The Ambient Dissociation of Being Alive in 2025
It's hard to be alive today.
Fear, panic, desperation, control, manipulation, addiction, collapse, violence, capitulation, psychosis, self harm, mental health issues, economic instability, gaslighting, ghosting... these experiences seem more and more normalized.
One example of the desperate state of affairs picked easily amongst hundreds: One man can earn 1 trillion dollars while others struggle and starve. That same man, responsible for mass suffering and death through the destruction of USAID calls Joyce Carol Oates mean. Because she tweets that an unnamed wealthy man doesn't seem to enjoy normal human things.
And a couple more examples:
"They're eating the dogs.. they're eating the cats." - DJT
“Panera’s moderately caffeinated lemonade was loosely associated with 2 deaths before it was taken off market. This article alone has 4 examples of ChatGPT encouraging young people to commit suicide, and OpenAI’s own public stats estimate over a million users discuss suicide with ChatGPT each week.” - Ryan Marino, MD
Little makes sense. It's the worst online but it’s trickling down into the personal at an ever rapid rate….
In the transactional way we treat friends and lovers. In our insistence that we are right and the world is wrong rather than considering that both sides may be a complex mix of both.
We spend more time taking care of our properties, finances, jobs, and appearance than we do spending time with each other or doing things we enjoy.
It doesn't make sense. Yet we persist.
What does it feel like to live in this world where lies thrive with no consequence? Where we are surrounded by obvious nonsense at best, cruelty at worst?
We each have unique ways of metabolizing our experiences and getting through. Common default methods include: anxiety, withdrawal, and self soothing behaviours (scrolling, eating, drinking...).
Being exposed to the worst of humanity normalizes the act of dissociation from who we are and what we know is right. We don't want to feel what it feels like to be alive right now. So we leave.
It's infectious.
I call the collective human unmooring that comprises our lives today Ambient Dissociation. Most human beings are dissociated most of the time and the result is we are swimming in the water of dissociation. And dissociation breeds dissociation. Which makes the problem worse.
In this piece I talk about Ambient Dissociation from the lens of trauma, the solution as a collective integrative healing project, and why the solution matters far beyond our individual wellbeing.
Let's start with a primer on dissociation. We dissociate when we have an experience that is too much for us to feel in the moment. Example: we are in a moderate car accident - no one was hurt but we felt the crash and we are shaken. We go into a kind of shock. We might shake. We might feel afraid. Or furious. We might not think exactly straight. We leave ourselves and are not present. This is a survival mechanism.
With repeated exposure to shocks or pain we become more and more habitutated to our shock responses which include fight, flight, play dead/collapse, fawn, addictive behaviours, anxiety, depression, reactivity, psychosis, etc. Each of these responses are a state where our nervous system acts to protect us from what we are experiencing. It's protective by (dis)regulating but over time it can separate us from the truth of the moment, our life force energy... who we are. When it becomes our default state we feel empty and the protective mechanisms begin to create bad circumstances: difficulty in relationships, job problems, addictions, etc.
We usually think of violence, accidents and abuse but dissociation happens as a result of countless events. 'Small' shocks are not small when we are young. 'Small' shocks accumulate over time to larger effect on our beings. Once we are our default mode is dissociation it doesn’t take much to jostle us out of our centre.
Ambient Dissociation is individual dissociation multiplied throughout most of humanity, most of the time. It is a systemic and collective condition - the result of pervasive dysregulation. Now that we have entered this space, it feeds on itself - dysregulation leading to more dysregulation such that it feels like the chaos and confusion has a life of its own.
Inside our collective ambient dissociation it is difficult to feel the truth of a moment. We are disconnected from our life force energy itself resulting in confusion, delusion and perhaps even collective psychosis.
And so we see trends such as:
Systemic Gaslighting: We are continuously bombarded with information and political rhetoric that defies basic sense, forcing us to try and "believe" things that contradict our intuitive and factual understanding of the world. This is societal gaslighting on a massive scale, overwhelming our capacity for rational and emotional coherence. Gaslighting passes from one dissociated person to another like a virus causing fear, and confusion and amplifying all existing struggles and conditions..
Economic Illusion: Our current economic framework rewards extraction and externalizes costs. Corporations are hailed as profitable and intelligent while simultaneously ignoring the staggering human and climate debt they accrue. The financial systems pretend to be "making money" when, if the full human and ecological costs were accounted for, their balance sheets would collapse. This collective agreement to ignore reality is a clear signal of dissociation.
Overload of Fragmentation: From the baffling complexity of 38 kinds of frozen french fries at the grocery store to the climate-raping logistics of shipping disposable plastic from China to North America to be sold for a dollar, our reality is fragmented into too many choices, too much complexity, and far too many ethical contradictions to manage. Our overwhelmed nervous systems cannot process this flood, leading us to radiate out fracture and absorb it from others.
