Dissociation 101: What Is It?

Although there is no official definition that everyone embraces, the essential definition of dissociation (also known as disassociation) is a mental disconnect from your thoughts, feelings, memories, and/or your sense of identity. You might feel like you aren't yourself, like you're being possessed, like your memories aren't yours, like your thoughts or feelings aren't yours, or something along those lines. Sometimes, people who are in a dissociative state can feel like they're an entirely different person.

When you're dissociated, you can feel like the world around you is unreal. But at the same time, you may have physical side-effects that should remind you that it is (but they often don't). Your heart might be pounding, you might be light-headed, or you might be emotionally numb and just detached. You can feel a lot or nothing at all. Basically, everything just disconnects.

One thing that seems to confuse a lot of people is how they can't tell when someone's dissociated. This is because here aren't really outward signs of dissociation that people can look for. Some people may stare off when they dissociate, but others walk around, continuing on their life in a trance-like state, similar to being lost in thought.

The most common reason for a person do dissociate is trauma. Dissociation is, in a nutshell, a way for a person to cope when they have no other way to escape the pain that surrounds them. They mentally disconnect to a point so that they can keep going in life without absolutely shattering. It doesn't have to only be trauma that causes dissociation, but that's a common reason. But those who are in a lot of pain, whether physical or mental, may also find themselves starting to disconnect so that they can keep going. The pain doesn't disappear, but for as long as they're dissociated, they don't have to face the full extent of it.

Dissociation isn't entirely good, though. Things around you can seem distorted and unreal when you're dissociated and that can lead you to take risks that you otherwise wouldn't—and perhaps shouldn't—take. It may make you start to think that life is just a giant game.

Depending on your specific kind of dissociation, you could even lose memories of certain time periods, certain events, of some people, and even forget personal information.

There are three main dissociative disorders, and those are as follows:

• Dissociative Amnesia

• Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

• Depersonalization Disorder

A psychiatrist has to diagnose you with an official dissociative disorder, but you can most certainly dissociate without one. It's quite helpful, though, to try to keep in mind what "kind" of dissociation you relate to more. Some people don't forget what happened while they dissociated, others have alters (those with DID) where they don't share memories and you remember things when you're the alter who had that memory.

Dissociative Identity Disorder is a bit too complicated for me to really go into in this short post, but it is helpful to keep in mind that when you're dissociating, not only can you feel like you're more than one "entity," but your mind may have created a whole new side of you for you to swap to when you're in too much pain.

Other than that, I hope this cleared some stuff up for you! If you have any questions, feel free to comment or send me an email and I'll try to answer, whether in a response or in a new blog post. Thanks so much for reading!