Grounding exercises help bring you back to the present moment when you're dissociating. These techniques often use your current surroundings, senses and breathing to calm yourself. They also help refocus your attention on your safety in the present and away from anxious thoughts.
The key strategy to deal with dissociation is grounding. Grounding means connecting back into the here and now. Grounding in therapy (therapist does). Note: It is always important to return to active treatment including doing exposure or trauma narrative.
For many people, dissociation is a natural response to trauma that they can't control. It could be a response to a one-off traumatic event or ongoing trauma and abuse. You can read more on our page about the causes of dissociative disorders. Dissociation might be a way to cope with very stressful experiences.
Dissociation is a natural response to trauma while it's happening. But some of us may still experience dissociation long after the traumatic event has finished. Past experiences of dissociation during traumatic events may mean that you haven't processed these experiences fully.
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.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
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.
It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time. The symptoms often go away on their own. It may take hours, days, or weeks. You may need treatment, though, if your dissociation is happening because you've had an extremely troubling experience or you have a mental health disorder like schizophrenia.
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.
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.
Dissociation functions as a coping mechanism developed by the body to manage and protect against overwhelming emotions and distress 6. This can be a completely natural reaction to traumatic experiences, and can be helpful as a way of coping at the time.
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.
People with dissociative disorders are at increased risk of complications and associated disorders, such as: Self-harm or mutilation. Suicidal thoughts and behavior. Sexual dysfunction.
For some people, the tremors are big movements in the muscles. For others, they are tiny contractions that feel like electrical frequencies moving through the body. TRE® is not painful—in fact, most people enjoy the sensations.
Being in a dissociated state may feel like spacing out or mind wandering. There may be a sense of the world not being real. People might watch themselves from seemingly outside their bodies. There is also a detachment from one's self-identity.
Dissociation is the opposite of association or recombination.
This is a normal process that everyone has experienced. Examples of mild, common dissociation include daydreaming, highway hypnosis or “getting lost” in a book or movie, all of which involve “losing touch” with awareness of one's immediate surroundings.
Dissociative identity disorder
Previously called multiple personality disorder, this is the most severe kind of dissociative disorder. The condition typically involves the coexistence of two or more personality states within the same person.
Dissociative disorder clients typically spend many years in treatment. Many are hospitalized repeatedly over time.
Some signs your therapist can sense if you're dissociating:
They start to pull away. They feel disconnected. They feel confused.
Dissociation is one of the symptoms of anxiety, as well as a trigger for anxiety. 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.