What Does It Really Mean to Dissociate?
By Christina Caron for The New York Times
Have you ever zoned out?
Maybe you have experienced highway hypnosis, with no recollection of having driven from Point A to Point B. Or maybe you have zero memory of something you just read.
These are mild forms of dissociation, which is the ability to disconnect from our thoughts, feelings, environment or actions.
Dissociation can even help athletes do their jobs, for instance, because it “allows people to focus on the most salient or life-preserving aspects of a situation” without mental interference, said Janina Fisher, a psychologist who has been treating dissociative disorders for decades.
But sometimes people experience a major form of dissociation, often in the aftermath of overwhelming trauma. In this case, the dissociative symptoms become more extreme and frequent.
What are the dissociative disorders?
Rather than fight or flee in a stressful or threatening situation, some people “freeze,” said Dr. Frank W. Putnam, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and an expert on dissociative disorders. “That’s the dissociative state where you shut down and you kind of go away.”
Although dissociation can help a person mentally escape during a threat, it can interfere with daily life when people continue to dissociate during benign situations. Some people might find themselves in a new location without knowing how they got there, for example.
Frequent experiences like that make dissociation pathological, Dr. Putnam said. It becomes a disorder when you space out and “lose time” long enough that it interferes with your life in a significant way, he added.
The three most common and well-known dissociative disorders are: dissociative identity disorder, depersonalization/derealization disorder and dissociative amnesia.
The common thread in each is a disruption of identity.
Read the full article here.