For most people with dissociative amnesia, memory eventually returns, sometimes slowly and sometimes suddenly, which makes the overall outlook very good. In some cases, however, the person is never able to fully recover their lost memories.
Dissociative symptoms include derealization/depersonalization, absorption, and amnesia. These experiences can cause a loss of control over mental processes, including memory and attention.
Talk therapy provides a safe space for you to recover your repressed memories, as your therapist can help you deal with any traumatic memories that come back. Talk therapy is considered the best way to recover your memories. It's the safest, most effective way to remember repressed memories.
Dissociation is a way the mind copes with too much stress. 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.
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. Remember, everyone's experience of dissociation is different.
Too much dissociating can slow or prevent recovery from the impact of trauma or PTSD. Dissociation can become a problem in itself. Blanking out interferes with doing well at school. It can lead to passively going along in risky situations.
You could feel as though you're observing yourself from the outside in — or what some describe as an “out-of-body experience.” Your thoughts and perceptions might be foggy, and you could be confused by what's going on around you.
Signs and symptoms depend on the type of dissociative disorders you have, but may include: Memory loss (amnesia) of certain time periods, events, people and personal information. A sense of being detached from yourself and your emotions. A perception of the people and things around you as distorted and unreal.
Yes. If you have the right diagnosis and treatment, there's a good chance you'll recover. This might mean that you stop experiencing dissociative symptoms. For example, the separate parts of your identity can merge to become one sense of self.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
A growing body of neuroimaging research suggests that dissociative disorders are associated with changes in a number of brain regions. For example, studies have found links between these disorders and the brain areas associated with the processing of emotions, memory, attention, filtering of sensory input, and more.
Usually, signs of dissociation can be as subtle as unexpected lapses in attention, momentary avoidance of eye contact with no memory, staring into space for several moments while appearing to be in a daze, or repeated episodes of short-lived spells of apparent fainting.
Symptoms of Dissociation
“Blanking out” or being unable to remember anything for a period of time. Experiencing a distorted or blurred sense of reality. Feeling disconnected or detached from your emotions. Feeling like you're briefly losing touch with events going on around you, similar to daydreaming.
Visual snow, static, thinking you're seeing things move, blurry vision, floaters etc. You only see them at all because the brain is just looking for something -- anything -- to be the source of the danger.
Zoning out is considered a form of dissociation, but it typically falls at the mild end of the spectrum.
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.
Triggers are sensory stimuli connected with a person's trauma, and dissociation is an overload response. Even years after the traumatic event or circumstances have ceased, certain sights, sounds, smells, touches, and even tastes can set off, or trigger, a cascade of unwanted memories and feelings.
Treatment for DID consists primarily of individual psychotherapy and can last for an average of five to seven years in adults. Individual psychotherapy is the most widely used modality as opposed to family, group or couples therapy.
Although there are no medications that specifically treat dissociative disorders, your doctor may prescribe antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications or antipsychotic drugs to help control the mental health symptoms associated with dissociative disorders.
[24] also confirms this finding by showing that dissociative children have a lower IQ at 90.06 ± 10.3. The personality assessment of adults revealed that 50% of the subjects were emotionally unstable and neurotic. This revealed that neurotics were at higher risk to have dissociation.
The process of dissociation usually occurs outside your own awareness, though you may also realize it is happening, particularly if it is in the context of anxiety. The experience involves a disconnection between your memory, consciousness, identity, and thoughts.