In school, I learned about dissociation. I see it used in various online spaces and memes and to some it may remain an undefined word. Dissociation is defined as the experience of feeling (physically, emotionally, mentally) detached from your environment, i.e., a detachment from reality.
This can range from a moment of healthy/functional dissociation — detaching yourself from reality to protect yourself and later to return to reality and have the “detached” part of yourself return to the “whole” part of yourself—to a moment of more severe, pathological dissociation—such as being consistently detached with an inability to return to reality and unite the “detached” parts with the “whole.”
After the news about the murders of six Asian women in Atlanta, I found myself in a dissociative state. I told myself, this is just a healthy dissociation. It is adaptive. It is my way of staying under control. As a graduate student, I had a whole week ahead of me full of classes, appointments with patients, and my part-time work. And I went by the entire week like that: detached, numb, and productive.
In one class, my professor notified me that she was planning on having a moment of silence and discussion in our class about the recent events. As one of the two POC professors in our program and a mentor figure of mines, I appreciated that someone was making space to talk about this in an academic setting after an entire week of silence.
She requested that I read out the names of the individuals, in case she would mispronounce them. I felt a tenseness in my body. I repressed (i.e., pushed away) these feelings of pain, grief, sorrow, and anger and agreed to help read the names and draft the program’s statement of solidarity in response to the murders. If I’m not the one to do it, who will?
In another class led by one of my White professors, he suggested we start the class with a minute of silence. After this minute, as if checking off the “be an ally” item on his to do list, we moved on to class content. There were a few comments from myself and my classmates about the importance of taking action and showing support in addition to this minute of silence, but this conversation was at most 10 minutes. I felt a pang in my heart about how this moment mirrors how calls for support for our community have been minimized, pushed aside, and not prioritized by the media, lawmakers, and people in power. This action was like saying, “We have better, more important things to do,” as if acknowledging current events and engaging in social justice are not important components of our duty as mental health clinicians.
I reconnected with a co-worker, also an Asian woman, as we reminisced bonding over being women of color in predominantly White organizations. This was a year ago, when COVID-19 related hate acts towards Asian Americans were — and still are—surging.
Speaking to this co-worker helped pull me closer to reality as I felt more in touch with my emotions: all the anger, resentment, sorrow, grief, and fear I was feeling as a professional working in a field that was created by and for White folks. Why do these predominantly White institutions demand physical and emotional labor from POC and marginalized folks to educate other White folks in the institution, when these White folks are able to use the same Google that we would use to compile resources for their continued learning and education?
As I came back to reality and left my dissociative state, the emotions were surging within me. I looked forward to seeing my therapist and processing my emotions with her, but that would not be until Tuesday. I came across various community healing spaces and decided to attend one.
The healing space exceeded all of my expectations and allowed me to heal alongside my community members that were also suffering, in pain, and grieving. It was a completely different feeling from receiving support from my White classmates or to confide in my White therapist. To feel the collective virtual hug from the community members that were in attendance was something that I needed in this time of isolation and grief.
I’ve said this to my clients and friends alike as I assured them that healing is continuous and nonlinear. There will be harder moments that make our days more difficult. There will be happy moments that make our days better. There will be a mix of both in all of our days moving forward.
But sometimes it’s hard to practice what we preach.
Last week, just when I felt that I well on the path of healing, I heard from my dad about him wanting to purchase a security camera for our home. I made a joke about if he wanted it to snoop on the neighbors. He laughed along before explaining that it was because someone had thrown eggs and rocks at our family home, and he wanted the camera to see who did it.
My heart dropped to my stomach. I tried to remain calm on the phone, assuring my dad that I would purchase the camera and would come home that weekend to help set it up. I reminded him to be careful when cleaning the eggs from the front door, in case someone were to be using the eggs as a reason to lure them out of the home in order to attack them.
I craved the warm community hug I received from the support group more than anything in this moment. I felt vulnerable and at a loss—no one is safe from these acts of hate, not even my parents. I feared for their safety and felt helpless about what I could do about it. I was not okay. What made the most sense to me in this moment was to reach out to my classmates and community to share what happened. I did not know what I wanted them to say but I just wanted to confide in someone—anyone—in that moment.
I was met with a storm of “I’m sorrys” and comforting messages. Despite the comfort I felt, I still felt jaded and at a loss. What can these ‘I’m sorrys’ do? What will the security camera do? What will my parents do when they’re confronted on a street and it’s not just eggs?
Later in class, my classmates asked about my family’s safety and wellbeing. I appreciated the sentiment but felt moderately uncomfortable—I am not accustomed to asking for help or seeking comfort and am more accustomed to solving things on my own independently, something I learned from my parents. While I felt uncomfortable, I didn’t regret reaching out to confide in my classmates and leaned into the discomfort, as I embraced their compassion.
However, out of habit, I found myself downplaying the event. I assured my classmates that I was doing better than when I messaged the group chat, and that my parents are doing alright as well. “I’m glad that it was just eggs,” I said, “My family has certainly experienced worse. It’s nothing new.”
A classmate stopped me and said, “But the fact that it’s ‘nothing new’ doesn’t make it okay.”
For both myself and my parents, it was adaptive for us to tell ourselves that it was just eggs, it’s nothing new, at least it wasn’t something worse. For us to dissociate every now and then to convince ourselves that the “land of the free” and the great America that my parents chose to immigrate to is not as bad as it could be, is our way of protecting ourselves from further turmoil and distress. We have acclimated ourselves to living in a world where having eggs and rocks thrown at our door is the least of our worries. But that doesn’t make it okay.
Now that I am sitting in my family’s home, security camera installed, sweet and sour pork and rice sitting on the dinner table, I am doing okay. No longer in my dissociative state, I write this to process my experiences and to have my feelings on paper to let myself know my feelings are valid and that my pain and grief are valid, and to let others know that you are not alone in your fear, pain, and grief. I encourage others to take the space you need, journal, rest, exercise, sit in nature, and do what you need to heal, because we will need to heal in order to have the energy to fight and to protect our loved ones.
And to those who are wondering, my parents are doing okay as well. Earlier in the day, my dad and I wrestled and sparred each other as we demonstrated various self defense tactics for my mom, who was scrolling facebook on her phone in one hand and eating bún riêu with her other hand. In my dad’s words, he came to this country and has survived being a refugee, and surely won’t let these acts of hate ruin his appetite, but #StopAsianHate should not be a thing trending in 2021; he hoped America would have been a better place by now, after all those years.
