Overcoming Dissociative Identity Disorders & Community Health Solutions

 

The American Psychiatric Association mentions three types of dissociative disorders (psychiatry.org)

Dissociative identity disorder
Dissociative amnesia
Depersonalization & Derealization disorder (DP DR)*

Depersonalization (DP) represents experiences of detachment from one’s Self – Mind or Body.
Derealization (DR) represents Unreality, feeling detached from one’s surroundings, i.e., one’s socioenvironmental matrix.

DP and DR patterns may also manifest as a secondary symptom, linked to other psychiatric conditions. Conditions formally linked to dissociative states of existence, such as Bipolar Disorder and a range of schizotypal behaviors (conditions), or due to iatrogenic/ prescribed drug induced adverse reactions.
DP states remind us of the fragility of our Identity (Ego) Matrix to trespass, at the molecular level.

 

Based on recent reviews (2023), the ‘baseline’ prevalence of DPDR is estimated to be ~ 1% in the general population, though both researchers and clinicians acknowledge it as an underestimate, due to diagnostic challenges.
Current research frontiers are focused on structural and neurocomputational aspects of DP states.

I first noticed this DP pattern of Being over a decade ago, when treating chronic pain patients. Many were often unable to localize the site of their pain precisely or identify any prior causative factors. Some demonstrated somatoform disorders and allodynia, suggesting central neuroendocrine dysregulation, as an aspect of their long term/ constitutional patterns (TCM).

 

DP and DR states are more prevalent among adolescents and young adults, reflecting the sensitivities and susceptibilities of their developing cognitive processes (brains), and in patients with persistent mental health disorders, including persistent anxiety and depression patterns.
Trauma, e.g., concussion-TBI, interpersonal abuse, and intimate partner violence all increase DP & DR incidence.  Lifetime DPDR prevalence in industrial societies is estimated to be high (~50-75%).

Industrial societies may be propagating culturally dysfunctional styles of communication that, to put it simply, overstimulate and lead to exhaustion, states of collapse in decision making processes.

 

Impulsivity: Stimulation <> Reaction Patterns

A research librarian recently (2023) directed my attention to recent experiments in which volunteers, mostly males, stimulate themselves electrically rather than sit alone and silent,  in an otherwise empty cubicle, for 15 minutes.
These types of Psych outcomes suggest that the Sympathetic arm of our autonomic nervous system (ANS) – manifest as Fight, Flee, and Freeze reactions – is hyperactivated, when involved in sociocultural interactions, e.g., Experiment.

‘Frozen’ cognitive states, refer to reduced plasticity in the processing of sense impressions / inputs (sensations) and responding appropriately. This reduced cognitive flexibility, or inability to change our behaviors leading to negative outcomes, is framed by mnemonic linkages between instinctual (programmed) decision making processes, Emotional Hyperarousal associated with Anxiety or Fear states of Being, and chronic Threat anticipation, leading to hypervigilance behavior patterns, manifest occasionally as physical acts of violence.
At the societal level, these Internal Disharmony (TCM) patterns of the People are manifest as the terrifying endemic patterns of community level violence.

Reduced neuroplasticity, e.g., an evidence agnostic tendency to anticipate negative outcomes, is also linked to many mood disorders – e.g., stress retention patterns, anxiety, and depression.

Culturally, these actions / reactions, are driven by expectations formed in our Identity Matrix by our negative life experiences– including Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), daily adult frustrations (e.g., work or home snark, trauma).
Our daily indulgences, i.e., consumption patterns of  News, Social Media content, have been linked to neuroendocrine cuing/activation and the reinforcement of cognitive biases.

 

Ego Dissolution & Self Healing

Positive and health promoting aspects of dissociative states of cognitive awareness have also been  recognized in human societies for tens of thousands of years. Ego dissolution practices, by which we can access nonlocal realities, achieve their goals and objectives by developing and sharpening the Seeker’s  Inner Awareness (Insight) to achieve Connection. Yoga practices offer 3000+ year old guidelines on these matters.
Shamanic /Traditional healer circles around the world possess certain skills (e.g., siddhas), which allow them to practice what may be known as internal resonance biofield enhancing techniques, aka Awareness, Swashakti.

