These are things that are hard to describe in words. It's hard to talk about if people just ask "how are you doing". It's more phenomenological. A 'felt sense' in the body and mind. You can try to explain it with words, but another person would only get an idea, an imagination. Even visually there is a lack, because it doesn't encompass the physical feelings.
So one of the goals of the artistic part, is simply the need to express.
However, I'm not done with this topic with just that.
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One day my hope and goal is to find other people that feel similar, to help other people, with it. I think expressing feelings or emotions through art is a lot healthier than some of the coping mechanisms out there. As a coach I would like to invite others to do so as well and I'm working on a more artistic/expressive methods and exercise within my life coaching practice, for the future.
Besides the more 'flat' visual expression, I would love to bring this one day to something like a 3D virtual reality experience, so people can maybe get like some percentage of the feeling of dissociation in a more embodied way. To get people talking about it. Because in the end, I think I'm not alone and we might all have our own versions of dissociation. Maybe we can all be a bit more connected that way.
