Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 7

Dissociation

Small children experience events from their own viewpoint, looking out of their own eyes, what is called associated, or �self position, in which you have full access to all your feelings. Most adults also do this most of the time.

In contrast, �dissociated� means taking on the viewpoint or perspective of an outside observer of the event, seeing yourself in it, as well as a different view of the event and its surroundings. From observer position you lose the feelings of being in an event, as you gain the quite different feelings about the event, as if you were watching it happen to someone else.

Seeing yourself provides an additional scope, while deleting the feelings of being in an event. Dissociation is particularly useful in difficult situations in which very strong unpleasant feelings occupy so much of your attention that there is not much left for creativity or problem-solving. This change in scope is used in the classic NLP method for resolving and eliminating the intense feelings that someone experiences in a phobia, (12,4, ch. 7) Since phobic feelings are very intense, this is a particularly convincing example of how impactful a scope shift can be in helping someone change a response that is unpleasant.

There are an infinite number of possible observer positions that you could take, at different distances, different angles, different heights�from eye level up close, to ceiling or floor level at a distance, etc. Since each of these different positions will have certain advantages and uses, and other disadvantages and limitations, it is important to know exactly how a person is dissociating, precisely what perspective they are using.

Observer position has often been described using words like �being objective,� or �meta-position,� from the Greek word �meta,� which means �change of place, order, or condition.� It has also been called �going meta,� or even �out of the body experience� or �astral travel.� Since this general term can indicate so many different points of view, using it gives only a partial understanding of the person�s point of view. The words �meta� or �meta-position� have also been used for the experience of going to a more general category, making it even more ambiguous. The easiest solution is to simply not use these terms at all. If you use the word �observer,� and carefully describe the exact location of the observer, that will specify the scope well.

When we experience a problem, we usually think of ourselves as a �victim,� of outside events beyond our control that make us feel bad. We usually attend to what caused our discomfort. �He made me mad,� �She�s being unreasonable.� Difficult situations are often ones in which others are behaving in unpleasant ways. However, I can�t directly influence their behavior, because I don�t have any direct control over them, so viewing an event in this way makes me helpless to change the situation. People usually try some kind of coercion, which is a short-term solution at best, one which doesn�t usually work very well in �the long run��a longer scope of time.

When you take an observer position, you can see others� behavior in the context of your own actions, making it easier to observe how your behavior elicits responses in them, reversing the typical �victim� sequence. This is information that is usually not available to you when you are associated into an event, seeing it out of your own eyes. Being able to see how your behavior elicits problem responses in others gives you a way to influence them by changing your behavior, which is something you do have control over. This gives you some ability to influence the other person, reversing the �victim of others behavior� sequence that most people experience in a problem situation.

Some people get so good at using dissociation to diminish the emotional impact of problem situations (often as a result of unhappy childhood experiences) that they tend to use it for many other events as well. Separating from your feelings removes much of the feedback about how you are responding to a situation, which can lead to an indifferent response to events that are important to you. The protagonist in Camus� novel The Stranger is an extreme example of this; he goes through his life without any feelings, positive or negative�nothing matters to him, not even his mothers� recent death.

When someone has learned to dissociate in most situations, learning how to reassociate into them is a valuable skill. People who are grieving are dissociated from the positive experiences that they had with the lost person; since they are missing the good feelings that they had with that person, they have an �empty� feeling of loss. Reassociating with those positive memories ends the grief, replacing it with a felt sense of the person still being with them. (6, 4, ch. 11) Association and dissociation are both valuable human skills, with different advantages in different situations, so it is important to be able to choose when and where to use each.