Can Someone Disconnect From Their Emotions If They Have Experienced Trauma?

In addition to a physical and mental self, someone also has an emotional self. Nonetheless, just because they will have at least three parts to their being, it doesn’t mean that they will always be in touch with each of these parts.

What one may find, that’s if they were to reflect on how they experience life, is that they are rarely in touch with their emotional self. As a result of this, it could also mean that they spend a lot of time being disconnected from their body – their physical self.

One and the same

The reason for this is that one will feel most of their emotions in their body, so if they rarely experience their emotions, they are unlikely to spend much time in their body. Their body is then still going to be connected to their head, but they won’t feel strongly connected to it.

Thus, they are going to spend a lot of time in their head, which will mean that they will have a strong connection to their mental self. Other people may often describe them as someone who is fairly intellectual.

On The Surface

Through living in this way, it is going to be a challenge for them to really embrace the Trauma Therapy Toronto life that they have been given. Instead, they are likely to be on the sidelines and unable to really take part in what is going on.

As the emotional part of their being is what allows them to feel connected to others and life itself, it is going to be perfectly normal for them to feel disconnected from everyone and everything whenever they are disconnected from themselves. In this place, it will seem as though they are separate from everything and are all alone.

Cut-off

If they do have people in their life, then, they are unlikely to feel a strong connection to them. The part of their being that would allow this to occur – their emotional self – will be offline and out of reach.

When it comes to their love life, they could be with someone and yet not feel connected to them. Or, they may have had a number of relationships that were like this, with each person making a point about them being emotionally unavailable.

On The Plus Side

If there is a benefit to living this way it is that they will most likely avoid a lot of the ups and down that they would have if they had a strong connection to their emotional self. In general, they could just be numb and not feel anything.

Still, this doesn’t mean that they won’t ever be taken out by how they feel and they might have moments when they feel deeply depressed. What this illustrates is that although they typically won’t have access to how they feel, how they feel still have an impact on their mood.

Self-Blame

After they have thought about how they experience life, they could end up believing that there must be something inherently wrong with them. Through being defective in some way, it won’t be possible for them to experience life in the same way that other people do.

Even if they do come to this conclusion, it doesn’t mean that there is any truth to it. How they experience life is likely to be a way for them to stop themselves from being overwhelmed by how they feel, not a sign that there is something inherently wrong with them.

Protection

On one side, living in this way is going to stop them from being able to really embrace life, but on the other, it is going to stop them from being taken out by how they feel. What this shows is that they are carrying a lot of emotional pain inside them, and so, while they will usually come across as emotionless, they actually feel things deeply.

If they were to change how they experience life, for instance, they would soon come into contact with this pain. Keeping their life the same is then going to be essential, that’s if they are to keep it together, so to speak.

A Closer Look

What this is likely to show is that during their adult life and/or during their childhood years, they experienced trauma. There may have been one experience or a number of experiences that were too much for them to handle, thereby causing them to feel completely overwhelmed and unable to integrate what took place.

The years will have passed but the charge of what took place will have stayed inside them, preventing them from being able to function as a whole human being. Ergo, the emotional charge that is inside them will need to be dealt with if they are to experience life differently.

A Process

Naturally, this is not going to be something that will take place overnight. If they tried to face all this pain in one go, they would soon end up disconnecting from themselves (or going mad) as it would be too much for them to handle.

Their mind would cause them to dissociate once again to keep them safe. So while being in a dissociated state will cause them problems, it will simply be their minds way of keeping them alive.