How to Stop Dissociating: Symptoms, Meaning, and Support Tips

If you’ve ever found yourself disconnecting from your thoughts, emotions, or surroundings, you’ve likely dissociated—your mind has disconnected from the information it’s gathering. It can mess with your perception of time and make you feel like you aren’t yourself.

In this article, we’ll be exploring this topic in detail, from a more thorough dissociating meaning to steps to teach you how to stop dissociating, as well as its causes, symptoms, and support tips.

What Is Dissociating?

If we were to define dissociating, it would be an involuntary state of mind in which you feel disconnected from your thoughts and feelings, as well as your environment.

In most cases, you’ll stop dissociating on your own, within a few hours or days. However, if it goes on for longer, you might need to seek professional help. It also sometimes happens if you experience something exceedingly traumatic, or if you have schizophrenia.

Signs and Symptoms of Dissociation

The clearest sign that you might be dissociating is if you forget things or have short-term memory loss. You might also find yourself questioning whether you or the world around you is real. These are just a few of the ways to learn how to tell if you're dissociating.

Otherwise, you might notice some other more specific symptoms, including feeling disconnected from your body, almost like you’re having an out-of-body experience. You might also experience mood changes, especially feeling noticeably sad, or that you’re not even yourself anymore, struggling with your identity.

How to Tell If You’re Dissociating

If you happen to be dissociating, it will be relatively easy to tell. At best, you won’t feel like yourself or that you’re daydreaming—and at worst, it’ll feel like you’re having an out-of-body-experience.

You’ll find yourself easily zoning out, even if you’re in the middle of a conversation or doing something that requires a lot of focus. If you have a more severe episode of dissociation, you might start to notice gaps in your memory, especially if you’re extremely stressed or experiencing trauma.  

Common Dissociating Symptoms to Recognize

Now that we’ve given a broad overview of the symptoms, and how to tell if you’re dissociating, let’s explore those symptoms in a little more detail.

·        Detachment from reality: You may feel as though the world around you isn’t real or that you are not truly in that reality, just observing it.

·        Memory lapses or amnesia: When you’re in the midst of a dissociation, you might experience gaps in your memory or bouts of selective amnesia.

·        Out-of-body experiences: You may feel as though you have left your body and be viewing it from the outside.  

·        Emotional numbness: Dissociating may cause you to disconnect from your emotions.

·        Time distortions: You may also feel as though time has sped or slowed down, or you may lose track of it all together.

·        Physical symptoms: While dissociating, you may also feel dizzy or lightheaded.

Why Do I Keep Dissociating?

If you’ve often wondered, “Why do I keep dissociating,” then know that there are a few specific causes that can cause the issue to recur.

Causes of Dissociation and Underlying Triggers

First and foremost is trauma. For those who experience extremely distressing situations, such as sexual assault or going to war, dissociation can occur to temporarily escape from these traumatic experiences.

Next to that, chronic stress can also spur dissociative episodes as a way to disconnect and avoid or manage the stressor itself.

Various mental health disorders can also lead you to dissociate, schizophrenia being one of the leading causes, but post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociative identity disorder (DID)—which was once called multiple personality disorder—can also cause you to dissociate.

Certain substances, notably hallucinogens and sedatives, can also trigger an episode, so if you’re on any sleeping medication, check with your doctor.

Lastly, sometimes certain brain chemistry or brain functioning can also spur a dissociative state, especially if there is something going on with your memory centers or emotional regulation. So, if you have none of the other underlining causes, fingers will point here.

Situations That May Lead to Dissociation

Trauma can be a very broad topic, and some people may find certain situations more traumatizing than others. However, often these situations will initiate a dissociative state. This could include any sort of abuse, from physical to emotional to sexual, and in these cases, it’s typically more common in childhood.

Extreme violence, like going to war, being in the middle of a riot, or even an extreme medical emergency can also cause you to dissociate—when reality just becomes too much to bear. Even being in the middle of a natural disaster, like a hurricane or a tornado, can cause you to dissociate.

As for other highly stressful situations, expect big events, like the death of a loved one or a breakup or a divorce—or even being laid off from your job—to potentially also trigger a dissociative state.

