Martha Stout's When I Woke Up Tuesday, It Was Friday

The Extremes of Self Discovery
An individual may struggle all of his or her life to figure out who he or she is as an individual for the duration of his or her life, usually beginning with one’s past. The past always has a way to seemingly define a person’s personality and characteristics. As a result, depending on the type of past that a person has experienced, as an individual matures he or she will try to go against his or her upbringing and family situation while other individuals may attempt to hold on to the past in order to discover his or her roots. This notion of self-discovery was explored in “When I Woke Up Tuesday, It Was Friday” by Martha Stout in relation to trauma victims. Stout, a psychologist, interviewed trauma victims, in …show more content…
In particular, Stout explored the mental disorder of dissociation that a victim of trauma unconsciously utilizes to protect his or her mind from the horror of the trauma that a victim has experienced. While this method of self-protection may seem ideal, for a trauma victim he or she may suffer moments of time where he or she may completely blank out from reality. This phenomenon hampers a trauma victim’s efforts as he or she may try to retrieve one’s repressed memories to uncover parts of his or her identity. Another psychologist, Leslie Bell, also studied how people go to extreme lengths to change how people depict an individual’s character based on deemed societal norms. Bell wrote about her findings in an essay “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom,” where women, in particular, often suffer from the dictated norms of society in regards to sex.. The women that Bell interview portray their journey of splitting, in essence creating another identity consciously, in an attempt to satisfy their sexual desires. Both texts thoroughly explore the struggle of an individual attempting to discover who he or she may be. However, regardless of a person’s past, those experiences aid in defining a …show more content…
Any individual experiences moments where he or she cannot seem to hold on to who he or she may be as a person. This divide is more extreme in people who suffer from dissociation and splitting. For these people the question of how to approach rediscovering his or her identity can be difficult. Another one of Stout’s patient’s, Seth, recounted how he was able to maintain his consciousness in the present and did not succumb to dissociation. This was a major feat to accomplish. Seth was able to accomplish this “By trying with everything [he had] to concentrate on [Stout], and what [Stout] was saying and on the things around [him] in the office [t]here” (Stout 434). The level of concentration required for a person suffering from dissociation is immense. While an individual is trying to keep his or her conscious in reality he or she is actively attempting to overcome his or her separation of consciousness. When this step is taken, an individual may then remember the importance of living in the present and not unconsciously being consumed by his or her memories. This action will then help an individual to reclaim the lost parts of his or her identity, thereby gradually overcoming his or her oppressing traumatic memories. Even in a situation where an individual is conscious of separating one’s identity may also experience a sense of loss from the extremes of one’s