Some of the more common and insidious forms of sensory dissociation are the ones that allow the continuation of unhealthy habits and lifestyles that also feel bad, from drinking and smoking to inactivity and excessive agitation. Our body constantly sends us signals — hangovers, coughing, joint pain, headaches, ulcers, fatigue, you name it — but we

And just as Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, so, too, all children, as they begin to label and value and judge, lose contact, at least somewhat, with their unselfconscious body-mind, with the ineffable, nonverbal garden within.

Marijuana seems to be the self-medication of choice for the underreflective, but cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and even opiates are also used.

As the left brain develops, it creates a whole new spectrum of selves — or, rather, it alters all the existing selves, intertwining itself with all the different combinations of the moving, feeling, and sensing selves that were already being integrated through the right brain. It adds self-consciousness. It adds planning. It adds goals.

Of course, the inner-child and inner-parent exercises are not as distinct from each other as I have drawn them. They are two sides of the same coin. Almost inevitably, when you interact with your parents in this way, you will feel yourself to be a child, as you did then. In the inner-child exercises, an everyday grown-up self interacts in a

In unreliable folks, the right-brain doing self long ago learned to dismiss the left brain as an alarmist drill sergeant who’ll work them both until they drop if allowed. The planner and the doer don’t get along, and the inner self feels no obligation to heed carelessly worded instructions about which it has not even been consulted.

The tendency of people with ADD is to impulsively avoid painful experiences, which makes it much less likely for them to maintain focus on an area in which they have no natural gift. Therefore, these deficits are likely to be amplified instead of corrected.

Where trance is the indisputable mainstay of treatment, however, is in the dissociative disorders. Disorganization, procrastination, and the avoidance of mental work are not, in adults, only manifestations of ADD as a neurophysiological problem but also the consequences of a dissociative condition, a disjunction of left-brain planning functions

Conflict and lack of clarity create discomfort, which interferes with reflection and therefore creates more conflict and sets off more danger signals.