Disordered thinking. Hearing voices. Living in an unreality. These are descriptions of some of the key symptoms of psychosis. We see those with lived experience as suffering, as having a second mental world thrust on them in the form of an illness that needs to be treated and cured. But what if psychosis is merely the human body’s response to overwhelming stress and complex trauma?
Like Peeta recovering from being brainwashed in The Hunger Games trilogy, these individuals must constantly ask themselves “real or not real?” because their emotions have become so completely overwhelmed by trauma and stress beyond what the brain can handle. Therefore, it follows that psychosis is a logical trauma response on a spectrum of possible bodily responses.
Writing for Psychology Today, two trauma therapists, Ann Bayly-Bruneel and Mark Shelvock, explored this idea together from years of experience with those in psychosis or struggling with schizophrenia. Both agree that psychosis is part of dissociation – a breakdown in how the mind processes incoming information.
“Psychosis can be conceptualized as part of the dissociation continuum. While there are many theories and ways to understand the process of psychosis or dissociating, one theory that has gained traction within psychosomatic (body-oriented) communities is to see this as embodied wisdom,” Bayly-Bruneel and Shelvock wrote. “As humans, we have been gifted with the innate survival mechanism to dissociate and to fragment when life is so untenable.”
Continuing this thought, the authors ask that we imagine being subject to these traumatizing experiences without this innate ability to insulate our minds through dissociation. We can be grateful that this mechanism exists within our bodies as a means of self-preservation.
“The truth is that our mind (psyche) and body (soma) are frequently more interested in survival than always experiencing a sense of wholeness. Dissociation is a natural response to horrifying, mind-boggling, and overwhelming traumatic experiences. We do not consider psychosis as a symptom that needs to be intrinsically eliminated or destroyed,” Bayly-Bruneel and Shelvock wrote. “Rather, when we honor dissociation as a truly amazing, organic, and life-saving process that often reduces shame-based responses to the physiological ways in which people adapt and survive.”