This started as a comment elsewhere, and I added to it a couple times. Of course something 3 levels down in the comments doesn't get seen. It was well enough received, I thought I'd repost as a post.

I ran into one meta-definition of dissociation that just made so much sense.

You have multiple minds, and data processing systems. rational, emotional. narrative memory, implicit memory.... When you disconnect one or more you are dissociating.

If this is true, then you dissociate all the time in normal life:

• daydreaming -- your largely ignoring somatic and sensory input.

• driving -- part of you is doing "To the Office, James" disconnects from the memory system.

• hyperfocus -- Pete walker talks about Left brain dissociation. Getting so wrapped up in your intellectual life, that you ignore emotions and the rest. Computer programmers. Video games. Ever gotten wrapped up in something only to surface at 4 a.m. having to pee?

• emo-dissing -- ever been a miserable mess just sitting there feeling bad, not thinking about anything at all? I've never seen a label for this, but when I talk about it, immediate nods of agreement.

I think that meditating is another form of dissociation. With it you are trying to cut of the constant yammer of the intellectual brain, and be in the present.

I may be off base with this.

I think most of us dis a lot. Not just us sickies. All of us. It's a survival mechanism, but its also a tool. So instead of stigmatizing it, we should seek to master it.

But here's my idea: I want to learn how to control them. If I can get control over the mild forms, I may be able to learn to control the wild ones. Not sure how much control I have or can have over the "wild" ones. And by control I don't mean stop. Dissociation is an ability. I want to use it.

Analogy: If you take a swing at you with hands or a stick, I reflexively put up my hands to intercept the blow.

If I train in martial arts or unarmed combat, I channel that reflex into pushing the blow aside, and getting inside your defenses.

I don't know enough to say what form controlled depersonalization will take. But it's another way to cut the puppet strings.