There is a huge cost to all of this. When humans are present they make good decisions, take care of each other, think ahead... they are aware of their impact on the world, they take complex factors into account. Present humans are secure enough to protect the vulnerable and to know their limits and when they need nourishment themselves.
Dissociated humans are the opposite - they may struggle with creating a stable life, they may hurt others and themselves, they may make poorer decisions, they don't have capacity to consider their impact. They are afraid and so they grasp, hoard, and spread fear.
[Note: I am not making a comment on the nature of evil and its relationship to trauma. For the purposes of this piece I am talking about normal, well-intended people.]
Dissociation is contagious. A paranoid person spreads suspicion and fear. Addicts introduce others to substances. Cynicism and hopelessness are catching.
There is nothing moral in this. We all dissociate. We all need and deserve compassion for those parts of us that struggle to stay present.
Recognizing that this ubiquitous confusion is actually a trauma response is the first step toward finding our way back to coherence and aliveness.
So how does dissociation heal? How we do we come back to ourselves?
Here's a primer on trauma healing:
First - soothe the nervous system. We pay gentle attention to ourselves, bringing the compassion we would bring to a small child. We relax, move, and feel.
Second - gentle titration. The principle of titration is to gently feel the emotion and physical sensation of the moment a little bit at a time. This happens naturally as we relax. We feel a physical sensation or emotion, we think a previously unthought thought.... we let this experience happen. And then before the experience becomes overwhelming we return to relaxation. Titration can take many forms and varying amounts of time.
We don't figure this out alone. At first we need help - from our parents, caregivers, teachers and later from friends and therapists. Over time we can come to witness ourselves and care for ourselves - being aware of our state, aware when we leave/dissociate, and aware of what we need to return. We become more and more present, open hearted, open-minded, and connected.
There is a tendency to see healing as individual. And I certainly believe in and support individual practice, psychotherapy, etc. But we have made these endeavours into capitalistic ventures with slick marketing and individualistic goals. Yes - invest in someone wise, trained and caring to speak with. And also - invest energetically in relationships that welcome all the parts of you. Cry with others. Reflect with others. Spend time in nature alone yes - and also together. Pets count. Tress count.
There is a delicate balance between doing this work with people who are trained and not believing that only "experts" can help. Witnessing and caring is the work of all of us. The existence of therapists (and other trained practitioners) is one more sign of our fractured world and yet - the world is indeed fractured and thus we do indeed need help outside our families for our emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing.
I don't sit in the camp of "we don't need healing". We do - we all do. I think of it like this - with a broken arm - I need help. And we know how to help a broken arm - there is hope. The same is true for dissociation. There is collective wisdom available to help you feel better. There's nothing wrong with you when you have a broken arm or PTSD - but there is help to relieve your suffering and bring you back to wholeness - the truth of who you are.
So healing exists. And - it's a practice. Ongoing. Of noticing dissociation and returning to presence. Always with love and reverence. Always.
Our individual practice, best done in relaitonship and community, impacts the field of ambient dissociation. The fact of consciousness tricks us into thinking we're not a part of it all. But it’s not true. A thought we allow ourselves to think, an emotion we allow ourselves to have - these things have material impact on our world.
I call this process remembering. Literally putting ourselves back together again.
We do not fight authoritarianism with socialism. We become people who choose to take care of ourselves and others. Each of us has a role to play in that.
So when we're considering why a OpenAI continues to offer a free technology that has aided hundreds of thousands of people in self harm continues to be available or we feel hopeless in the face of Amazon deliveries, fast fashion, and the carbon emissions of our transportation choices... we have the option to bring ourselves back to presence before deciding on a response.
Fighting online, giving up in the face of challenge - these are dissociative responses to trauma. As we heal we become actors in the world bringing our uniqueness to the problems of our time. And we don’t lose energy doing it.
The challenges are big right now. And so big healing is required.
To dig a bit deeper on the two phase model of healing (this may be a bit technical so feel free to skip) - there are five aspects of humans that experience this healing: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and sexual.
Healing happens as we titrate (feel) in and out of relaxation, while spiraling around these five aspects in an ongoing healing cycle that is uniquelly ours.
Physical: Becoming present in the body. This is a practice of strengthening, health, and flexibility, anchoring us to the reality of the immediate moment.
Mental: Thinking slowly and carefully to cultivate our own, genuine thoughts that change as we learn and are able to consider ideas that appear to conflict with ours.
Emotional: Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings fully. Emotion is natural us. To attempt to live with logic devoid of emotion is to attempt to live outside the body and escape nature itself. Accessing joy, sadness, and rage is a key component of becoming whole.
Spiritual: This is not dogma, but a practice of relationship and belonging - our deep connection to nature and to one another.
Sexual: This is the life force energy to create - it includes but goes far beyond genital sexuality. It asks us to hold our desire as sacred and express the fullness of ourselves in a life that is orgasmic in nature. It’s our birthright.
When we experience shock or trauma it interrupts our connection with ourselves. And so our expressions become less conscious, less connected to who we are. The process of remembering brings us back.
