Do you sometimes find yourself feeling cut off from others and the world? Do you sometimes just find that you “space out“ for no apparent reason? Do you ever feel sometimes like you’re not completely in your body for one reason or another? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you experience some degree of dissociation and would do well to read further.
Dissociation Is An Ever-Increasing Problem These Days
We are in a time when there is a tremendous amount of trauma that is being experienced by people all over the world, as well as centuries of trauma that have passed down over the generations. Dissociation is a byproduct of trauma, and even though it is very adaptive when you first experience it, it can quickly become a huge problem in your life going forward.
What Dissociation Is And What It Feels Like
Dissociation is an experience of being not present mentally or emotionally in certain instances and experiences in your life. It allows you to psychologically survive events and experiences that would otherwise be intolerable. I like to say it’s something that happens when the circuits on your nervous system would otherwise blow and serves as a circuit breaker to keep that from happening. It can feel a number of different ways, ranging from just feeling numb to feeling totally out of one’s body as if you were watching yourself from above. You can also feel foggy or a sense of unreality as an experience of dissociating, as well as losing your sense of time and space in some instances. It can also be an experience of having memory gaps or blackouts in some instances, too.
How Therapy Can Help With Dissociation
If you have trauma and dissociation and want to recover from it, therapy is a critical component of being able to overcome a pattern of trauma and disconnecting. Therapy can help you first recognize when you are experiencing it, which is an important first step in being more mindful and having some degree of self-awareness with regard to the problem. Therapy can also help to identify experiences that contributed to the disconnection, as well as to heal all of the effects from them using therapies like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), or Image transformation Therapy (ImTT).
Healing the Effects of Dissociation in Your Relationships
Therapy can also help you to be able to address the effects of dissociation and trauma in your relationships. Most often couples therapy is the best way to address this, as some individual therapies are not able to handle or address the reaction pattern that people can have to trauma in their relationships. In addition, many people develop addictions as a way to cope with the effects of trauma. Getting treatment for these is a primary benefit of being in therapy, as well as also treating other mental illnesses that can go with disconnecting because of trauma.
What To Do If Dissociation Disconnection Keeps Up?
It is certainly in your best interest to inquire about getting therapy help to address dissociation however it may be showing up in your present day life. I’ve been helping my clients for my entire social work career in addressing issues related to trauma and disconnection, and helping to fix them. Feel free to call the number at the top of the page if you live in Maryland, or fill out an inquiry form below if you so choose in order to get a free 20 minute phone consult with me so you can get a better idea about whether I can help you with your own experience of the problem. You only stand again from reaching out and getting help for a problem that has been robbing you for a long time of the freedom that you want to have in your life. Take the first step on your journey to healing today!
Visit our page on trauma therapy to learn more about how Scott can help you with dissociation.
About the author: Scott Kampschaefer, LCSW is a private practice therapist in Frederick, Maryland. He has an extensive background in working with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder at a clinic for older adults with these disorders in Austin, Texas. He now works with adults and adolescents 14 and up in private practice. His most recent book is titled The 5 Pillars of Addiction Recovery and is available for purchase on Amazon and in paperback on this website.