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.
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.
Dissociation is a break in how your mind handles information. You may feel disconnected from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and surroundings. It can affect your sense of identity and your perception of time.
Lots of different things can cause you to dissociate. For example, you might dissociate when you are very stressed, or after something traumatic has happened to you. You might also have symptoms of dissociation as part of another mental illness like anxiety.
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.
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.
They can, but they usually do not. Typically those with dissociative identity disorder experience symptoms for six years or more before being correctly diagnosed and treated.
"Dissociation is a disconnection from one or more of the following: your thoughts, memories, surroundings, actions, or identity," says C. Leigh McInnis, L.P.C., executive director at Newport Healthcare Virginia.
Some signs your therapist can sense if you're dissociating:
They start to pull away. They feel disconnected. They feel confused.
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.
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 key to managing dissociation related to anxiety is to practice grounding techniques to bring yourself back into the present moment. You can do this by always having a "grounding plan" that you put in place when you find yourself spacing out or otherwise feeling as though you are dissociating.
There are classic ways of grounding the body that many therapists teach clients. “Focus on the bottom of your feet and imagine roots growing down,” “describe five things you see, four things you hear, three things you can feel,” “push against a wall, or push hand against hand,” and “hold onto a piece of ice.”
Dissociation is not a form of psychosis. These are two different conditions that may easily be confused for each other. Someone going through a dissociative episode may be thought to be having a psychotic episode, and in some cases, dissociation may be the initial phase to having a psychotic episode.
Dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity, and affect (e.g., depersonalization, derealization, numbing, amnesia, and analgesia).
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.
If someone has dissociated, they are not available for this type of interaction. You are talking to a person who cannot reason with you. The person might be able to hear you, but regardless, they may be unable to respond.
Depersonalization disorder.
Symptoms can last just a matter of moments or return at times over the years. The average onset age is 16, although depersonalization episodes can start anywhere from early to mid childhood. Less than 20% of people with this disorder start experiencing episodes after the age of 20.
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.
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. Many people with a dissociative disorder have had a traumatic event during childhood.
The four dissociative disorders are: Dissociative Amnesia, Dissociative Fugue, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and Depersonalization Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2000; Frey, 2001; Spiegel & Cardeña, 1991).