However, the seemingly relentless ANS is motivated and driven to avoid any triggering situation, often at the cost of mistrust and insecure attachment with others. To sum up, you can recognize an ANS by its need to be from the outside high functioning and often can show signs of solid work ethic and dedication that is not seldom admired by others. Unfortunately, those emotionally disconnected ANSs will struggle to form meaningful relationships with others and have a poor grasp of their physical and emotional needs. Particularly desperate ANSs might engage in more harmful detached self-soothing activities such as self-harm, binge eating, or substance abuse to prevent EPs from intruding. Detachment by disconnecting from emotions and body sensations.Ĭonsequently, those avoidant behaviors can drain mental energy and not seldom cause depression, anxiety, or chronic feelings of hopelessness, shame, guilt, or rage.Anesthesia (insensitivity or loss of particular sensory input.For example, the ANS handles social relationships, work, learning, and caretaking for others and their physical needs while avoiding reminders of their traumas.īecause an ANS cannot correctly integrate and process the traumatic materials contained by the EP, ANSs are often highly phobic and avoidant towards reminders of their trauma to prevent the activation of flashbacks. Trauma Survivors, as ANSs, are rational, present-oriented, and mainly grounded with a focus on how to cope with their everyday life. What exactly is an Apparently Normal Self (ANS)? Therefore, it is eminent to understand and start treating dissociation if we want to treat trauma effectively.Ĭhronically traumatised clients often present different parts that roughly can be separated into an “Apparently Normal Self” (ANS) and “Emotional Part” (EP). Since they often need to go on with life, they start to mentally avoid their unresolved and “too much to handle” past and sometimes present and try to keep up an appearance of normality, which can be easily triggered. So what is actual dissociation?Ĭomplex trauma survivors often lack the adequate interactive capacity to realize and process their traumatic experiences fully. Therefore, I want to shed some light on it. This combination leads to the fact that clients often don’t get the treatment they need. They are in a state of confusion, often accompanied by feelings of shame and not sharing symptoms. Clinicians either don’t identify dissociation or make a problem out of it, and clients don’t know what is happening with them. Also, I keep coming across many misconceptions about dissociation among clinicians and clients alike. This makes it highly challenging for assessment and treatment. Often they present a mix of many symptoms and receive not seldom up to five different clinical diagnoses. Life can be a huge struggle for a client that has been chronically traumatized. In Featured Articles J2163 0 0 Why is dissociation often misunderstood and goes unrecognised?
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