How to Stop Dissociating, and What It May Be Protecting You From
You're sitting across from someone you care about and you realize you’ve spaced out and missed the last few minutes of what they said. Or you're moving through a regular day and everything feels slightly muffled, like there's a glass screen between you and your life. You might not be able to say what you're feeling, but you know you feel far away from yourself.
You might have already searched for and learned that what you’re experiencing is dissociation. It's a common word these days that comes up a lot on social media. Or you may have only had the experience itself, without a name for it yet. In this post I discuss what dissociation feels like internally, what it’s often protecting you from, and why trying to force yourself to be present usually doesn't work. Toward the end, I'll describe what tends to help, in therapy and more generally.
What does dissociation feel like?
In my practice, people describe dissociation in quite a range of ways, and I tend to think of it as a spectrum (researchers still debate whether everyday spacing out and more severe dissociation sit on one continuum or are different kinds of experience, but as a clinical map I find the spectrum frame useful). On one end, you may have somewhat limited access to your physical sensations, your emotions, your memories, or your thoughts (or some combination of these). You can still function, sometimes very well, but something is muted. Many people describe this as feeling numb, or as not really knowing what they're feeling.
The further along the spectrum you go, the more it can feel like you're floating behind yourself, as if you're not really in your body and are watching yourself from above. That more extreme form often happens during traumatic experiences, when being fully present to what is happening would be too much (though it can also come with intense panic, severe exhaustion, or certain drugs).
There's also a form of dissociation that almost everyone knows, which is daydreaming or spacing out. On its own it is ordinary, but it becomes worth looking at when it happens very often, or when it seems to take you away from important moments of connection with others.
Am I dissociating?
Dissociation can be hard to recognize while it's happening, mostly because the part of you that would notice has stepped back. Clients can often describe it more easily afterwards, sharing that they feel foggy, or that they're "in their head" more than in their body. Some notice they've lost the thread of a conversation. Others notice it most in relationships, as a feeling of distance from the people they're with, even people they love. For some people, that distance comes and goes with closeness itself, showing up just as a relationship starts to matter. That pattern can be part of a disorganized attachment style.
If some of this sounds familiar, I'd encourage curiosity before being alarmed. A useful question to ask is what was happening, inside you or externally, just before you started to feel that way.
Why do I dissociate so much?
In my experience, what's underneath dissociation is often trauma, shame, or both.
From a trauma perspective, there can be certain memories, feelings, and sensations that were too frightening or too harmful to fully experience at the time. So the body and mind create distance from them. This is a form of protection, a way of keeping you from more damage than was already being done. The trouble is that the impulse to distance can continue long after the danger is no longer present, and it can show up later as spacing out, feeling numb, or frequent daydreaming. (If this resonates, you may find my page on complex trauma useful as well.)
Shame works a little differently, and it's more connected to relational trauma. When the adults in our lives, or even people in our community or culture, label certain ways of expressing ourselves as "bad," we learn to create distance from those parts of ourselves. Many men experience this around emotions, especially sadness and crying. Over time, the feeling itself can become hard to reach, and what's left is a kind of flatness. Research on complex trauma points the same way: people with higher levels of dissociation also tend to report more shame, and more withdrawal when shame comes up. I've written more about this in how men experience depression.
I also think about dissociation from an Internal Family Systems (IFS) perspective. When we're fully “blended” with one part of ourselves, for example a part that is in a rage, we're in a sense dissociated from the other parts. So dissociation doesn't only look like numbness. Sometimes it looks like being so taken over by one feeling that the rest of you is out of reach.
And sometimes part of the answer is more ordinary. Sleep loss, for example, has been shown to increase dissociative experiences even in healthy people, which is one reason exhaustion and dissociation so often travel together.
How to stop dissociating: grounding that works through safety, not force
When people try to stop dissociating, they often start by trying to force themselves to be present. That makes sense conceptually, but it tends to work against itself, because presence requires accepting whatever is coming up. If part of you is pushing hard to get back into your body, you end up more at odds with yourself, and the distance usually grows.