Of special relevance to Cultural Healing, in our troubled times, is the ability to let the world of the senses guide us to safe and restful places, e.g., easily (equitably) accessible greenspaces, distributed around our metro communities.
Current health + environment peer reviewed literature speaks of the long term health benefits of having nearby green spaces, to recover from our industrial age health disruptive influences, and to recharge.

Manifest Community, Green Power. Reduce Health + Care costs.

In this regard, psychologists speak of cultivating the health promoting aspects of Absorption.  Children have this skill (talent) in abundance but this faculty appears to fade with age, in most people.

 

All of us can (probably) recall moments when the world grabbed our senses and held our attention so completely that we lost our sense of time, of Self, i.e., ego dissolution, dissociative states.
People speak of paradigm shifts and spiritual epiphanies in their recall of these types of events. They are deeply personal moments, memories of intense experiences, character forming and perhaps, even life changing.
Self directed Ego Dissolution practices like Tapas (Yoga), Prayer, and the Native American Sun Dance, focus Awareness and generate Community Power.

Those who have been ‘touched’ by the Earth (Bhudevi, Gaia) know of the Universe Wave Entity (UWE) that connects all of us, and is known around the world by many names – Purusha, Spirit, Yang (Ling).
Those who develop the disciplines (practices) needed to open the inner door, e.g., by increasing neuroplasticity to see themselves as they truly are, will find personal sanctuary via UWE, in the axis mundi, available 24/7-365, and FREE.  Work for it.

 

Community Solutions, Open Conversations

As a Pain Specialist, the development of sustainable clinical practices to better manage Chronic Pain, and the related aversive psycho-social states of Being – e.g., anxiety, despair, unresolved suffering, persistent irritability, paranoia, oppositional defiance patterns of behavior, flash communal violence targeting innocent people – is of special interest.

Due to the heterogeneous, time dependent, and multifactorial nature of these sociocultural phenomena, we need to work smarter than the demonstrably failed logic of spilling drugs along the patient’s path to healing, i.e., the current serial drug therapies model of care, in which 50% resolution of mental health symptoms is now considered a ‘cure’. Incredible.
Is it any wonder that so many people (~ 30-50%) in our fast paced industrial societies are falling apart, due to sensory and cognitive overload?

 

The continuing debacle of U.S. pain management practices, focused on mind altering narcotics, is untenable.  Using more drugs to quell the problems, e.g., dependencies, addictions, and immunoreactive ADRs, created by initially prescribed drugs, is one definition of insanity. Works well for the Pharma Bros bankroll though, for sure.

The U.S. Fentanyl Fiasco, a disastrous outcome of the ill advised clinical pain management practices using narcotics which have lasted decades, is now being exploited by our adversaries under the capitalist flag of Free Enterprise – i.e., low risk and high profit.

 

WE need to activate the ability of The People to engage, to share their personal story, and to have intelligent conversations about their own pain and suffering while also being able to acknowledge our collective / communal societal pains and sufferings.

To build community while keeping delivery costs down, I favor a group model for open and informal conversations known as Colloquia, i.e., open societal discourses on challenging issues that our Health + Care system continues to bungle.
Each community must build/select their meeting places, i.e., provide the Set & Setting needed, that meet their community’s needs to achieve and advance collective health, by working together.

 

WE have the technical knowledge to develop practical solutions.
However, we lack the political will needed to break free of the reduced neuroplasticity seen among medical doctor cohorts, frozen in Denial,  who remain evidence agnostic regarding the damage, i.e., morbidities and mortalities, they inflicted on the People over the last three decades, while ‘treating’ pain as the Fifth Sign.

Let us not blame America’s long standing love affair with weapons explicitly designed to kill humans for providing the release from suffering that the drug tainted and profit oriented economics of our 21^st century industrial world imposes upon those who are marginalized, who feel unheard.