Trauma & Dissociation (The Benefits of Dissociation and Why it’s Blocking You).
Dissociation is a psychological and biological strategy for coping with overwhelming fear, confusion, or discomfort. Dissociation feels like being in a daydream. In a state of dissociation, there is a separation between the physical world around you, and your internal experiences.
A dissociative experience, is the experience of disconnecting, or dissociating, from the physical body, and projecting awareness to locations other than the physical here and now. This is done in order to manage unwanted experiences that we feel we cannot otherwise escape.
This is why I consider dissociation to be a survival instinct - When other biological instincts like fighting or running for example fail, dissociation is a commonly engaged survival strategy. It’s purpose is to help us to survive a scenario that is psychologically painful.
The challenge with dissociation, is that if this strategy continues to activate long after the situation resolves, we may find ourselves feeling out of touch, like we are losing time, and cannot connect to reality to get traction.
Are you Dissociating? Take the Dissociative Experiences Scale Quiz
