Dear Readers. Happy 2023. I am returning to my last year’s resolution of writing, because, as it turns out, I am a consistent person: consistently procrastinating, consistently petrified of writing something bad, consistently incapable of holding self accountable, consistently driven by friends’ affirmations, consistently both anxious AND desirable of a public presence, a constant of which, both this year and the last, has stymied my creative output, and yet, I consistently imagine, to be slightly improved with a January phoenix-like (phoenician?) rebirth from the old ashy and inarticulate self, via Substack.
SARAH’S SEVEN SPIRAL PROOF TIPS FOR DISASSOCIATING
Life? hard. I mean it is wonderful, gorgeous fantastical theatre of scene and character for us to consume.. but the bigger questions — what am i doing with my life? are my friends doing okay? does my mother know I love her? maybe- but would about my 5th grade teacher? definitely not- and did I say something horrifically insulting at the party on Friday??? — are really quite paralyzing to consider.
The demands of school / service jobs / travel volleyball / family tantrums has robbed me of the capacity to spiral over these questions my first 23 years of life. But now, blessed (burdened?) with capacity, I have come to seek alternative coping mechanisms. Mechanisms that create a little distance between your current moment of existence and the enormous, rather crippling reality. That put a hazy rosy hue on the past, on the future, and on every atomic instant in between. That muffles the part of your brain racing with discontent, uncertainty.
For lack of a better term, I am going to call these mechanisms disassociating. But I don’t mean the ketamine kind, i mean something softer, gentler. Something that you can lean into, at your own will, as you lean out of the paralyzing reality of being a human, with all its autonomy and consequence.
#1 - Music.
My personal favorite. Music tugs at your attention in such a pleasant way, helping you glide over all the bumps and cracks in a day. Old songs infect thoughts with nostalgia; new songs with excitement. It gives your life a sountrack, makes every plot twist feel intentional. Breakups become gorgeously heart-wrenching, the looming Williamsburg bridge simple fodder for your thighs to vanquish. Music distracts, glosses over, idealizes; leaving you at peace with the present.
This is not just personal anecdote, there is some science here too.1 According to Jeanette Bicknell, author of Why Music Move Us, music arouses a kind of “effortless involvement” and “detachment” where “attention is narrowed and aspects of our surroundings recede from awareness.” And because music is portable, we can project it on any number of environments, selecting the tone that we desire to filter out lives through.
Bicknell points out this is particularly true of music without lyrics, which lacks an articulated topic, and grants even more freedom for assigning meaning.2
#2 - Online Shopping
It is true - an absolute TRANCE comes over oneself when online shopping. Time ceases to pass, twenty tabs are open, you are on page 9/127 on reviews for black jeans, your heart is racing, mind operating at 126% capacity, as it compares price vs. length vs. wash vs. size vs. return policy if size is wrong vs. possible resell value if you do return policy wrong. The amount of comparisons demand a staggering amount of attention, not to mention the energy spent imagining visions of your future self wearing potential purchase — arriving in a glow at a dinner party, frolicking at autumnal farmer’s market, doing chores SO CHILL around home — leaving your brain with not a single neuron left to spiral with.
Until of course, you emerge from the trance, violently, sick to your stomach, having purchased not a thing at all and forced to reckon with the numerous hours you spent cultivating your most impressionable capricious consumerist self.
And yes, this applies to apartment hunting too.
#3 - Games
Another technique of the attention variety. Subsumed into an entirely new environment, with new rules, capital structures, definitions of success. Your actions are so limited, so obvious! almost predetermined. And best yet - utterly inconsequential. Games offer an escape, a hop to a different, faux universe, all while remaining on your living room couch.
#4 - Movies, sports, reading books.
Ok nothing groundbreaking here, consuming content in general is great for dissociating. For similar reasons: stuff yourself to stave off yourself.
I put travel in this category too. bombard your senses. new scenes; new smells. and lots of stresses (will you make the connection in Lisbon??? are you being duped at the leather market??) If you keep a steady flow of external crises, not much capacity for internal ones.
#5 - Not sleeping
Oft-lamented, but I am a huge proponent of a 5-6 hour sleep situation. Every podcast will tell you how sleep deprivation lowers your cognitive ability; they fail to mention how it lowers the ability of your cognition to spiral out of control. Limiting your Zs gives your day a nice haze, foggy around the edges, everything sort of blunted, and impersonal. An underlying exhaustion that leaves you feeling raw, fragile, grateful to be alive, as if you just went through some totally taxing event. Plus! an experiment by psychologist Van Heugten and colleagues found that sleep deprivation “undermined memory of emotional material”. Sounds dissociative to me. And close to what I’m chasing ... scuse the sappy prose ... but to mute the harshness of my own regrets.
and such an easy side affect of other life things. queue next club night; impending grad school; children ..
#6 - Talking to other people about your problems
Despite being an absurdly awk and interior kid, I’ve entered a stage of life where I tell everyone every little thing that happened to me. Like if I trip as I walk down Bedford, 5 people will probably hear about it. And if I have drama with my boyfriend, or my mother? I will broadcast to 20 people. tears involved? make it 30+.
Of course I have qualms about this - is this a manifestation of my narcissism? taking space from more worthwhile conversations? invading other’s privacy? probably all the above.
But it makes me feel better. Always more distant, always less invested. Telling a story forces you to construct a narrative, and inserts a degree of separation between yourself (as narrator) and yourself (as person experiencing event). It also allows you to reframe events - with humor, or irony — and in doing so reframes your own perspective.3 Etches over your memories with a preferred version, tailored to your friends’ ears, in sync with your public persona. AND it is shared! I think so much of what is unpleasant about associating is how individual and interior and alone you are in it. But shoving your traumas down others throats? That's a party.
#7 - Fan
Ok so do you ever look straight into a spinning fan. Put your nose half an inch away. Get utterly flooded with the noise and air. It envelopes you; consumes you; it is everything. and yet? it is absolutely nothing at all.
Happy Dissociating :)
AND if you have tips for me ? please. I’m all eager ears.
That is, if you consider psychologytoday.com science
I personally have found solace in this playlist, for dear Zoe, who also appreciates the dissociative properties of the genre.
Biiig stretch, but there’s a (short!) substack post about recent media making fun of rich people on vacation, Even if our attempts at wealth / class redistribution are hopeless, we can tell stories to laugh about it, disassociating a bit from these upsetting structures of society, with our utter failure to address them.