Trauma & Dissociation discussion

December 2024 - January 2025 Book of the "Month"

Dissociation Made Simple:
A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life
by Jamie Marich (2023)


Publisher's Summary
Dissociation 101: The go-to guide for understanding your dissociative disorder, breaking the stigma, and healing from trauma-related dissociation.

Guided by clinical counselor Jamie Marich--a trauma-informed clinician living with a dissociative disorder herself--this book tells you everything you need to know about dissociation...but were too afraid to ask.
Here, you’ll learn:

What dissociation is--and why it’s a natural response to trauma

How to understand and work with your “parts”--the unique emotional and behavioral profiles that can develop from personality fragmentation

There’s nothing shameful about dissociating--that, in fact, we can all dissociate

Skills and strategies for living your best, authentic, and most fulfilled life

What to look for in a therapist: choosing a healer who sees you and gets it

Foundational elements of healing from trauma, including PTSD and C-PTSD

With practical guided exercises like “The Dissociative Profile” and “Parts Mapping,” this book is written for those diagnosed with dissociative disorders, clinicians and therapists who treat trauma and dissociation, and readers who are exploring whether they may have dissociative symptoms or a condition like dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociation Made Simple breaks it all down accessibly and comprehensively, with empowerment and support--and without stigma, judgment, or shame.

Yeah! Thanks for coordinating, Steve.

This will be a learning experience. Despite being group moderator, I actually don’t really know anything useful about dissociation. The group has historically focused on dissociation and was fairly dormant, so … I essentially hijacked it to try to bring it up to date on trauma books. Might be nice to switch off every other month between trauma and dissociation books. If anyone wants to moderate dissociation books, that might be a useful help. A second moderator.

I have a pretty fair knowledge (and experience) of dissociation as it used to be defined, and the emerging definitions that are happening now. I and will always chime in on any thoughts other readers share in this group. At this point, we haven't seen much discussion to actually moderate, but perhaps that will change with this book. Maybe invite members from other similar groups to join ours too?

Just started.

The author concedes that the title Dissociation Made Simple is indeed an oxymoron. It isn’t for comedic effect, but a goal to strive for. She also wrote Trauma Made Simple and EMDR Made Simple, so this seems a case of Title Made Simple. It’s a cute title. I like it. But, if you’re going to name it that, please adhere to it.

So far, not “simple”. Does not cut to the chase, instead opting for “verbose”, with equal parts taking a long time to say things and meandering a bit with no obvious direction. Beating around the bush is okay and even “fun” when it is entertaining or intriguing, but is not appreciated when it’s a set of academic rabbit hole asides that not even a mother can appreciate.

The book dives in without delay to a use of pronouns that … just … wow. I have pronoun fatigue. That isn’t helping … isn’t easing the introduction to newcomers. Seems squarely intended for those who’ve already been around this block a couple times.

Update: The pronouns tapered off. Not an issue.

Chapter 1 was defining dissociation. She polled several people. What’s your definition?

Adam O’Brien: It’s where you go when things aren’t ok, and it takes care of you.

I struggle listening to this author. It is hard to put a finger on it, but I often have to re-listen several times to parts. Her tone is part. It doesn’t travel up and down and doesn’t convey where in the sentence you are or where you are going. Different cultures do it differently and each are fine, being self-consistent, but not here. Far too many of the words of each sentence are rather forcefully emphasized, almost stern or militant. The asides are part of it. In the middle of a sentence she’ll break off to define or elaborate something. That can be helpful, but when your asides have asides, the context gets lost. After a cascade of asides explaining asides all in the same sentence, she continues with this as if you have a prayer of knowing which object she was is now talking about. The nomenclature is part of it. She uses lots of full tilt terminology instead of plain English. For example, she interject qualifiers like ventral without having said it before nor bothering with one of her asides to define it, and it seems likely relevant that ventral is juxtaposed to say dorsal but she doesn’t really say that and keeps on trucking. I probably have some of these same tendencies, but my editorial brain tends to kick in and translate to plain English where ever possible. In a book titled Made Simple, she is not. Seems like she has some good information here but it’s hard to access, like when I eat a crab and spending more calories getting through the shell to the meat than the calories I get from eating the meat.

Steve, what great analogies! I just started reading and agree with some of your points.
I didn't know that what I did as a child and adult was called dissociation until I was researching my book. I write about some of those experiences in one chapter; how in high school my nickname was "space cadet" because I zoned out so often. I didn't use drugs or alcohol like many of my peers, because I hated the idea of not being in control. That said, at least a few times a day I zoned out, disappearing in a grey cloud of space, where my limbs would slowly detach one by one and drift off. I felt nothing except curiosity, no fear. One incident is a bit horrifying when you consider my parents' response: I went into a catatonic state in my bedroom, and they left me sitting on the edge of the bed staring at a wall -- for 3 days. When I later heard them talk about it when I was a young adult, I of course asked, "Weren't you concerned?!" Both my mom and step-dad said I was always spacing out, so they figured if they left me alone I would come out of it in my own time. I have zero memory of that incident.

What I've learned in my research, echoed in Dissociation Made Simple, is that my 'superpower' of being able to tune out everything around me was actually dissociative behavior. In addition, the separation from my body during abuse was another form. I would 'leave' my body and disappear into a tile in the ceiling, or a fold in the curtains.

Even with my personal experience and background research, I'm finding the author's writing style to be a bit muddled. She does go off on tangents, and to me, it's as if she is trying too hard. Now, because I know myself so well, I have to recognize that I must carry some of those unwanted traits in my writing, because it annoys me when I read them in hers.

I'm looking forward to continuing this book.

3 days catatonic?! Wow!
My parents would not allow 1s. If that wanted me to do to something, … now was generally when, and if I didn’t immediately start making sounds and motions of acknowledgment and compliance, things escalated fast.