What is dissociation?
Dissociation is when a person's thoughts, memories, actions., or sense of self is disconnected from reality.
Everyone experiences disassociation from time to time. An example of this would be day dreaming. Dissociation becomes serious when persistent episodes occur. That is what we call an dissociative disorder.
So, lets talk about this spectrum.
As previously mentioned earlier, dissociation can happen everyday such as daydreaming during a class lesson or during a long speech.
Checking out/ Zoning out is a more intense form of day dreaming where you are out of touch of reality for longer periods.
Dissociative amnesia can occur in PTSD victims due to their trauma history. This is when a person cannot remember important information about their life. In trauma victims, this is usually the course of action the brain takes to protect its body from the enduring painful memories.
DPDR, otherwise known as Depersonalization/ Derealization Syndrome is a mental health condition causing one to experience either of the below feelings. What makes this different from a psychotic disorder is that the person who experiences these things, know that what is happening to them is not real.
Derealization is a sense of feeling detached from the surrounding environment and its inhabitants. People who suffer from this report:
- feeling as though the world isn't real
- feeling as if you are separated from the world by a glass wall
- time seems to change speed such as moving faster, slower, or stopping all together
- surroundings beginning to feel unfamiliar
- distance/size/shape of objects is distorted as well as sounds
- vision becoming blurry, colorless, or distorted
- feeling in a "fog"
More than 50% of people have an instance such as this at least once in their lifetime. Despite this large number only 2% have this become such a common occurrence for them it becomes a disorder.
Depersonalization is a feeling described as being out of your own body. People who suffer from this report feeling:
- feeling detached from emotions; commonly referred to feeling like a robot
- outer body experience
- numbness of mind/ body such as that your senses are not functioning properly
- swollen/shrunken appearance of body/limbs
- feeling disconnected from self
- having no control of what you say or do
- body feels foreign
It can feel as if you are watching you life play out in front of you like a movie. Episodes can last minutes, days, weeks, months, or even years.
DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, was formerly referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder. When this condition is present, two or more clear personalities (a.k.a alters) have different reactions, emotions, and body functioning. The primary is called the host and the alters refer to each others as head mates. DID often occurs after severe abuse and is diagnosed nine times more often in females than males. Not all alters are considered human as some could be demons, animals, etc... People who suffer from DID report:
- loss of time
- memory lapses
- blackouts
- accusations of lying
- finding strange objects
- feeling like more than one person
Add comment
Comments