What Is Dissociation? Types, Causes, Symptoms & Treatment

Dissociation is a coping mechanism that some people use to deal with overwhelming or traumatic experiences. It involves a disconnection or detachment from one’s thoughts, emotions, sensations, or surroundings.

Dissociation is both a symptom as well as a standalone disorder. Dissociative experiences can range from mild (e.g., daydreaming) to severe (e.g., dissociative identity disorder).

Some common symptoms of dissociation include feeling numb, spaced out, or disconnected from reality.

It’s important to seek professional help if dissociation is interfering with your daily life or causing distress.

Disclaimer:
This article provides a general overview of dissociation for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional clinical advice. It should not replace consultation with qualified mental health professionals.

If you are struggling with dissociation or have other mental health concerns, please seek guidance from a licensed therapist or healthcare provider.

What Does Dissociation Feel Like?

People who experience dissociation often describe it as feeling detached from themselves or their surroundings. Common descriptions include:

• Feeling like you’re watching yourself from outside your body, as if you’re on autopilot
• The world around you seems blurry, flat, or dreamlike, like you’re in a movie or looking through glass
• Losing track of time or feeling like moments pass without you being fully aware of them
• Emotional numbness — feeling nothing, even in situations that should cause strong reactions
• A sense of not being real, or that your body doesn’t belong to you
• Struggling to remember how you got somewhere or what you were just doing
• Feeling distant from your thoughts or as if your mind is “somewhere else”
• Difficulty recognizing yourself in the mirror or feeling like a stranger to yourself

If these feelings are intense or happen often, they may be part of a dissociative disorder rather than everyday stress or fatigue.

Personal Experience

Words often fail here. Černis et al. (2020) conducted a qualitative study of people with psychosis who also experienced dissociation. One of the hardest parts of the condition, they found, is putting it into words.

Participants often could not describe what was happening to them. So they often said nothing at all. When they did try to explain it, they often felt misunderstood and received no support specific to dissociation.

One phrase captured it best. The researchers described the core experience as a “felt sense of anomaly,” a sense that something is wrong with no words to explain it.

Below are some quotes taken from individuals who have experienced dissociation.

“If a switch is oncoming, my vision starts to tremble (best word for it) and everything around me feels peculiarly distant and completely unreal, and the lights go extremely bright. The lights going funny is usually the first sign for me, then comes the trembling vision, then the faded reality. I can often “pull myself back” from that, but if it goes any further, there’s no chance.”

‘Bryan’

 “you just don’t really feel like you’re here … time kind of elapses”

Participant from Černis et al. (2020).

“You try and get control of it, but it’s like a bar of soap or something, it just keeps slipping out of your hands.”

Participant from Černis et al. (2020).

“I wanted time to pass, but it didn’t, it seemed . . . It seemed I had already been there for 24 hours, at the moment, there.”

Participant from Mattos et al. (2016).

“I don’t feel present sometimes, thoughts are not here.”

Participant from Gušić et al. (2018).

“It is similar to a daydream, but you are even more removed than that. Sometimes I am at work and I am looking at what I’m doing, and I can hear everything around me just fine, but it feels like my peripheral vision is fuzzy, my energy is low, my mind is focused on something very far away.”

‘Leo’

Is Dissociation Normal or a Mental Health Condition?

Mild dissociation, like zoning out or daydreaming, is common and often harmless. However, when dissociation is intense, ongoing, or interferes with daily life, it may indicate a dissociative disorder.

Symptoms associated with dissociative disorders vary depending on the type of disorder being experienced.

Each dissociative disorder could be described and understood using a combination of one of these five core symptoms:

• Amnesia – memory loss of certain time periods, events, people, and personal information, which are recurrent. These gaps in memory can vary from several minutes to years and are inconsistent with typical forgetting.
• Depersonalization – a sense of detachment or disconnection from oneself and their emotions. This can include feeling like a stranger to oneself, being on autopilot, or feeling like a part of their body does not belong to them.
• Derealization – the perception of the familiar people and surroundings around an individual as being distorted and unreal. For instance, close friends or relatives may not seem real to an individual experiencing derealization. The world around them may also appear distorted or blurred or artificial in general.
• Identity confusion – some people with dissociative disorders may have a blurred sense of their own identity. This may involve an inner struggle regarding an individual’s sense of self or identity, with feelings of conflict and uncertainty.
• Identity alteration – this is a sense of acting like a different person some of the time and in different situations. Individuals who experienced this may use different names depending on the situation, realize they have items that they do not recognize, or may have learned a new skill that they have no recollection of learning.

