Eli5: disassociation
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For me it’s sort of a spectrum. On one end, I get intense daydreams, while on the other I’m completely unplugged from my body and it feels like I’m watching myself from the corner. It has gotten so bad that I wasn’t able to really come back without self harm.
It’s a defense mechanism.
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Mental Health therapist here, disassociation is something our brain does to limit how much information is coming in at once. Often it’s viewed as a response to a trauma or threat but the main reason people disassociate is overstimulation.
Think about how much information and data your brain takes in at one time. Now imagine that it just stopped taking in pieces of information even though they are still there. That would feel pretty strange and may cause confusion, memory loss, etc.
Have you ever been looking at your phone and lost track of time? Because of how much stimulation your phone was giving your brain, your brain turned off it’s awareness of time to reduce the overall stimulation. This is an extremely mild example of disassociation.
With trauma and other mental health symptoms the brain is extremely active and overstimulated. So to protect itself, it starts turning off parts of our awareness. Our awareness of self, time, reality, body, emotions can all be throttled or even stopped completely by our brain. It can be a very strange feeling. Many people describe it as being “checked out” or “not really here”
Hope that helps!
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