Severe dissociation, like that which is often associated with borderline personality disorder, can be broken down into five specific classifications. These types are
Dissociation during times of stress is one of the main symptoms of BPD. It's also associated with acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), both of which can co-occur with BPD. It's important to note that not everyone with BPD experiences dissociation.
In BPD, stress-related dissociation is one of the core diagnostic features [1]. Up to 80% of patients experience transient dissociative symptoms.
Symptoms of dissociative disorder can vary but may include: feeling disconnected from yourself and the world around you. forgetting about certain time periods, events and personal information. feeling uncertain about who you are.
Experiences of dissociation can last for a short time (hours or days) or for much longer (weeks or months). Dissociation may be something that you experience for a short time while something traumatic is happening. But you also may have learned to dissociate as a way of coping with stressful experiences.
Those with BPD experiencing dissociation often feel lost, scared, and detached from reality. While dissociation is not the primary symptom of BPD, it is one of the symptoms that make getting treatment for BPD all the more urgent.
In BPD, stress-related dissociation is a core symptom, closely linked to other features of the disorder [1, 49]. Up to 80% of patients with BPD report transient dissociative symptoms, such as derealization, depersonalization, numbing, and analgesia [1, 50].
Some of the symptoms of dissociation include the following. You may forget about certain time periods, events and personal information. Feeling disconnected from your own body. Feeling disconnected from the world around you.
Dissociative identity disorder
While the different personality states influence the person's behaviour, the person is usually not aware of these personality states and experiences them as memory lapses.
Many times, people who are dissociating are not even aware that it is happening, other people notice it. Just like other types of avoidance, dissociation can interfere with facing up and getting over a trauma or an unrealistic fear.
Emotional detachment is a common core feature of quiet BPD. Instead of feeling everything intensely, they may feel nothing at all. Emotional detachment in quiet BPD is often linked to structural dissociation, specifically due to the creation of a persona that is unfeeling.
When their feelings become too unbearable, a person with quiet BPD frequently will detach emotionally from their experience, also known as dissociation. This can feel as if you are watching your life happen from afar and disconnected from painful feelings and desirable feelings such as happiness and love.
Chronic Emptiness and Fear of Abandonment
In this example, the dissociation—as a symptom of BPD—set up the gaslighting. Once this spark is ignited, other symptoms of BPD make the experience and the relationship worse. BPD is a perfect storm for introducing gaslighting into relationships.
An unstable sense of self, or self-image is indicative of BPD also. This can lead to quick changes in goals, careers and the like. Opinions of self tend to fluctuate from high to low rapidly. Sufferers of BPD sometimes describe “out-of-body” experiences and feelings of separateness.
Separations, disagreements, and rejections—real or perceived—are the most common triggers for symptoms. A person with BPD is highly sensitive to abandonment and being alone, which brings about intense feelings of anger, fear, suicidal thoughts and self-harm, and very impulsive decisions.
Because gaslighting is a form of manipulation. Many struggling with BPD are already highly sensitive individuals and lean towards perfectionistic tendencies and people-pleasing (which are manifestations of their trauma and rooted in low self-worth). When gaslit, these individuals are being invalidated.
Some signs your therapist can sense if you're dissociating:
They start to pull away. They feel disconnected. They feel confused.
Zoning out is considered a type of dissociation, which is a feeling of being disconnected from the world around you. Some people experience severe dissociation, but "zoning out" is considered a much milder form. Daydreaming is the most common kind of zoning or spacing out.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
Examples of dissociative symptoms include the experience of detachment or feeling as if one is outside one's body, and loss of memory or amnesia. Dissociative disorders are frequently associated with previous experience of trauma. There are three types of dissociative disorders: Dissociative identity disorder.
There are five main ways in which the dissociation of psychological processes changes the way a person experiences living: depersonalization, derealization, amnesia, identity confusion, and identity alteration.
Shutdown dissociation simulates central nervous system neuropathy. Peripheral neuropathy describes the damage to the peripheral nervous system. Peripheral damage affects one or more dermatomes and thus produces symptoms for specific areas of the body.
Sense of nothingness, numbness and disconnection from self and others. Participants largely defined feelings of chronic emptiness as a sense of nothingness or a feeling of numbness.
To complicate matters, people with BPD often experience an intense fear of abandonment, sometimes due to their self-image issues, and may have difficulty spending time alone. When they're with people, they can demonstrate bouts of anger, moodiness or impulsivity that can push loved ones away.
Symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder
Many people who struggle with BPD symptoms report intense feelings of emotional sensitivity that are difficult to manage and control. This experience can be exhausting and scary, as well as isolating. Everyone experiences BPD symptoms in a unique way.