Dissociation might be a way to cope with very stressful experiences. You might experience dissociation as a symptom of a mental health problem, for example post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder.
Most mental health professionals believe that the underlying cause of dissociative disorders is chronic trauma in childhood. Examples of trauma included repeated physical or sexual abuse, emotional abuse or neglect.
Derealisation is where you feel the world around is unreal. People and things around you may seem "lifeless" or "foggy". You can have depersonalisation or derealisation, or both together. It may last only a few moments or come and go over many years.
Severe stress, such as major relationship, financial or work-related issues. Depression or anxiety, especially severe or prolonged depression, or anxiety with panic attacks. Using recreational drugs, which can trigger episodes of depersonalization or derealization.
However, unlike personality disorders, with derealization, the individual senses something isn't quite right with their perception of the world - they have some awareness that it's inaccurate. For this reason, derealization can be highly distressing.
But it's not always so extreme as that. For many, it takes the form of depersonalization or derealization, where your automatic survival/protective response kicks in, causing you to "detach" from the pain or stress you're experiencing.
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.
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.
The causes behind dissociation vary but generally it is a result of trauma. People who suffer from this condition generally use it as a coping mechanism to deal with stress. Dissociation helps protect an individual's consciousness from past traumatic events they experience.
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.
Evidence suggests that dissociation is associated with psychotic experiences, particularly hallucinations, but also other symptoms.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Feeling your identity shift and change
Speak in a different voice or voices. Use a different name or names. Feel as if you are losing control to 'someone else' Experience different parts of your identity at different times.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
Dissociation exists on a spectrum that ranges from mild everyday experiences to disorders that interfere with daily functioning. Nearly everyone experiences mild dissociation from time to time. In fact, daydreaming is a prime and common example of mild dissociation.
Differences in emotions in people with ADHD can lead to 'shutdowns', where someone is so overwhelmed with emotions that they space out, may find it hard to speak or move and may struggle to articulate what they are feeling until they can process their emotions.
As emphasized above, the evidence emerged in the research is that dissociative experiences are significantly associated with symptom clusters of the ADHD, particularly attention deficit symptoms.
Research has linked dissociation and several mental health conditions, including borderline personality, ADHD, and depression.
This is Not Psychosis
People with schizophrenia or psychosis commonly experience hallucinations or delusions that are difficult to distinguish from reality. Individuals with DR may feel strange about themselves or their surroundings, but they do not typically experience hallucinations or delusions.