Talking therapy. 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.
Dissociative disorders are a range of conditions that can cause physical and psychological problems. Some dissociative disorders are very shortlived, perhaps following a traumatic life event, and resolve on their own over a matter of weeks or months. Others can last much longer.
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.
Dissociation may persist because it is a way of not having negative feelings in the moment, but it is never a cure. Too much dissociating can slow or prevent recovery from the impact of trauma or PTSD.
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.
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.
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 involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
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.
When people are dissociated, they still are out doing things, but they are not aware of doing those things. Further, they are not able to recall having done things either.
Dissociation Symptoms
Memory loss surrounding specific events, interactions, or experiences. A sense of detachment from your emotions (aka emotional numbness) and identity. Feeling as if the world is unreal; out-of-body experiences. Mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide.
While dissociation is not a symptom of ADHD, the two are closely related because they are often comorbid. 123 People with dissociative disorders may also show symptoms of ADHD and vice versa.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
You may feel as if you have no control over your actions. This terrifying feeling often is accompanied by thoughts and fears of losing touch with reality or losing control over yourself. Depersonalization can cause frightening physical sensations such as numbness or tingling.
Many people may experience dissociation in their life and some forms of dissociation are healthy. Dissociation is one way the brain copes with too much stress or during a traumatic event.