Mental Tricks

I have a dentist appointment in a couple of hours and like I have mentioned before it tends to bring up my anxiety level so I need to figure out a way to get through the session. The best way I know how is to just dissociate through out the process where basically my brain takes a vacation from reality for awhile so mentally I do not need to deal with what is taking place.

Through my life I have created a couple of make believe personas to take over when the situation is to much to handle. Basically I can go to this other place and not deal with reality for awhile. When entering this world I do not realize 99% of what is going on and with today's dentist appointment the time has come to use this trick again. The key to events that you know are coming is to get into this place long before the situation is going to occur as it is difficult to pull out of thin area when the time arises. This mysterious world that I have created has been built over the last few decades and every aspect of this personality is covered from where he was born to what he does for a living to the way he thinks so it makes it pretty easy to get lost in this character.

Now when I use this world it is to avoid situations that I normally do not handle well with the dentist appointment the issues I normally do not handle well is someone touching me and not knowing what is going to happen next. If I tried to handle this situation by staying in the present chances are it would lead to a panic attack which is never a fun event. So I just let my mind drift off and let the other side take over for awhile.

As a child this is how I got through the abuse in my life. At one end it was to get through all the negative emotional abuse that was constantly destroying my self esteem plus tended to get over whelming at times. For when I let my brain go over to the other place this characters life was perfect so I did not have to dwell on the negative energy that I was consumed in for I became someone else. When the nasty stuff occurred my body would be present but mentally I was not there which made it easier to deal with.

The problem with doing this is the events still take place and eventually I will have to deal with the damage that it created. For a long time I was able to keep the negative side of my life buried deep in a corner and would not acknowledge that they ever took place because to me they never did. Well I guess there is a limit to how much space there is to hide these negative events for when I became sick a few years ago part of it was due to all of the events that I had buried rose to the surface. Not a lot of fun when your brain is overridden by terrible events that you are no longer able to deny and all of a sudden need to be dealt with. Through the denial of these events I was able to lead a normal life but eventually my past caught up with me sending everything into complete disarray.

To get to a better place in my life I need to go back into my past and deal with all of the situations that took place but I am unable to do this on my own as I tend to get lost and end up in a bad position. I have tried to just shove everything back into the far corner of my mind but I am unable to do so. Now I deal with what seems like a million different images, situations and events that need to be put in order and in some cases justified or else I will never reach the recovered state that I have been fighting for.

Wikipedia defines dissociation as a state of acute mental decompensation in which certain thoughts, emotions, sensations, and/or memories are compartmentalized because they are too overwhelming for the conscious mind to integrate. This subconscious strategy for managing powerful negative emotions is sometimes referred to as "splitting", as these thoughts, emotions, sensations, and/or memories are "split off" from the integrated ego.

take care