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].
Symptoms of a dissociative disorder
feeling disconnected from yourself and the world around you. forgetting about certain time periods, events and personal information. feeling uncertain about who you are. having multiple distinct identities.
Feeling like you're looking at yourself from the outside
Feel as though you are watching yourself in a film or looking at yourself from the outside. Feel as if you are just observing your emotions. Feel disconnected from parts of your body or your emotions. Feel as if you are floating away.
Generally, zoning out or spacing out means that you are simply not in the moment, or that your mind is somewhere else. Zoning out is considered a type of dissociation, which is a feeling of being disconnected from the world around you.
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.
Dissociation and depersonalization disorders
Dissociative amnesia: People forget information about themselves or things that have happened to them. Depersonalization-derealization disorder: This can involve out-of-body experiences, a feeling of being unreal, and an inability to recognize one's image in a mirror.
Some signs your therapist can sense if you're dissociating:
They feel confused. They feel numb. They feel like you've gone somewhere else. Things don't add up.
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.
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.
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.
Splitting is a psychological mechanism which allows the person to tolerate difficult and overwhelming emotions by seeing someone as either good or bad, idealised or devalued. This makes it easier to manage the emotions that they are feeling, which on the surface seem to be contradictory.
Once upset, borderline people are often unable to think straight or calm themselves in a healthy way. They may say hurtful things or act out in dangerous or inappropriate ways.
First, you need to know how to figure out if someone is dissociating. And while everyone's different, some common indications are "if their eyes glaze over, they seem 'checked out' or 'spacey,' their tone changes, they're quieter than usual, or they're staring off into space," explains Schwartz.
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.
Moreover, the question of self-talk frequency in relation to dissociation has been observed before. The more a person partakes in dissociative tendencies, the more likely they are to engage in self-talk.
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.
Passing feelings of depersonalization or derealization are common and aren't necessarily a cause for concern. But ongoing or severe feelings of detachment and distortion of your surroundings can be a sign of depersonalization-derealization disorder or another physical or mental health disorder.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
Grounding is one skill that can be used to reduce dissociation. Grounding exercises involve using external stimuli and your five senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste) to reconnect with the present.