These five symptoms actually reflect two different processes. Amnesia and identity alteration involve “compartmentalisation,” where information or functions are split off but still there, just not accessible on command. Depersonalisation and derealisation involve “detachment,” a felt sense of separation from the self or the world (Holmes et al., 2005).

This distinction matters for treatment. Detachment often responds well to grounding techniques, while compartmentalisation calls for approaches that help restore access to split-off memories and functions.

What causes dissociation? 

Below are some potential causes of dissociation:

Note that these causes may only contribute to fleeting dissociative feelings. If the symptoms of dissociation persist and they meet the diagnostic criteria, this could result in a dissociative disorder.

Trauma

Trauma is a significant cause of dissociation, especially severe trauma during childhood. The link is well documented in research. For example, ongoing physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from a parent or other caregiver can overwhelm a young child’s ability to cope and cause them to dissociate.

Witnessing domestic violence between parents, the death of a close family member, injuries and medical procedures, or surviving a natural disaster can also cause dissociation.

The common thread is feeling overwhelmed and unable to escape. For an adult, trauma from combat, violent assaults, accidents, or natural disasters can also cause dissociation.

Essentially any event that overwhelms the person’s ability to cope may trigger a dissociative response.

The strength of this link is now well established. A large analysis pooling 65 studies and over 7,000 abused or neglected individuals found consistently higher dissociation scores in people with childhood maltreatment than in comparison groups. Scores were highest after sexual or physical abuse (Vonderlin et al., 2018).

An earlier age of onset, a longer duration of abuse, and abuse by a parent each predicted more severe dissociation. Timing and relationship matter, not just whether trauma occurred.

Stress

Examples of severe life stressors that could overwhelm a person’s coping capacities include the loss of a loved one, divorce, job loss or instability, physical illness, bullying, or financial pressures.

When a person experiences stress, their body’s natural response is to activate the “fight or flight” response, which prepares the body to deal with a perceived threat.

However, if the stressor is ongoing or the person is unable to escape the stressor, the body may enter a state of freeze or shutdown (dissociation).

The key aspect is that the stressor persists and the individual feels trapped or unable to escape the distress.

Substance use

Another known cause for dissociative disorders may be substance use. The use of some recreational drugs, such as ecstasy and Ketamine, can cause some feelings of dissociation whilst taking them.

This dissociation would only be considered a disorder if the signs of dissociation continued after stopping using the drugs.

Anxiety and depression

Anxiety and depression may cause dissociation as a way to cope with overwhelming emotions or thoughts.

For anxiety, the associated fear and worry can become so intense that the person may dissociate to protect themselves from the emotional pain.

Similarly, depression can also lead to dissociation as a way to cope with overwhelming feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

Sleep deprivation

Sleep deprivation can cause dissociation as a result of the brain’s inability to process information and regulate emotions and behavior effectively.

During sleep, the brain undergoes critical processes for consolidating memories, processing emotions, and restoring energy levels.

When a person is sleep-deprived, these processes are disrupted, leading to a range of cognitive and emotional impairments, which may trigger dissociation.

The Trauma vs. Fantasy Debate

Researchers broadly agree that trauma and stress can trigger dissociation. There is less agreement about how strong that link really is, and a genuine scientific debate has shaped the field for decades.

The stakes are real. This debate affects how courts weigh recovered memories, and whether conditions like dissociative identity disorder are treated as genuine trauma responses.

The Trauma Model

The trauma model holds that dissociation is a genuine, trauma-driven disruption of memory and identity. Overwhelming childhood abuse or neglect teaches the mind to “switch off” from pain. This defensive habit later resurfaces under ordinary stress, mirroring the body’s freeze response to inescapable threat.

The evidence backs this up. A systematic review tested this model against its main rival across many studies. It found that the trauma-dissociation relationship stayed strong even when trauma was measured objectively rather than by self-report. Dissociation was not reliably linked to suggestibility either (Dalenberg et al., 2012).

This gives the trauma model strong support.

