Understanding The Nuanced Differences Between Dissociation Types

[theshadowoftheliving]

So, I understand that there are five types of dissociation: derealization, depersonalization, amnesia, identity co fusion and identity alteration. I've read the definitions over and over. It sounds like they all assume some level of awareness.

So, what do you call it when you dissociate hard enough to lose track all together? I have moments in therapy where I just ... Disappear. No conscious awareness at all. No idea how much time goes by. Eventually I hear my therapist calling my name, and I struggle to come back. Hearing comes back sooner than sight or touch or smell.

I'm just trying to figure out what to call this because I'm looking at having to switch therapists yet again and I want to be able to tell them what is going on with me.

 

[Friday]

Zoning out. Lights on & no one home. A better door than a window. Needing to make myself useful as well as decorative. Only using my head for growing hair. Stoic. Cheaper than nodding out. Losing time. Away on one of my loooooong journeys inside my brain. Sleeping very, very alertly. Paying only a token nod to being awake. An homage to humanity. A highly trained forgettery. I may not look like I'm doing much, but at the cellular level I'm really quite busy. Impersonating a lemur with a tranq dart problem (alternatively, a very energetic koala). Alluringly mysterious. Rescuing the couch from floating off into outer space (Yo! Pay the damn gravity bill, will ya?), lost in my mind, & Present, but not accounted for. <chuckling> I call it a whole lot of things.

Shrug. I would call it disassociation, if I were being technical. Since disassociation exists on a spectrum? I would be very much surprised to find out there are only those 5 subtypes, instead of those subtypes being common expressions of disassociation. Kind of a squares and rectangles thing.

 

[Sideways]

Try and remember having breakfast yesterday. Really remember. Pouring the cereal, getting the milk, each spoonful going in...it's gone, right? No memory of that. How long did it take? No idea. Is that alarming? Only if turns out you ate 4 roast beef sandwiches with a bottle of vodka.

That's totally normal (switching off, not the vodka-brekky!) That's dissociation. Everyone does it. Did you need to concentrate hard on how to have brekky to pull it off? No - and your brain didn't think so either, so it switched onto autopilot and disappeared into the matrix of your subconscious to deal with bigger issues. Clever, really.

With trauma, the brain decides that this is actually a really awesome way to function when things get too stressful - either in your environment (like with your T), or just inside your head (nasty thoughts...autopilot). Still just dissociation- it's just that the trauma has taught your brain to use this skill in stressful situations, not just for matters of routine.

The sub-types you've listed are just when your brain gets a little bit over-zealous with the whole thing and takes the dissociation too far in a weird, weird, direction.

some peolple are diagnosed with Anxiety. That's it, no classification required. For others, it morphs into stuff like OCD. So there's Dissociation (like Anxiety), then there are specific types, like Dissociative Fugue. You don't need to be able to recognise yourself in a subtype for it to still be perfectly valid, helpful (but not so much) Dissociation.

So the question isn't "what type of dissociation was that?", it's "what was my T talking about that made my head need to switch off?"...

 

[Klo]

I think it's the most extreme freeze response out of fight/flight/freeze. Like an extreme form of the flight response might involve mindlessly trying to escape something, with all other parts of thinking and feeling shut down. An extreme fight response might look like a mindless, enraged frenzy, someone ready to fight to the death no matter what is in front of them. An extreme freeze response I imagine is a person completely blacking out.

 

[anonymous]

The way I understand it it falls under depersonalisation but towards the more extreme end. It is a removal from self in a sense. Or if you look at it another way it is a disruption of consciousness. Like part of the mind or body is asleep.

It may be best to say to the T that you become unresponsive and dissociative and that way she won't think you mean personality DID type dissociation. Just use your own words. It's very common with PTSD and trauma. And with some other conditions to an extent.