Each human moves through this process in their own unique way. Our nature carries us through it. And as we do we change the constitution of the world itself.
The invitation is the feel it all, become whole, and use ambient dissociation as the motivation to move and more wholeness.
Soul
Soul is wholeness. It is meaning, body, nature, creativity, and art. It is what is not said as much as what is said. It is the reality that life, including our own, are not under our control - our heart beats without our conscious act. We live. That is soul.
We remember soul through feeling our body, our emotions, having our thoughts, connecting to nature and each other and expressing ourselves creatively (i.e. living out our desires).
Soul is contacted thought. the body, dreams, and all creative production. It is the truth of ourselves - conscious and unconscious.
My relationship to the word Soul is influenced by the work of Marion Woodman who say Soul as the embodied essence of a person. It includes every aspect of ourselves including those of which we are not aware or do not control (such as the digestion of food or self sabotage patterns).
Photo by Matt Benson on Unsplash
The connection to Technology, Finance, and Governance (TSG)
Soul expresses itself through everything we say and do - it comes out in language, dreams, movement, synchronicities, fantasies, love, sex, physical experiences, and art.
And because humans build technology, markets, and political systems - these human made things also express soul. They have points of view, unconscious expression…. The more present and grounded and whole the people who make, trade and rule are the more solid our systems become, the more connected to human values and the way nature works..
Everything we create, everything we do, expresses our values and, therefore, expresses soul. There is soul in technology, soul in markets, and soul in governance because they are all made up of and influenced by soul.
The process of remembering soul is the process of becoming conscious of this pervasive reality. It requires us to ask: What does this particular experience/situation/technology feel like? What does my soul want? What values are being expressed? This demands radical honesty - to acknowledge the ways we harm or contribute -and, imperfectly, channel our life force energy into more meaningful ways.
In an environment of Ambient Dissociation, Remembering Soul takes time. Because dissociation is disconnection from life force, the healing work is reconnecting to soul.
The way a therapist notices how her client hurriedly stuffs papers into a briefcase as she sits down for a session holding what the body is expressing as more than the issue consciously on the client's mind... so we can hold our world and how it works as more than its express intent.
Technology
Technology is more than the latest app or AI model; as philosopher Ursula Franklin defined it, technology is simply "the way we do things." Our tools, our methods, and our infrastructure are all technology, and they reflect our deepest, often unconscious, values.
Thinking about AI & Social media, the technologies top of our minds at the moment, when we fail to remember soul in technology, we see the inevitable results:
Privacy and Safety: The erosion of personal data boundaries and the amplification of Surveillance Capitalism.
Mental Health: Social media platforms optimized for addiction and dopamine hooks, contributing to a crisis in mental health, particularly among the young.
Safety: Child Predators, bullying, scams thriving on popular platforms - technology designed built and maintained without a commitment to the welfare of users.
Employment: The disruption and deskilling of labor caused by AI and automation prioritizing economics over human experience, demanding a new ethical framework for work, education and contribution.
Exploitation: hiring of workers in the Global South for content moderation, construction of data centres near vulnerable communities causing blackouts, increased electricity prices and more.
Soul demands tools and systems that are built for human and planetary flourishing, not merely for extraction and profit.
Finance
Currently, our economic system operates under the delusion of extractive capitalism - a model that is fundamentally impossible to sustain because it refuses to account for the actual costs of human and climate impact.
To remember soul in finance means to confront these uncomfortable truths:
Economic Models: Challenging the dominant narratives (like the legacy of Friedman economics) and engaging seriously with alternative frameworks such as creator and wellbeing economies and steady state economics.
Sustainability: Moving beyond ESG window-dressing to embed true ecological and social costs into the balance sheet.
Redefining Employment and Abundance: Recognizing the precarity of the modern worker and exploring solutions like a Social Stipend or Universal Basic Income (UBI) that decouple survival from relentless, unsustainable growth.
As we remember soul we shift our focus from scarcity and perpetual borrowing—the ultimate financial trauma response—to a recognition of the abundance of life itself. The earth is capable of providing it is up to us to allow it.
The paradox of our era is that despite massive technological and productive capacity we are all enslaved by credit, borrowing, and the constant fear of scarcity. This disconnect between production and security is a hallmark of collective trauma.
We have the opportunity to redefine profitability to include health and wellbeing and attribute climate and human costs where they are owed.
Governance
Governance is the mechanism by which we manage our collective agreements, conflicts, and resources. When soul is forgotten, governance becomes distant, disrespected, and disconnected from the people it serves.
Remembering soul in governance leads to a focus on:
Interconnection and Decentralization: Fostering systems that emphasize our deep, factual interconnectedness, often through models of decentralization, whether political or technological.
Local Engagement: Shifting our focus to active participation and respect for local governance—the closest expression of community values.
Values-Driven Leadership: Creating systems that truly support and reward ethical leaders and citizens, changing our often adversarial relationship with those who govern.
