Many people experience the feeling of “spacing out” from time to time. This mental “pause” can cause people to lose orientation with their surroundings for a few minutes (or longer) throughout the day. These symptoms can become extreme and happen frequently. When they do, it can be scary and debilitating.

Spacing out here and there is common and perfectly normal. However, someone with a dissociative disorder might experience such a significant loss of touch with reality that they lose full days or weeks from their memory.

In this resource page, we’ll cover everything you need to know about dissociation including:

• What it means
• Different types
• Dissociation as a symptom
• Treatments

What Does it Mean to Dissociate?

Dissociation is a way the brain protects itself by disengaging from the present. When a person experiences a triggering situation, they may mentally remove themselves from the psychological harm that they are experiencing.

Dissociating can be as simple as ‘spacing out’ in some cases, but it’s not just daydreaming. Dissociation is a learned coping strategy to deal with trauma where someone detaches themself from reality, willingly or unwillingly. The idea is that if you’re not “present”, you can't get hurt.

Related Article: Moon Knight: What Disney’s Latest Series Gets Right and Wrong About Dissociative Identity Disorder

Signs and Symptoms of Dissociation

Common symptoms of dissociation include:

• Detachment from self or reality
• ‘Spacing out’
• Memory loss
• Loss of identity
• Feeling numb
• Missing gaps in memory
• Confusion of identity

These symptoms are incredibly disorienting. While experiencing them, it may be hard to understand what’s going on.

Causes of Dissociation

No matter how big or small, traumas can affect people in profound ways. Dissociative disorders are created as a response to traumatic events or periods in a person’s life. These events can include circumstances like a car crash, parental stress, war, or any number of stressors that are too overwhelming for the brain to cope with.

Dissociation can also be triggered long after trauma occurs. Triggers are things that remind people of their past traumas. If an event, person, or circumstance reminds someone of their trauma, they may relive that trauma and dissociate for a moment.

Dissociative disorders are often found in people who have experienced long-term childhood trauma. Dissociative disorders may share similar causes and symptoms, but they present themselves in different ways. 

Types of Dissociative Disorders

Within the world of dissociation, certain subcategories help people frame how they think about their symptoms and what causes them. This is helpful for finding treatment options and having a holistic view of what’s going on.

These types of dissociative disorders range in severity and can be caused by any kind of trauma. 

Dissociative Amnesia

One such disorder is dissociative amnesia. As the name suggests, the primary symptom is a lack of memory. These memory gaps can include people, places, and events associated with their trauma. 

These memory lapses can last anywhere from a few hours to several years, and may not even develop for quite some time after the trauma. 

Dissociative Fugue

Dissociative fugue is a type of amnesia that is rarer, and generally only caused by exceptionally severe trauma. People with dissociative fugue have no memory of who they are or anything about their lives. Again, this might only last a few hours, but on occasion, it can last several months. 

Someone with dissociative fugue may put themselves in situations that are wildly out of character for them. They often don’t recognize family or friends. Occasionally, they even begin a new life in a different place that is completely different than their own.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Also called DID, people with dissociative identity disorder have two or more distinct personalities that cannot exist simultaneously. Most people have heard it called by the now out-of-date term “multiple personality disorder.” Each personality is a fully fleshed identity, with biographical memories, preferences, and physical characteristics. 

Some symptoms of DID line up with dissociative amnesia, such as the loss of memory for large periods of time. This happens while another identity is presenting.

Related Article: Dissociative Identity Disorder

Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder

Also referred to as DDD, this disorder has two major parts. They can occur together or individually.

Depersonalization

Someone experiencing depersonalization might think that they are out of place in the world. They may feel as though they are ‘outside themselves looking in’. They observe thoughts and emotions rather than experience them.

Derealization

This part of DDD occurs when the world around you just ‘feels wrong.’ Perhaps everything seems too slow or too fast, or you get the sensation that you are in a dream. If the reality surrounding you feels ‘wrong,’ you may be experiencing derealization. This can refer to people as well as the overall environment.

