As described by the American Psychiatric Association, dissociation is a disconnect between your thoughts, memories, feelings and a sense of who you are. You most likely experience it when you are daydreaming, or “getting lost” in a book or movie. When referring to trauma, we may dissociate to help us get away from the emotional and psychological pain and fear caused during a stressful event.  In these examples, dissociation is useful, it provides us with a momentary beneficial experience to the alternate reality that can be boring, slow and/or traumatic. However, neurobiologically speaking, dissociation involves disruptions of usually integrated functions of consciousness, perception, memory, identity and affect. Although the precise mechanism is not clear, it is ultimately affecting how you experience life, or how you are actually experiencing less of it. That’s where the problem lies, when our bodies learn to consistently dissociate in order to escape one’s reality, even when the reality is not physically or immediately dangerous. 

A silly analogy to compare it to is a motorcycle helmet. I once wore one while mountain biking and it sure saved me from a near death experience. During the down hill fall at approximately 15-20 miles per hour, I felt my head slide on the floor and heard the helmet scratching against the cement. My sunglasses broke, but my face was scratch-less. My legs and arms definitely got bruised and scratched up, but I survived a very scary fall. It’s been 6 years since that incident and you will never see me in a bike or motorcycle without a helmet. I’m not scared of bikes per say, but I’ve been a strong believer of helmets since then. However, if I wore a helmet everywhere I went, not only would it be exhausting and hot, but it would also impact a lot of my daily view and experience. For example I wouldn’t be able to eat (imagine it’s one of those helmets with the frontal glass), I wouldn’t be able to see my peripheral vision. I wouldn’t be able to feel the breeze on my face, or easily put on chapstick when my lips are chapped. Entering my car would sure be difficult, and can you imagine showering with a helmet on? Unable to feel the water fall on your head and drip to your toes so smoothly.

Making a habit of dissociating without present danger it’s kind of like that. You miss a lot of your daily life. You might miss the funny comment your partner made while you were both washing your teeth together. You might not even be aware of all the times your friend reached out for you to hang out but you didn’t answer because picking up the phone was such a dread, maybe you didn’t even notice the phone rang and now it’s too much effort to call back. While dissociating, you may miss your children growing up in front of you, the beauty in the holidays and the peacefulness in nature. You may even miss the plot of the episode or book you are dissociating with. This is because when dissociating becomes a habit, it makes us comfortable, and it makes the non-dissociating reality much scarier than it is.

What does dissociation look like?

Have you ever had to take a cold shower to feel something, the moments that led you to take that cold shower is probably what dissociation looked like for you, it took feeling the freezing water to feel alive. The alternative of being alive is death, however dissociation is the limbo between them. It can look like being stuck to the T.V or your phone majority of the time in order to keep your brain constantly too busy to develop any self awareness thoughts. It can look like overworking to avoid your personal life and it can look like laying in bed doing absolutely nothing. It can look like staying high all the time or experimenting with heavier drugs and alcohol to “escape.” Or even like intellectualizing all your feelings, that typically takes you to an overwhelming spiral where you escape your feelings by drowning in your thoughts (I wrote a little bit about this in a past post). It’s basically doing the most to avoid feeling, thinking, and becoming self aware of the internal and mental suffering you may be experiencing. Once again, that suffering is probably so hurtful that dissociation is needed but don’t forget it’s at the expense of living your life fully.

How to stop dissociating?

I added this question here because I figured that after reading everything above you are in fact questioning how to stop. However, if this is your first time learning about dissociation, I will just say asking that question is premature. (1) Because it’s hard not to and (2) because it’s too easy to dissociate. In other words, do not set yourself to fail. Yes, go to therapy, and no this whole blog is not a replacement for therapy. But taking the initiative by being here, reading, and being curious about the impact of dissociating it’s already step one. I encourage you to pay attention to when you dissociate throughout your day. What does dissociation look like for you? Is it safe to stop dissociating? What emotions did you feel throughout the day, if any? You can start by making a list at the end of your day, or just by trying to remember what you did throughout your day. (Remember dissociation will affect memory!). After you do this, and have a good idea of what that looks like, ask yourself what did you miss today? When I say miss I don’t mean the random plane that passed by at 3:45pm while you were dissociating on tik tok. Rather, stuff you missed you actually wanted to experience. For example the recent lunar eclipse, or the protest you wanted to attend in order to show your solidarity with the Palestinian community. The important thing is to start asking yourself these questions. Let me know in the comments, I have been there and I know noticing the absence of feelings it’s where we start to take action to feel all the feelz, no matter how comfortable or uncomfortable they are.

Lastly, and rhetorically, how radical would it be if you allowed yourself to feel instead of dissociating? If feelings cannot kill you, can you imagine what comes after you feel the pain and the fear?

I dare you to take a leap of faith.