Dissociation Comes to the Rescue, or Does It?

When an individual experiences a horrific event, there can be many outcomes that might arise. Experiencing a trauma response is predicated upon numerous factors. One includes the presence of adequate protective factors that the individual possesses. Simply, the greater the protective factors and their efficiency, the more likely the individual will be emotionally safeguarded from the severe impacts that traumatic events can have on one’s psychic experience.

Protective factors that range from having basic needs cared for, a firm acceptance of one’s self, prior possession of healthy use of defense mechanisms, and possessing a loving support system, to name a few, increase one’s ability to experience a traumatic event and arrive on the other side relatively emotionally unscathed. However, individuals whose protective factors are less developed or available during a traumatic event are increasingly vulnerable to the sequelae of trauma symptoms that can follow. Jess X Snow’s short film Safe Among Stars (2019) examines the influence trauma can have upon an individual, coupled with how coping with trauma can appear in an Asian family where culture and acculturation are considered.

Protective Factors

Protective factors are resources individuals have that act as a shield from trauma. These resources are both internal and external for an individual and do not build in isolation. Rather, one’s environment can shepherd protective factors that are reliable and effective in minimizing the impact of traumatic experiences. Equally, environments can dampen the effectiveness of protective factors.

For instance, temporary and acute environmental challenges, as well as chronic difficulties within the environment, can burden one’s protective factors and cause one to be increasingly vulnerable to the effects of trauma. Poor adaptive hygiene, such as disturbed sleep, insufficient food consumption, neglected personal care, and stressors within academic, occupational, and interpersonal domains, influence one’s ability to demonstrate resilience in the face of traumatic events. In concert, the quality of familial support and cultural influences can significantly impact one’s ability to secure an emotionally safe place to process and begin to integrate the effects of trauma(s). This is particularly true when one belongs to a culture that is outside of the dominant culture and when there are factors of acculturation at play.

As gleaned from Lee et al.’s (2008) research, findings indicated that Asian Americans may experience struggles adhering to their Asian background and values while attempting to adapt to American culture. The authors expounded that there were four main sources of stress reported by their subjects: parental pressure to succeed, difficulty with balancing two cultures, family obligations, and experiences of discrimination and isolation due to culture. Further, when considering gender, women reported greater intergenerational conflict in regard to dating issues, which the authors noted may be connected to increased parental standards for daughters. In addition, across Asian ethnic groups, there appeared to be a significant acculturation effect, whereas the highly acculturated groups reported significantly less intergenerational conflict.

When protective factors are compromised, such as feeling that family support is unavailable due to societal demands and cultural expectations, one may find oneself unable to effectively process a traumatic experience where clinical symptoms arrive thereafter. Symptoms such as intrusion, avoidance, constriction, and both emotional regulation and cognitive changes are frequent experiences associated with diagnoses of trauma-related disorders (Herman, 2015), including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As with many traumas, the specifics of the event can be difficult to comprehend, causing one to lose voice and words, and the defense mechanism of dissociation may be employed to move through the experience until the traumatic event concludes.

Dissociation, a defense that tends to be pathologized, as any defense, activates in the service of self-protection to the psyche. Dissociation manifests in numerous ways and is frequently conceptualized on a continuum (i.e., daydreaming, depersonalization, derealization, dissociative identity disorder) that can assist with coping with trauma yet can cause significant distress for the individual. As our defenses are reliable with the goal of keeping us safe, they are not always compliant with what we desire from them. Consequently, initially, we are held to allow them to continue to employ themselves even when they are no longer needed. This is the place in which we find Jia, the protagonist of Safe Among Stars, performed by Poppy Liu.

Within this short film, Jia experiences a sexual assault that causes her to struggle to function academically and interpersonally. Her mother, acted by Leah Cai, an immigrant to America, is concerned regarding her choice to discontinue her education at the university and not date in an effort to find a love interest. However, Jia is dating a woman whom she is learning to feel safe with and not dissociate with during moments of intimacy. Jia’s dissociation is concerning for her. Her dissociation leads her to fantasize about a new body and long to know how to stay in the one that she has.

The film concludes with Jia demonstrating the onset of integrating the trauma into who she understands herself to be in the present moment. She begins to be able to share her experiences with individuals with whom she feels safe: her stars (her mother and Sonia). Bringing her love interest into the euphoria she felt from their mutually pleasurable sexual encounter reveals her ability to no longer be and feel alone. In her renewed capacity to find connection, Jia shows her increased ability to seek support by first placing words to her experience and sharing her narrative of the trauma with another.

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Both injured, Jia emotionally and her mother physically (evidenced by a bandaged finger), Jia takes over the household duty of cleaning, demonstrating her capacity to care for another and her increased ego strength and stability. She is no longer running away; rather, she is holding responsibility and relinquishing her mother from her worries regarding what has come of her daughter. Washing away the debris in the bowl, Jia equally washes away the mars of her traumatic experience and begins the conversation to confide about the events that have emotionally scarred her.