What Does it Mean to Dissociate?
One cold morning driving to work way back in 2011, I took an exit off the highway and skidded on untreated ice, losing control of my car. My car swung off the highway and into a bank. Terrifying you might think? But in the moment, I wasn’t scared. I remember the instant when I realized I had lost control of the car (and the outcome) and time seemed to slow down. I felt floaty and detached. I was dissociating from my environment in response to a stressful event. I couldn’t process the level of stress in real time, and the dissociation was a defense mechanism. One I am grateful for! Thankfully I was unharmed.
If you’ve ever felt yourself becoming detached from your sense of self or your environment, you’ve experienced dissociation. It can feel like watching your life from outside your body. In some cases, it can be adaptive and helpful such as in my car accident. In others it can be pleasurable. Losing your sense of time when engrossed in a good book is a form of dissociation. But for some folks it can happen frequently, and cause hindrance to day-to-day functioning.
If children are exposed to traumatic events, such as abuse by a parent or caregiver, they are likely to dissociate as a response to a situation that they cannot physically escape from. They escape in their mind. When children are repeatedly exposed to traumatic events the brain can start to lose its ability to turn this coping mechanism off, and the dissociative response can start to interfere with functioning even in times where there is no immediate danger. This neurological rewiring can have lifelong impacts, with research showing a strong correlation between childhood abuse and dissociation in adulthood, with earlier age of onset and duration correlating with increased levels of dissociation. Mental health conditions such as PTSD, Borderline and Anxiety all have dissociation elements to them, and links to childhood trauma.
Disassociation can present as depersonalization (disconnection from the self) or derealization (disconnection from the environment). A person might experience one or the other, or a combination of the two. Thinking back to my car accident, it felt more like derealization, my mind and body seemed to float away from my environment. This makes sense as it was a sudden environmental stressor. Depersonalization is feeling like you are detached from yourself and disconnected from your body and sensations.
If you experience dissociation often, and at times when you’re not under an immediate threat, and it’s interfering with your daily functioning it may be time to seek some support or coping skills. Grounding techniques such as deep breathing or body scan techniques can help with bringing you back to your body and give short term relief. Deep and longer-term therapeutic work may be required to explore the roots of your tendency to dissociate. Deepening this understanding can help come to terms with dissociative symptoms and make them feel less frightening and powerful.
