Dinkaltranen

“What is it like to experience dissociation?”

You are in front of a mirror, preparing to leave for some event. You wash your face, and at some point notice that as you ran the cloth over your skin that your reflection’s eyes are closed. You think for a moment that maybe you pulled the lids closed with the motion, but then you pull away the cloth the eyes remain closed for another second. Except they are your eyes, and they open a second later.

That is dissociation. A more creepy version of this example has your reflection smile – but you are not smiling. The distress of not being the person you see reflected back at you by the world is something that most people can relate to.

How do you become a person when you realise you are not who you are meant to be, or worse, feel like you are not a person at all? Many people I see tell me they feel like a series of consumptive habits.

“I think therefore I am.” In the modern era, I can’t help but worry people may have misinterpreted it to mean that thinking alone is enough. Thought informs action, and action informs identity just as much as thought.

You can think you are a good person, but unless you are doing things that inform that statement, your identity is misaligned. Most people with identity disturbances don’t not have an idea of who they are, but much more frequently struggle to commit to a set of behaviours that align who they think they are with who they want to be. This is an Id, Ego, Superego situation. The whole system is unbalanced, because the superego screams “We should be doing (blank)”, while the Id says “I want (blank), and the ego bounces between these exhausting states. What the ego should say is: “I am.” or "I am not.", informed by behaviour which is tested against agentic lived experience.

For example, are you a clean person? Your behaviour should reflect that. I don’t mean pretending to be a clean person: tidying up only when people are coming around. Pretending is how we got here, pretending we were following the authority of the superego or not following the impulses of the Id. You need to be which requires behaviour to back up the identity.

The unfortunate fact of this is that when you do something that contradicts your “I am” statements, you will most likely experience guilt. It is a good thing if you can feel this way. It means you are able to recognise you are misaligned, and that you need to examine your behaviour. If you feel shame, and not guilt, then it is not your behaviour that bothers you, but others’ observation of it, and this also means that your “I am” statement is not something you actually want to be, but something you want others to see you as.

You do not have to start with something absurd like “I am a millionaire”, if you do, the repeated failure to embody that identity will dissolve your ego. Find one of your goals like “I want to be someone who is strong.” and adjust it to be: “I am someone who is working on becoming stronger.” Now, go do 20 pushups, or however many you can do or something else that makes you stronger, and stick to that behaviour consistently. It is quite literally anchoring you to your identity, far more than the fantasy of being strong, because you are making it not fantasy.

Stop pretending and fantasising. Start being.