While you may not be able to control dissociation, you can reduce the likelihood of it happening and also try to learn to ignore it when it does happen rather than letting your anxiety make it spiral out of control. In other words, the dissociation will stop when your brain no longer feels the need to protect you.
Cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral therapy are the two most effective behavioral therapies to treat dissociation.
If you dissociate, you may feel disconnected from yourself and the world around you. For example, you may feel detached from your body or feel as though the world around you is unreal.
Eye contact is broken, the conversation comes to an abrupt halt, and clients can look frightened, “spacey,” or emotionally shut down. Clients often report feeling disconnected from the environment as well as their body sensations and can no longer accurately gauge the passage of time.
Periods of dissociation can last for a relatively short time (hours or days) or for much longer (weeks or months). It can sometimes last for years, but usually if a person has other dissociative disorders. Many people with a dissociative disorder have had a traumatic event during childhood.
They can happen to us all sometimes. For example, during periods of intense stress or when we're very tired. Some people also find that using drugs like cannabis can cause feelings of derealisation and depersonalisation. Dissociation is also a normal way of coping during traumatic events.
If someone with the disorder is experiencing ongoing trauma, then dissociation can become “fixed and automatic” outside of one's control, with some people reporting that they've been stuck in a dissociative period for weeks, months, or even years at a time.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
Some anxiolytic medications reduce hyperarousal and the intrusive symptoms of dissociative disorders. SSRIs are also commonly used to treat anxiety and are good choices for people with dissociative disorders. Benzodiazepines are typically contraindicated because they typically exacerbate dissociation.
Sometimes dissociation is a way of coping by avoiding negative thoughts or feelings related to memories of traumatic events. When people are dissociating they disconnect from their surroundings, which can stop the trauma memories and lower fear, anxiety and shame.
Evidence suggests that dissociation is associated with psychotic experiences, particularly hallucinations, but also other symptoms. However, until now, symptom-specific relationships with dissociation have not been comprehensively synthesized.
Awareness of yourself and what's going on around you can be compromised during dissociation, which might feel like an unwelcome and frightening intrusion into your mind. On a psychological level, dissociating can be an involuntary means of coping with acute stress, such as physical abuse.
Dissociation can occur in response to traumatic events, and/or in response to prolonged exposure to trauma (for example, trauma that occurs in the context of people's relationships). Dissociation can affect memory, sense of identity, the way the world is perceived and the connection to the physical body 3.
The four dissociative disorders are: Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociative Fugue, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Depersonalization Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Frey, 2001; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1991).
While there is no absolute cure for dissociative identity disorder (DID), therapy can reduce your symptoms and improve your quality of life. DID is a rare condition where you have two or more distinct personality states. The symptoms are often lifelong, but treatments can help you cope.
If someone with major dissociation does not seek help, Dr. Hunter says it could get worse over time. She explains that you may find it difficult to feel safe or maintain a healthy long-term relationship.
Talking therapies are the recommended treatment for dissociative disorders. Counselling or psychotherapy can help you to feel safer in yourself. A therapist can help you to explore and process traumatic events from the past, which can help you understand why you dissociate.
Findings revealed that therapists have strong emotional and behavioral responses to a patient's dissociation in session, which include anxiety, feelings of aloneness, retreat into one's own subjectivity and alternating patterns of hyperarousal and mutual dissociation.
A sense of being detached from yourself and your emotions. A perception of the people and things around you as distorted and unreal. A blurred sense of identity. Significant stress or problems in your relationships, work or other important areas of your life.
Dissociative disorders usually result from trauma and stress in childhood, not adulthood. They stem from chronic trauma (for example, repeated episodes of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse).
Recent research evaluating the relationship between Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and dissociation has suggested that there is a dissociative subtype of PTSD, defined primarily by symptoms of derealization (i.e., feeling as if the world is not real) and depersonalization (i.e., feeling as if oneself is not real) ...