Ultimately, any situation that can cause you enough stress or anxiety—or be traumatic to you personally—can induce a dissociative state.

How to Stop Dissociating

So, now that we’ve covered what dissociating is and some symptoms and situations that might spur this out-of-body experience, how can we learn how to stop dissociating?

If you find yourself drifting out of your body, so to speak, there are a few techniques you can employ that might help you return to your body—again, so to speak. First and foremost are grounding exercises.

There are a few of these to explore, starting with the 5-4-3-2-1 method, which has you ground yourself by first pointing out five objects you can see, then four things you can touch, then three things you can hear—you can see where we’re going with this. Then, two things you can smell and one you can taste.

If that proves ineffective, you could try simply splashing some water on your face, especially cold water—or you could try to use your senses, literally, by doing something like chewing gum, touching something with a distinct texture, or drinking something warm. Also, try taking slow and steady breaths, holding in for four seconds, and then exhaling. Doing so can help regulate your nervous system.

Beyond that, you could also try some mindfulness techniques. These take a bit more effort and practice to truly master, but they can be immensely helpful not only when dissociating, but when you are having other problems, like panic attacks. Mindfulness involves you trying to focus your thoughts and emotions on the present, in the here and now, allowing you to put aside dissociating symptoms.

If all else fails, talk therapy can also be enormously helpful. A trained therapist can help you unravel the key triggers at the source of your recurring dissociation to gradually put a stop to it.  

What to Do When Someone Is Dissociating

Next, let’s explore how to help someone dissociating and some of the signs and symptoms to look out for when you’re on the outside looking at someone dissociating. It can be a little trickier to tell, because, typically, dissociating is something that happens internally, so the outward signs can be a little more difficult to spot.

So, with that in mind, what exactly are the signs someone is dissociating?

·        They zone out or appear distant: More than simply distracted, a person who is dissociating will be hard to get the attention of.

·        Robotic or flat: The emotional numbness will manifest in someone who seems to be lacking emotion and may respond to you robotically. Or they might not respond at all.

·        Memory loss: They may have gaps in their memory, or at worst, selective amnesia.

·        Weird behavior: Ultimately, their behavior may just be out of the ordinary from what you expect of them, especially if they have one or more of the other signs. 

With the signs established, what to do when someone is dissociating? The good news is that you can use a lot of the techniques we mentioned above to help them come out of their dissociative state. You can start by guiding them through the grounding techniques, having them identify things around them. Then, if that doesn’t work, they may hate you for it down the lie, but you could try the cold-water method.

Ultimately, if someone you know is dissociating, then helping them is relatively easy—as long as you can recognize the signs.

Conclusion

For many people, dissociating is a way for them to cope with stressful or traumatic experiences, so while finding yourself with harsher symptoms, like memory gaps, can be frustrating, your mind is putting you in this state for a good reason.

However, if you find yourself dissociating regularly, or if it’s a symptom of a deeper psychological issue, like schizophrenia, Serenity Space Therapy is here for you. Our talented and friendly therapists are experts in the latest talk therapy modalities to help you get to the root of whatever your mental health issues might be. Those in Arizona or Florida can contact us today for more information.

FAQs

• What does shutdown dissociation look like?

  This extreme form of dissociation happens during extreme stress or trauma. It can lead you to withdraw from the world entirely, making it hard to even function. You may find yourself unable to move, or you may even faint.

• What are the five stages of dissociation?

  These five stages—or components/facets—are amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alteration. They refer to the ways in which someone is affected by dissociation.

• Can I be aware I'm dissociating?

  Although the level of awareness will vary from person to person, it’s entirely possible that you’ll realize that you’re dissociating. You may realize that you’re becoming disconnected from the world or feel as though you are having an out-of-body experience. Alternatively, you could realize after the fact that you’ve dissociated. 

• What can be mistaken for dissociation?

  There are a few things that can seem very similar to dissociation, but are separate conditions and experiences in and of themselves. Daydreaming, for instance, can feel a lot like a dissociative state, but it is not. Panic attacks can also make you feel as though you are dissociating, and so can sleep deprivation. On top of that, certain personality disorders and conditions like ADHD can make you feel as though you’re dissociating.