Watch out for it...it will happen! Perfect. Is the detachment considered part of the trauma response of flight? My own defense was to freeze, to deny that the event/abuse happened. At one point, I heard myself say, 'that didn't happen', that inner voice had gotten loud enough to hear. Once heard, then I could attend to why I used freeze as a response to trauma.
We should look at it in this way, that many reflexive reactions can be either very adaptive, or very obstructive to adaptation depending on the context. As I happens I am extremely adapted to survive in an authoritarian situation. The detachment and reflexive hiding of one's emotions (even from oneself if need be) facilitates survival under these conditions. In modernity, I find that I am maladaptive, because this level of survival reaction gets activiated when my emotional survival would already be assured by the tepid, contemporary conditions. Still, I have survival reactions, which would suit me better to a time of extremes or a time of war.
