Dissociation is one of those scientific terms that has been used casually by people who have no clear understanding of what the term involves. In my practice, when they use the word and I ask them to explain the experience, I get descriptions that go from feeling numb, not remembering something, being mentally absent, or losing track of time, to experiencing their body as unfamiliar.
Some might say, “I was there, but I didn’t feel anything.” Another says, “I know it happened, but I can’t remember most of it.” Someone else may say they become so heavy they can’t move or speak. Some mention spending hours mentally somewhere else.
What’s also interesting about this particular term is that even professionals put all those experiences in the same box: dissociation. But are they really the same thing?
Researchers have questioned this for years. More than 10 years ago, a proposition to separate dissociation into two came up, saying that there were two mechanisms easily distinguishable: detachment and compartmentalization.
Combining that proposition with my clinical observations, I add two more mechanisms that can make people feel absent or disconnected. Not all four are necessarily dissociation in the clinical sense, but they create the type of stress and fear that the term now implicitly carries when someone believes they are dissociating.
1. The Volume Is Turned Down
This first mechanism is the most popular. it includes a woman describing her father’s death as casually as talking about the weather, a man who feels as if watching himself arguing with his wife from a foot away, or someone who looks at his street as if it was a movie set after a heavy day at work.
These experiences are dissociative and easily recognizable clinically as emotional numbing, depersonalization, and derealization. The mechanism they share is a change in how emotions, the self, or surroundings are experienced. It’s a temporary distancing that can be useful in some situations, like when a parent needs to remain composed while taking an injured child to the hospital. The problem here, and in almost every other dissociative experience, comes when the mechanism doesn’t stop and the experience becomes chronic.
I like describing this type as if the volume of the experience has been turned down. Volume down makes the heavy experience less loud. The brain uses this mechanism because it assumes the full volume of the emotional response may be unbearable.
This has been investigated. Neuroimaging research has found that some trauma-related dissociative experiences involve a higher-than-ordinary regulation of emotional responses that reduce the awareness of the reaction. It’s been proposed as the most probable mechanism even when it may not apply to every experience we call detachment.
2. The Connection Is Missing
The other recognized type of dissociation is called compartmentalization.
The experiences here are better identified than the mechanisms behind them. Think of someone not remembering writing the texts they sent, or someone who recalls a childhood experience when talking to their brother but goes blank if the issue is brought up by the parents. This mechanism works similar to a working lamp that isn’t plugged in. The capacity may be there but it won’t light up because that access has been interrupted.
This type of dissociation is probably the most severe issue because it involves discontinuities in memory, as in dissociative amnesia, or identity, as in dissociative identity disorder.
An accepted theory is that repeated overwhelming experiences, especially during childhood, may influence how memory, awareness, and identity develop, and that some connections may have developed without linking to each other, which creates that sense of fragmentation or absence that may be feel so disempowering.
3. The Whole System Shifts
There is another response, commonly called shutdown, whose place within dissociation remains controversial. Some researchers consider it a related defensive response rather than dissociation itself but many people think of it as the epitome of dissociation and trauma. It often occurs during overwhelming stress, particularly when a threat seems inescapable. Imagine someone receiving devastating news. Their system reacts in such a way that the body becomes heavy, thinking slows down, and moving or speaking becomes difficult, sometimes to the point of immobility.
It’s different than numbing because someone who is emotionally numb is still responsive. In shutdown, however, the person’s overall physiological state changes, affecting energy, movement, and the capacity to act. If numbing is low volume, shutdown is like a phone entering battery-saver mode. Other dissociative experiences, such as emotional detachment, may occur at the same time, but that doesn’t make them the same mechanism.
Dissociation Essential Reads
Shutdown is generally a temporary defensive response that subsides as the system recovers. However, in some people, similar responses may be activated repeatedly, sometimes by situations that no longer present the original level of threat.
4. Attention Goes Elsewhere
Another experience frequently included in dissociative descriptions involves absorption, although researchers disagree about where it belongs.
Think about becoming so absorbed in a novel that you don’t hear someone calling your name, or driving home with little recollection of the journey. Attention has concentrated elsewhere, like a radio tuned to another station.
But it can also look like someone spending hours creating elaborate imaginary worlds, complete with characters, relationships, and conflicts. Even when they generally recognize these worlds as imaginary, returning to ordinary life may become increasingly difficult. This is sometimes called maladaptive daydreaming that is assumed to be pathological and dysfunctional.
Absorption, like other dissociative manifestations, isn’t necessarily pathological. It’s a normal attentional capacity that can become problematic only when it becomes difficult to regulate. That’s why I think attention deserves a place in this conversation, even if some forms of absorption don’t qualify as dissociation.
Why the Difference Matters
In general, dissociative experiences feel strange and many times frightening, but many are temporary and harmless. I think that understanding the mechanism could help us decide what might help:
- When the volume is turned down, treatment may involve gradually restoring access to emotional experience.
- When connections are missing, the work may focus on improving access and continuity between experiences or states.
- When the whole system shifts, we need to find what triggers that response and help restore the capacity to act.
- When attention repeatedly goes elsewhere, we might ask what the inner world provides that ordinary life doesn’t.
Each needs a different starting point.
Knowing which process is operating helps us understand what’s happening, why it persists, and what might help us become more fully present again.