This fits a wider theory. Structural dissociation theory describes chronic trauma as splitting the personality in two: one part manages daily life, another holds the traumatic memories (van der Hart et al., 2006).

The Fantasy Model

The fantasy model takes a different view. It is also called the sociocognitive model.

It proposes a fantasy-prone, highly suggestible thinking style. This style generates both dissociative experiences and false memories of trauma, rather than trauma causing dissociation directly.

A review examined this model’s cognitive research. It found that highly dissociative people were more prone to pseudo-memories and more easily influenced by suggestion. Objective evidence directly linking dissociation to early trauma was found to be lacking (Giesbrecht et al., 2008).

Being suggestible and having a real trauma history are not mutually exclusive. That is the model’s central weak point.

The review focused on cognitive processes, not just self-report. It examined memory, attention, suggestibility and fantasy-proneness in people who scored high versus low on dissociation measures.

Which Model Fits the Evidence?

The most direct test compared genuine DID cases against healthy volunteers deliberately trying to fake DID, plus PTSD patients and healthy controls. Genuine cases showed the highest trauma scores of any group. They were no more fantasy-prone or suggestible than healthy controls, though (Vissia et al., 2016).

This head-to-head comparison, which included people trying to fake the disorder, gave the trauma model its clearest support yet.

Taken together, a large meta-analysis, a systematic review, and a direct experimental test now favour the trauma model for the core trauma-dissociation link. The fantasy model still offers a useful caution, though.

Dissociative reports are self-reported. Memory, including so-called “recovered” memory, can be reconstructive and unreliable.

For most people affected by dissociation, this debate is not an either-or. Trauma is now understood as the main driver, but memory still needs careful, uncorroborated handling in both therapy and legal settings.

Types of Dissociative disorders

Dissociative identity disorder

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is categorized by the presence of two or more identities or personalities that an individual has.

These identities recurrently take control of the individual’s behavior and can result in the person forgetting important personal information.

Dr Dawn-Elise Snipes, a Licensed Counselor, outlines some of the key alterations in functioning that occur when someone switches between alters/identities:

“The individual has two or more distinct personality states observed by others or experienced by the individual characterized by alterations in sense of self, affect, behavior, memory, perception, cognition and or sensory motor functioning may also change.”

An individual with DID may ‘switch’ to the alternating identities and may feel the presence of two or more people talking inside their head.

Dr Snipes goes on to explain what else can change during a switch:

“Attitudes, outlooks and personal preferences including food, activities.. (According to the DSM criteria) a person’s gender identity may change when they are in an alter they can have what they define as male alters they can have what they define as female alters.”

DID is often confused with schizophrenia in popular culture, but the two conditions are not the same. Schizophrenia is not a “split personality.” Its psychiatric meaning of “splitting” refers to a fragmentation of psychic functions, not to alternating identities.

DID is also widely misunderstood. It’s often thought to be rare, exaggerated, or something therapy itself creates. A major review tested these claims directly, examining whether DID is a fad, over-diagnosed, iatrogenic, or simply another name for borderline personality disorder (Brand et al., 2016).

It found no support for any of these myths, and directly refuted several of them.

Recent brain-imaging research adds objective evidence. One study used structural MRI scans and pattern-recognition software to distinguish people with DID from healthy controls based on brain structure alone. It classified cases with roughly 72–74% accuracy (Reinders et al., 2019).

This matters because DID is often missed. Patients receive four misdiagnoses on average and wait 7 to 12 years for an accurate one (Reinders et al., 2019).

Depersonalization-derealisation disorder

This type of dissociative disorder is associated with the presence of persistent or recurrent experiences of depersonalization, derealization, or both.

People with this disorder may feel like a stranger to themselves and/or to their surroundings (their surroundings may feel unreal).

Psychiatrist Dr Tracey Marks explains that there is a sense of detachment from oneself and not recognizing your own reflection for instance:

“Some examples of this are looking in a mirror and not recognizing yourself, or seeing yourself as an observer in the room.”

Individuals with this disorder may also have a distorted sense of time, altered bodily perceptions, and numb emotions and bodily senses.

People with this disorder may also feel detached from the reality of their environment:

“You can also feel like you’re looking at things through a glass or you have tunnel vision. You can also feel like the things that you’re looking at are distorted. I had someone tell me that it’s like the world is tilted like this.”

