Dear Cali Chica:

Not strange to me. Dissociating, numb, blocked soft emotions much of the time, this is how I was most of my life. Like you, my dissociation was not complete, probably it never is complete.

Your dog does not represent a threat to you, so no wonder you feel more for him. You… don’t project your mother into your dog, so your dog is .. just a dog for you.

When something big happens, alarms is rung through the pathways of the brain and dissociation is activated automatically. When you watch a movie, on the other hand, no alarm, you know it is fiction, not really happening, so soft emotions are not blocked.

The good news is that you are not like your mother. You are like a whole lot of people who protected themselves from people like your mother. Another good news, you can re-associate, get that softness back beyond interacting with your dog, watching movies or here and there, at times. After all, it is happening with me, this re-association, the gradual undoing of the disassociation. It is doable.

Not easy though, can’t just will it to happen, but having faith that it can happen, that it is doable, and aiming at it is a beginning in this process of re-associating, softening. I wonder if you need the psychotherapeutic setting to do this kind of work.

It will have to  be an excellent therapist to satisfy you, though.

anita