Dear Elise:

“I don’t know how I felt”- when children feel very scared, or otherwise very distressed, they get overwhelmed, the intensity of the feelings is too much, so they disconnect/disassociate. But the feelings are not gone, and they seep out or erupt in sometimes strange ways.

When a parent is angry at a young child, the child always feels guilty/ deserving of the parent’s anger, and if the parent gets repeatedly angry at a child (be it by spanking, using angry words, having an angry facial expression, and so forth), the child gets angry at herself, and at times angry at her angry parent (and then feeling extra guilty for feeling angry at her parent).

Back to disassociation, every child disassociates, some more than others. After years of disassociation, we don’t remember how we felt back then, we don’t remember a lot of what happened when we felt scared.. we don’t want to remember. But even if we forget the feelings, the feelings don’t forget us, they are always with us, until we reconnect to them, or re-associate.

Are you receiving any treatment for your OCD, medications or therapy?

(I will soon be away from the computer for the next 12 hours or so).

anita