Dr Tracey Marks, Psychiatrist

Dissociative amnesia

Dissociative amnesia is thought to be the most common dissociative disorder, with different types of amnesia branching from this condition.

The main symptom of this disorder is memory loss, which is more severe than typical forgetfulness.

One type of dissociative amnesia is localized amnesia, which is the failure to recall events of a specific period of time. Selective amnesia is when some, but not all, events can be recalled during a period of time.

Generalized amnesia, which is the rarest type, is when an individual’s life history is completely forgotten, and they may forget their identity.

Other specified dissociative disorders

This category includes dissociative disorders that do not meet the full criteria for any specific dissociative disorder but still cause significant distress or impairment in functioning.

Two examples exist: atypical dissociative disorder and acute dissociative reactions.

Atypical dissociative disorder involves dissociative symptoms that do not fit the criteria for any specific disorder but still cause significant distress or impairment. Acute dissociative reactions are temporary episodes of dissociation that occur in response to a stressful or traumatic event.

Unspecified dissociative disorder

Unspecified dissociative disorder is applied to people whose symptoms are characteristic of a dissociative disorder but do not meet the full criteria for any of the specific disorders mentioned above.

This unspecified category is often used when a doctor or clinician chooses not to specify which disorder, if any, an individual may have. This typically happens when there is insufficient information to make an actual diagnosis.

Complications of Dissociative Disorders

If left untreated, symptoms of dissociation can become lifelong and detrimental across multiple areas of functioning (Hoyos et al., 2019).

• Self-Harm Risk: Dissociation greatly increases one’s vulnerability to self-harm and suicidal behaviors, with over 70% of people with dissociative disorders reporting past suicide attempts (Foote et al., 2008).
• Work & Relationships: Chronic dissociation is also associated with difficulty maintaining employment and relationships, as well as an increased risk of substance abuse as a maladaptive coping mechanism (Batey et al., 2010).
• Risk-Taking in PTSD: The combination of dissociation and PTSD specifically puts adolescents at 3.5 times greater likelihood of engaging in sexual risk-taking behaviors (Kisiel & Lyons, 2001).
• Worsening Mental Health: Letting dissociative symptoms persist may also lead to worsening the severity of other mental illnesses over time (Tull, 2022).

Given the risk of self-harm, revictimization, job loss, relationship problems, worsening mental health, and other issues, it is critical to seek professional treatment for ongoing dissociation.

How Can Dissociative Disorders be Managed?

The treatment for dissociation depends on the underlying cause and severity of the symptoms.

Self-care

For individuals who experience mild dissociative symptoms, self-care techniques can help to manage dissociative symptoms:

• Grounding exercises – Activities like mindful breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or tapping exercises can help reconnect you to the present moment.
• Prioritizing sleep – Getting adequate, high-quality sleep helps the brain properly consolidate memories and process emotions disrupted by dissociation.
• Creative expression – Art therapy, journaling, or music therapy gives an outlet to process traumatic memories that may be triggering dissociation.
• Stress reduction – Lowering your stress levels through healthy diet, exercise, social support, or relaxation practices can help minimize dissociation triggers.
• Reality checking – Using reminder notes or safety objects keeps you oriented to the here-and-now and combats feelings of unreality from derealization.

Practicing regular self-care builds critical coping skills for interrupting dissociation and staying grounded in your body and surroundings. Over time, this can help reduce dissociative symptoms.

Psychotherapy

For more severe dissociative symptoms, or a diagnosed dissociative disorder, professional treatment may be necessary. Psychotherapy is the core treatment.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that helps people identify and modify thought patterns that may be disturbing and negatively influence behavior and emotions.

CBT involves working together with the therapist to practice new thinking skills, set goals, and problem-solve.

CBT has shown effectiveness for many people. One study found that participants who completed CBT had significant reductions in dissociation and depersonalization. Afterward, 29% no longer met diagnostic criteria for a dissociative disorder (Hunter et al., 2005).

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is another type of CBT. Its main goal is to help individuals develop healthy ways to cope with stress, regulate their emotions, and improve relationships with others. DBT has a big focus on mindfulness skills.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of therapy that can be effective in treating trauma-related dissociation. It involves guided eye movements that help the individual process traumatic memories and reduces the associated distress.

