6 Ways To Move Out Of Disconnection.

I am speaking in this post to people who at times feel disconnected, out of body, dizzy, light headed, and un-grounded.  These times can come around times of stress, trauma triggers, or sometimes people feel this perpetually for a season.  I think if we tune into someone’s story, if they feel this, then we will also in part.  For example, I sometimes will be talking to someone in a session, about something stressful, and I will get a sense that this is happening because I get a bit light headed.  I will ask “do you feel light headed or having a hard time focusing?”  And they usually describe something similar.  Interestingly when my child was crying with colick this was the same experience I had.  Or when in some argument a close friend, I will feel it then as well.  More intense versions of it will happen in life or death situations.  Sometimes people describe panic in this way.  

How to exit disconnection:

1.  Try to resonate (feel with) their disconnection

When you sit with someone who is in a state of disconnection or dissociation, you might feel it in part.  This is your mirror neuron system, which allows you to experience a bit of what the other person is experiencing.  

I first try to put into words why what they are talking about is disorienting, “it makes sense that you feel disoriented here, at this moment, because of what you have been talking about”…  

2.  Find the emotion.

In dissociation or disconnection, the emotional area of the brain is off line, it is important to reintegrate it. Often when we start to feel, the intensity of rage, fear or shame keeps us from coming out of a state of disconnection, and once again we go back into a dissociated state.

Sometimes we need to ask the question in different ways, to get us to feel.  

What do you feel in your body while you tell me this?

What might you wish me to feel by telling me this?

What might you fear I might feel by telling me this?

I sometimes read clients’ micro expressions and then help them find their emotions.

We can journal an angry journal entry.  Put words to all the reasons we are angry!  “I am angry because my plans were interrupted, my rights violated, I was concerned for my wellbeing, expectations were broken, I was totally overloaded!”  Then try to notice the body sensations of anger “my hands and legs tell me I am ready to fight, my neck is tight, my eyes glowing, I notice a tightness in my chest and stomach”…

We can journal our embarrassment and shame.  I wanted to cover my face, cower in the corner, my own son stood up for me and I let him down, he found out that I lied to him for years.  He was my biggest fan and now I lost his respect.  

3.  Become grounded in your body.

In disconnection, the right anterior cingulate (which has to do with interoceptive awareness) and the anterior cingulate cortex (which integrates bodily responses with behavioral demands and with emotional awareness) both have decreased activity.  For centuries humans have felt at times disconnected.  I speculate that every culture and time has tried to find solutions for this.  Yoga, Tai chi, Pilates, and Qigong are examples of this, which essentially is focus on calm breathing in different body postures.  My favorite exercise is to stand up and shift weight from your right to left leg.  Focus only on the bottom of your feet.  Start with shifting 50 lb back and forth.  Then decrease it to 25 lb, then 15lb, then 10b.  At this point if you can still feel the slightest shift of weight from right to left then continue this for several minutes.  Likely you will notice that it grounds you!  Another way I do this is by walking and focusing on the bottom of my feet.  As you walk, return your focus to all the different sensations that occur simply by moving your feet up and down.  For those who need a much more stronger sensation, it might be helpful to hold ice while lifting up your hands.  

4. Doing mirroring exercises.  

More on this later.  But basically sing with others, laugh with others, dance with others.  There is something about movement with others that is important.  Improv seems to have different exercises to help groups move into connection.  If you understand the mirror neuron system they seem less silly!  Often without knowing why, disconnected clients gravitate towards these things, in order to find ways to ground themselves.  

5.  Optimizing your sensorium.   Sensorium is not something most people think about, but I think it is a helpful concept to understand.  Sensorium is our mental capacity at a given moment.  If we are tiered, starved, sleep deprived, with no connection to loved ones, we have a lower sensorium then our baseline.  Someone with dementia will have a lower base sensorium and therefore a small urinary infection will make them delirious with hallucinations and increased confusion.  If you have obstructive sleep apnea (stop breathing thousands of times per night) then you will have lower sensorium then normal.  Doing things that increase our bodies inflammation hurts our sensorium.  Alcohol decreases our sensorium.  To optimize our sensorium, we eat healthy, have moderate exercise, and eliminate certain medications, alcohol and drugs, and increase our sleep quality… I will blog more on this later.

6.  Find your meaning and purpose.  

Meaning and purpose activate your frontal lobe, and bring your brain into more integration.  In disconnection our frontal lobe activity is actually decreased in brain scans.  I find Rembrandt’s picture of the prodigal son and Henri Nouwen’s story “The Return of the Prodigal Son” has been very grounding in my life on a spiritual level.  I have read the book which is Nouwen’s quest into the story behind the picture.  I can visualize it in my mind when feeling disconnected.  In one 2 year longitudinal study of a group of 596 medically ill elderly patients, feeling disconnection from God, designated by those who answered positive to “Questioned God’s love for me” increased their risk of death by 22% compared to those who did not (RR, 1.22 P=.05).  (Pargament, 2001)  I will therefore in my blog try to address connection and disconnection in this context as well.  

Please write any comments on things you might add or have worked for you.  Or if you have any questions or thoughts about what I might write on in more detail, leave a comment and I will try to address it in a further blog.