Someone with DDD may experience depersonalization and derealization at the same time, at separate moments, or one without the other. Some triggers can cause episodes of DDD, but some people experience it continuously for an extended period of time. 

Structural Dissociation

The theory of structural dissociation states that everyone is born without cohesion in their personality. We develop that cohesion as we grow older. Traumas that cause dissociative disorders either disrupt that cohesion or prevent it from happening at all. 

According to structural dissociation theory, our personalities come in two parts. The ‘apparently normal parts’ or ANPs, are responsible for day-to-day functionality. ANPs include hunger, social engagement, sleep, etc.

Emotional parts, or EPs, are your trauma responses. This includes every symptom of hypo and hyperarousal, including fight, flight, and freeze responses. Some suggest that they hold memories of the trauma. Normally, these two pieces can function and work together. With dissociative disorders, the EPs overpower the ANPs after a trigger. 

Typically, chronic childhood trauma is to blame for this disruption. When a child experiences trauma over long periods of time or is forced to be around the person who caused the trauma, they never have the opportunity to merge these parts of their personality. 

Dissociative Identity Disorder Research states that structural dissociation can be broken into three types.

Related Articles: How an Abusive Childhood Affects Adult Relationships 

Primary Structural Dissociation

The first type of structural dissociation is primary. This break in cohesion is typically associated with PTSD that develops later in life. In primary structural dissociation, a person has one ANP and one EP. While the ANP is ‘in charge’ most of the time, certain triggers can bring the EP forward and cause a flashback. 

Secondary Structural Dissociation

Secondary structural dissociation means that a person has one ANP and many EPs, each with their own trauma response. For example, one EP presents as fight, and one presents as flight.

Showing signs of secondary dissociation indicates a more traumatic childhood and is more closely associated with Complex PTSD and several dissociative disorders.

Related Resources: Complex Trauma 

Tertiary Structural Dissociation

The theory most often behind Dissociative Identity Disorder is tertiary structural dissociation. This means that a person has many ANPs and EPs. 

Each ANP is responsible for different parts of everyday function—one for eating and enjoyment, one for sexuality, one for social engagement, etc. Just like secondary structural dissociation, each EP is responsible for various individual sets of trauma responses. 

Even though each ANP is considered a ‘normal’ part of a person’s identity, they can overpower each other in response to certain situations. 

Dissociation as a Symptom of Other Mental Health Disorders

Dissociative disorders each come with their own symptoms and causes, but the common definition of dissociation is a disconnect from reality. 

That disconnect from reality is also a symptom of many other mental health struggles. Anxiety disorders, various personality disorders, and depression can all present as dissociation. Dissociative disorders can be comorbid with these other ailments. It’s not uncommon for someone experiencing a dissociative disorder to develop additional mental illnesses.

PTSD and dissociation are tightly linked. PTSD is also caused by trauma, so dissociation is often a symptom. It is also not uncommon for a person to have a dissociative disorder alongside PTSD.

Treatments for Dissociative Disorders

Coping with dissociation isn’t easy, but there are some ways to reduce it or stop it early. Sometimes, feelings of dissociation can be resolved through some mindfulness practices.

Mindfulness

One helpful exercise to stop dissociating in the moment is to bring yourself into the present by using all of your senses. This is done by observing your surroundings and naming:

• Five (5) things you can see
• Four (4) things you can touch
• Three (3) things you can hear
• Two (2) things you can smell, and
• One (1) thing you can taste

If you can feel yourself beginning to dissociate, mindfulness exercises like this are useful for keeping yourself grounded. 

Professional Treatment

Of course, there is never a bad time to seek treatment, especially if you have memory lapses related to dissociation. Complex trauma-related dissociation often requires specialized treatment, so it’s important to consult with a licensed therapist to decide which treatment works best for you.

The trauma therapists at Inner Balance Counseling have extensive experience helping people cope with dissociative disorders. Contact us today if you are ready to begin your journey toward feeling better.

Related Articles: Trauma Therapy Guide, Trauma-Informed Counseling