Creative therapies can also help. Art therapy and music therapy provide an outlet for self-expression and a way to process traumatic experiences.

Medication

Currently, there are no medications specifically approved to treat dissociation itself. Medication instead targets co-occurring conditions.

For instance, someone experiencing dissociation may also have a depressive or anxiety disorder. Some medications, such as antidepressants, can be used for depressive and anxious symptoms.

Benzodiazepines are generally avoided. This class of sedative medication can worsen dissociation rather than relieve it, even though it is sometimes prescribed for anxiety more broadly.

Overall, treatment for dissociation typically combines therapy, medication for co-occurring conditions, and self-care techniques. A mental health professional can help build an individualized plan suited to each person’s needs.

Do you need mental health help?

USA

Contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for support and assistance from a trained counselor. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

1-800-273-8255

UK

Contact the Samaritans for support and assistance from a trained counselor: https://www.samaritans.org/; email jo@samaritans.org.

Available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (this number is FREE to call):

116-123

Rethink Mental Illness: rethink.org

0300 5000 927

Who Was Pierre Janet? The Origins of Dissociation

The term “dissociation” comes from the French psychologist and physician Pierre Janet, who worked at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the late nineteenth century.

In his 1889 book L’automatisme psychologique, Janet proposed that overwhelming or “vehement” emotion could cause memories and experiences to split off from ordinary consciousness. These split-off memories stayed active and could intrude as symptoms, yet remained inaccessible to voluntary recall.

Janet linked this splitting directly to trauma. His ideas were largely overshadowed for much of the twentieth century by psychoanalytic theories of repression and later by biological psychiatry.

Interest in Janet’s work revived in the 1970s to 1990s, driven by growing recognition of post-traumatic stress and childhood abuse. Modern structural dissociation theory explicitly builds on his original insight: that trauma can fragment the mind, and that healing means putting the pieces back together.

References

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Černis, E., Freeman, D., & Ehlers, A. (2020). Describing the indescribable: A qualitative study of dissociative experiences in psychosis. PLoS One, 15(2), e0229091.

Dissociative Identity Disorder. (Jul 05, 2021). Traumadissociation.com, Retrieved Jul 5, 2021, from http://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeidentitydisorder.html.
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Dissociative Amnesia & Fugue. (Jul 05, 2021). Traumadissociation.com, Retrieved Jul 5, 2021, from http://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeamnesia.html.

Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder. (Jul 05, 2021). Traumadissociation.com. Retrieved Jul 5, 2021 from http://traumadissociation.com/depersonalization.html.

Foote, B., Smolin, Y., Neft, D. I., & Lipschitz, D. (2008). Dissociative disorders and suicidality in psychiatric outpatients. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 196(1), 29–36.

Gušić, S., Malešević, A., Cardeña, E., Bengtsson, H., & Søndergaard, H. P. (2018). “I feel like I do not exist:” A study of dissociative experiences among war-traumatized refugee youth. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 10(5), 542.

Hoyos, C., Mancini, V., Furlong, Y., Medford, N., Critchley, H., & Chen, W. (2019). The role of dissociation and abuse among adolescents who self-harm. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 53(10), 989–999.

Hunter, E. C., Baker, D., Phillips, M. L., Sierra, M., & David, A. S. (2005). Cognitive-behaviour therapy for depersonalisation disorder: an open study. Behaviour research and therapy, 43(9), 1121-1130.

Kisiel, C. L., & Lyons, J. S. (2001). Dissociation as a mediator of psychopathology among sexually abused children and adolescents. American Journal of Psychiatry, 158(7), 1034–1039.

Mattos, P. F., Pedrini, J. A., Fiks, J. P., & de Mello, M. F. (2016). The concept of peritraumatic dissociation: A qualitative approach. Qualitative Health Research, 26(7), 1005-1014.

Puckett, J., Sood, M., & Newman‐Taylor, K. (2024). Does insecure attachment lead to psychosis via dissociation? A systematic review of the literature. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 97(2), 372-392.

Steinberg, M., Rounsaville, B., & Cicchetti, D. V. (1990). The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III—R dissociative disorders: Preliminary report on a new diagnostic instrument. The American Journal of Psychiatry.