What helps more is allowing an “observing self” to come online, one who doesn't judge any aspect of what you're experiencing. From there, attention can move through the body, noticing whatever sensations are present, and into the mind, reflecting on the thoughts and feeling states that are there. Over time, these can be linked together, so that a tightness in your chest and a thought you'd been avoiding start to make sense as part of the same experience.
Sometimes simply orienting to the room you're in can help. Letting your eyes move slowly around the space, resting on whatever they're drawn to, can signal to your nervous system that you're here, now, and not back in whatever it learned to protect you from. The aim is to let your body register that it's safe enough to return, without dragging yourself back. It's worth going slowly with any of this. For some people, turning attention toward the body too quickly can stir up more than they're ready for, so a pace that doesn't overwhelm you is part of the work.
What changes in therapy
I can think of many moments where clients were in the room with me and I could feel that they were very far away, like there was a slightly opaque glass screen between us. When that happens, I'll often share what I'm noticing, that I'm feeling far away from them, and ask whether that resonates. Usually it does, and they'll say they feel kind of foggy, out of it, or that they're in their head.
From there, I might ask what's happening in their body, or whether there's anything their body wants to express through some kind of movement. And we'll explore why the distance is there in that particular moment. Perhaps we're talking about something too difficult to be present with. Perhaps they're sleep deprived and exhausted. Perhaps there's something else on their mind that they actually want to talk about, or feelings toward me that they've been holding back. It's important to understand the why, because that is what allows some movement toward presence and embodiment. (This is a big part of somatic therapy, and of why talking about it isn't always enough.)
I also think a lot of grounding comes from the sessions themselves. When clients are able to be completely honest and raw about their experience, and to be seen and not judged, it creates room to be less at odds with the parts of their experience they've had to ward off, and so less dissociated from them. With trauma in particular, the relationship itself can help re-establish a sense of safety, in the world and in relationships. This is consistent with a large body of research: across nearly 300 studies covering more than 30,000 clients, the strength of the relationship between client and therapist was reliably linked to how much therapy helped, whatever the approach.
When it may be something more
Most dissociation is part of how a nervous system has learned to cope, and it can shift a great deal in therapy. Sometimes, though, it points to something that deserves its own careful assessment. Brief moments of feeling unreal are very common (estimates range from a quarter to three quarters of people having had at least one). But if you often feel detached from yourself or as though the world around you is unreal, while still knowing it isn't literally so, and it's persistent and distressing, that may be depersonalization-derealization disorder, which affects roughly 1 to 2 percent of people. If you notice gaps in your memory, lose stretches of time, or find evidence of things you don't remember doing, it's worth seeing someone who specializes in dissociative disorders. And if the episodes are new, sudden, or come with other physical symptoms, it's a good idea to check in with a doctor, since seizure disorders and some other medical conditions can look similar. Cannabis, ketamine, and hallucinogens can also bring on these states.
Working with dissociation in therapy
If you recognize yourself in this, it may be that a part of you learned a long time ago that distance was the safest option. That part deserves respect, and it can learn, slowly and in relationship, that it doesn't have to work so hard. You can read more about how I work on my somatic therapy and complex trauma pages.
I see clients in person in Manhattan and online across New York and Florida. If you'd like to talk about whether working together could help, you can reach out for a free consultation.
Sources
Dorahy, M. J., Corry, M., Shannon, M., et al. (2013). Complex trauma and intimate relationships: The impact of shame, guilt and dissociation. Journal of Affective Disorders, 147(1–3), 72–79.
van der Kloet, D., Merckelbach, H., Giesbrecht, T., & Lynn, S. J. (2012). Fragmented sleep, fragmented mind: The role of sleep in dissociative symptoms. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(2), 159–175.
Waller, N., Putnam, F. W., & Carlson, E. B. (1996). Types of dissociation and dissociative types. Psychological Methods, 1(3).
Merck Manual, Professional Version. Depersonalization/derealization disorder.
Flückiger, C., Del Re, A. C., Wampold, B. E., & Horvath, A. O. (2018). The alliance in adult psychotherapy: A meta-analytic synthesis. Psychotherapy, 55(4).
