It allows those who have experienced trauma to go about their normal daily living whilst coping with emotional distress. For some, many aspects of dissociating is a comforting, positive experience but it can also be a frightening reminder of upsetting experiences, causing your brain to jump into 'panic mode'.
Dissociation may be a normal phenomenon, but like everything in life, all in moderation. For some, dissociation becomes the main coping mechanism they use to deal with the effects of a trauma response in anxiety disorders, such as PTSD, or other disorders, such as depression.
Dissociation can help a person feel as if situations, his or her body sensations, emotions that would have been overwhelming, etc., are muted and distorted so he or she can then go into “autopilot” mode and survive extreme situations and circumstances.
When people are dissociating, they are less aware (or unaware) of their surroundings or inner sensations. Reduced awareness is one way to cope with triggers in the environment or from memories that would otherwise reawaken a sense of immediate danger.
Whether we realize it or not, we all use dissociation as a coping or defense mechanism. It helps us get through our day-to-day lives, ensuring that our basic needs are being met such as belonging, being loved, feeling safe, and controlling our environments around us.
People with anxiety disorder may use dissociation as an avoidance coping mechanism when their anxiety levels peak and they feel incapable of handling their emotional or physical reactions. Alternatively, when a person dissociates, they may experience anxiety about feeling removed from their body.
The bond dissociation energy is the energy required—an endothermic process—to break a bond and form two atomic or molecular fragments, each with one electron of the original shared pair. Thus, a very stable bond has a large bond dissociation energy—more energy must be added to cleave the bond.
This can be a completely natural reaction to traumatic experiences, and can be helpful as a way of coping at the time. However, dissociation can become problematic when it happens often and/ or intensely in situations where it is unhelpful- causing distress and negatively impacting on a young person's life.
Unable to accept comfort or believe anything good about yourself. Unable to find words or connect to those around you. Feeling dead inside. A sense of being trapped behind glass or underwater; experiencing the world at a great distance.
If you experience dissociation during a traumatic event, you may separate different parts of the experience so you don't have to deal with them all together. Different aspects of the experience may not feel 'joined up'. Your actions, memories, feelings, thoughts, sensations and perceptions may feel separate.
Some signs your therapist can sense if you're dissociating:
They start to pull away. They feel disconnected. They feel confused.
“Dissociation is part of the fight-or-flight response, which is an involuntary survival network that helps protect us from threats or danger,” says Sabina Mauro, PsyD, who specializes in treating patients living with trauma in Yardley, Pennsylvania.
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.
From the outside, someone who's dissociating may appear disconnected or non-responsive as you interact with them, adds Halpern. "They might seem to space out, and their face may go blank," she says.
They won't be waiting to jump in with their opinion or to tell you how their experience was different. It isn't about them. A therapist uses silence intentionally as a tool. Wise use of silence in therapy can increase your chances of having profound insights and powerful emotional experiences.
Trauma-Related Dissociation is sometimes described as a 'mental escape' when physical escape is not possible, or when a person is so emotionally overwhelmed that they cannot cope any longer. Sometimes dissociation is like 'switching off'. Some survivors describe it as a way of saying 'this isn't happening to me'.
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.
The four dissociative disorders are: Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociative Fugue, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Depersonalization Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Frey, 2001; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1991).
Dissociation occurs when a person feels disconnected from themselves and the world around them. It can be a healthy response to boredom, stress, trauma, fear or emotional overload, allowing ourselves to avoid some of the strong physiological responses to a negative situation.
experienced a form of dissociation. Similar to when you zone out, emotional numbness happens unconsciously. It's the result of our minds disconnecting from our thoughts, actions, sense of self and sensory experience of the world around us.
If you have a dissociation problem, stress or boredom can cause the following: your head feels filled with fog or sand and you can't think straight. you feel very tired or even struggle to stay awake. there is a sensation you are 'out of your body', you can feel light, odd.
When you can't feel your emotions, you're likely to be in a dissociative state. This frequently occurs when people are overwhelmed, and the body switches to survival mode, resulting in numbness or blankness. “Not feeling” is also a protective psychic defense during a time of crisis.
ADHD may significantly increase mental stress levels. Developmental issues may affect how a person responds to stressful life events, which may lead to dissociation.