Many people may experience dissociation (dissociate) at some stage in their life.
Dissociation is one way the mind copes with extreme stress. Everyone’s experience of dissociation is different, but typical signs are feeling disconnected from yourself and the world around you, feeling detached from your body or feeling the world around you isn’t real.
Experiences of dissociation can be triggered by being so absorbed in a book or film that you lose awareness of your surroundings, or driving a familiar route and arriving at your destination without memory of how you got there. Experiences of dissociation can last for hours, days, weeks, or or even months. For many people, it’s a natural response to trauma they can’t control.
Dissociation may be a way of coping with stressful experiences, a symptom of mental health problems, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder. Some people may even dissociate as part of certain cultural or religious practices. Dissociation can also be a side effect of alcohol or some medication, or when coming off medication.
Dissociation can be experienced in different ways and there are specific dissociative disorders:
Dissociative amnesia — Having difficulty remembering personal information: • Gaps in your memory where you can’t remember certain events
- Being unable to remember information about yourself or your life history • Forgetting how to do something you’ve been able to do well in the past • Finding you have items that you don’t remember owning
Dissociative fugue — Travelling to a different location or taking on a new identity:
- You might travel somewhere and forget how you got there. You might forget important details about yourself and take on a new identity
De-realisation — Feeling like the world around you is unreal:
- Seeing objects changing in shape, size or colour
- Feeling detached or separate from the world around you
- Seeing the world as ‘lifeless’ or ‘foggy’
- Feeling like you’re seeing the world through a pane of glass
- Feeling like you’re living in a dream
- Feeling as if other people are robots (even though you know they aren’t) Depersonalisation — Feeling like you’re looking at yourself from the outside: 1 of 2
- Feeling as though you’re looking at yourself from the outside or watching yourself in a film
- Feeling as if you are observing your emotions
- Feeling disconnected from parts of your body or your emotions
- Feeling as if you’re floating away
- Feeling unsure of the boundaries between yourself and other people
Identity alteration — Feeling your identity shift and change:
- Switching between different parts of your personality
- Speaking in a different voice or voices
- Using a different name or names
- Feeling as if you’re losing control to someone else
- Experiencing different parts of your identity at different times
- Acting like different people, including children
Identity confusion — Difficulty defining what kind of person you are: • Finding it very difficult to define what kind of person you are
- Feeling like your opinions, tastes, thoughts and beliefs change a lot
Triggers and flashbacks:
A flashback is a sudden, involuntary re-experiencing of a past traumatic event as if it’s happening in the present. You might even experience a different identity with different memories. Things you see, hear, taste, smell or touch that remind you of past trauma can cause dissociation. Flashbacks can cause you to experience sensations and feelings from the past so that you relive a past traumatic event in the present.