[RepComm] RAMIKADYC I: Dissociation

[mamuzzy]

I started to talk about Ramikadyc in this post and I wanted to further explain, what is this Commando State of Mind that Kal taught them actually. I struggled to write about this topic, and I think the hardest part was to not making it too personal. But reading about this meant a lot to me. 

 

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Skirata called it ramikadyc—in a commando state of mind. It was a soldier’s unshakable belief that he or she could do anything, endure anything, take any risk, and succeed. It was stronger than muscle. It made the body do the impossible.

I’m not in pain. Any pain that I feel is temporary. Nothing can touch me. This is happening to someone else. I just observe it as I pass.

That mantra kept Darman going when all he wanted to do was lie down and die. He’d felt that way more in the last few weeks than he ever had in his life. Kal Skirata had taught his young commandos an armory of ramikadyc techniques for resisting interrogation, a way of shutting out reality to become someone else who wasn’t in that terrible place you found yourself in.

Some visualized putting their pain and fear in a box, or concentrating on its physical reality so minutely that it fragmented and ceased to register; some simply imagined they were somewhere else. And pushed beyond the breaking point by hunger, thirst, or exhaustion, Darman had been taught to focus only on the next moment that he could bear to think about—the next second, next step, next hill, next meal—time after time, until he’d come through the ordeal.

- Imperial Commando: 501st

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It's dissociation. Kal taught them how to dissociate in situations that was too much to bear mentally and physically. Whether you want to force yourself to do the impossible, or enduring pain that you wouldn't be able to do normally. Now when your dissociation doesn't make you forget things, it feels like that you are numbing yourself. It's a freeze reaction (as in fight-flight-freeze-fawn). You put your emotions ice, either because you weren't allowed to express it due to circumstances, or the said emotions are just too intense to actually feel it (like fear, terror, or about to cry). But the thing is with ice, that it eventually starts to melt. 

 

Dissociating can be delaying emotions, because you are not allowed to experience them at that moment when something triggers it. They are not gone, they don't disappear, they just catch up again later. 
 

It is actually useful when everyone is panicking around you in a dangerous or life-threatening situation, so you don’t absorb the environment’s emotional state and you can remain calm and think clearly and finding solutions to the given problem. But first you probably encounter with it, when you are in a abusive household where emotions and reactions are heavily monitored and punished, so you have to find a way to numb your emotions and with it, not react - at all. 
 

But after the immediate danger passes (or even months later, sometimes years later), your brain decides that you are no threatened so it’s okay to feel emotions again: and everything floods you that you repressed.
 

DISSOCIATION =/= Being mindfully control of emotions. You are not a Jedi by dissociating, you are not acknowledging the emotions and letting them pass. You are straightout repress it. 

In relevance of the Commandos, they had to learn to tolerate pain, VERY INTENSE PAIN, so when they are interrogated, the wouldn’t talk and they won’t beg for mercy. Darman uses this technique constantly when he is dealing with the death of his wife, Etain, because he can’t deal with the pain. He doesn’t allow himself to healthily grief. 

While it is your brain defensive mechanism that tries to protect you from harm, it is not a healthy way to deal with emotions in long term and can lead to the development of cPTSD. Severe dissociation symptoms like creating alters in your stead can be also tied Dissociative Identity Disorder too, but I will talk about the latter in the continuation.

Comments

[ithillia]

I really love this lil dissection here, especially this part:
"DISSOCIATION =/= Being mindfully control of emotions".

They way I see this copimg mechanism, dissociation might be part of your innate healthy defense mechanism, but when done consciously and for a long time, you might dissociate yourself so much, that you won't find your way back.

(If I remember correctly, though I could not find that part now, I read in one of the Boba Fett books (also by KT hahahaha) that Boba said that he was so distraught since the day his father was beheeaded before him, he just turned on-and-off his emotions as needed until the day he could not turn them back on and he was left empty.)

[mamuzzy]

Switching emotions off and on is actually a very good description!!!
I don't think either that dissociation is a harmful thing on its own, but yes, when it's prolonged, that's what makes it unhealthy.