How To Stop Dissociating Ptsd

Identify Early Warning Signs

PTSD: What You Need to Know About Dissociation

Flashbacks and dissociation may feel as though they come out of the blue and they may feel unpredictable and uncontrollable. However, there are often some early signs that you may be slipping into a flashback or a dissociative state.

For example, your surroundings may begin to look fuzzy or you may feel as though you’re separating from or losing touch with your surroundings, other people, or even yourself. Flashbacks and dissociation are easier to cope with and prevent if you can catch them early on. Therefore, it’s important to try to increase your awareness of their early symptoms.

Next time you experience an episode, revisit what you were feeling and thinking just before the flashback or dissociation occurred. Try to identify as many early symptoms as possible. The more early warning signs you can come up with, the better able you will be to prevent future episodes.

Associated Features And Risks Of The Dissociative Subtype

As compared to individuals with PTSD alone, patients with a diagnosis of the dissociative subtype of PTSD showed:

Repeated traumatization and early adverse experience prior to onset of PTSD
Increased psychiatric comorbidity, in particular specific phobia and borderline and avoidant personality disorders among women, but not men
Increased functional impairment

Childhood Dissociation Persists In Adulthood

As children with trauma get older, they may use self-harm, food, drugs, alcohol, or any other coping mechanism to maintain the disconnection from unhealed trauma. As therapists, we see these behaviors serving two functions for trauma survivors

As a dissociative mechanism or way to dissociate
As a way to sustain behaviors that keep them dissociated .

Ultimately, this coping strategy that was useful in childhood, in adulthood compromises abilities to trust, attach, socialize, and provide good self-care. These challenges follow trauma survivors throughout their life, if not attended to.

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How Can I Get Out Of A Dissociative State

There are a few exercises and targeted therapies that help people come out of dissociative states.Here are some examples of exercises that will help bring someone out of a dissociative state:

5 Senses

If someone is in a dissociative state, ask them to describe what each of their senses are experiencing. For example, what can you hear right now? What can you feel around you? What can you see? What can you smell right now? What can you taste?

Grounding

There are many ways to practice grounding exercises. Some grounding exercises that we find most helpful include giving the person in a dissociative state something to taste or feel. Ways you can do this is by giving them a candy and asking them to describe the taste and sensation. Another way to do this is put an object in their hands and ask them to describe the way it feels.

Focused sight

Focused sight techniques include asking the person in a dissociative state to look at something in the room and focus on it. Ask them to describe everything about it, ask them questions about it to try and bring their attention back to the present moment.

Ice cubes

Have the person in a dissociative state hold ice cubes in their hands. The cold temperature will bring them back to the moment by causing an unavoidable sensation in the present moment.

About Dr Arielle Schwartz

Dr. Arielle Schwartz is a licensed clinical psychologist, wife, and mother in Boulder, CO. She offers trainings for therapists, maintains a private practice, and has passions for the outdoors, yoga, and writing. Dr. Schwartz is the author of The Complex PTSD Workbook: A Mind-Body Approach to Regaining Emotional Control and Becoming Whole and co-author of EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology: Interventions to Enhance Embodiment in Trauma Treatment. She is the developer of Resilience-Informed Therapy which applies research on trauma recovery to form a strength-based, trauma treatment model that includes Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing , somatic psychology and time-tested relational psychotherapy. Like , and sign up for email updates to stay up to date with all her posts.

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Resolving Complex Ptsd And Dissociation

Traumatic patterns tend to be relived and re-enacted. Even though they are painful traumatic patterns are familiar letting go can actually feel more overwhelming. It can feel safer not to trust people. It can feel easier not to change.

Relational psychotherapy with a clinician informed about developmental trauma can help. Recommended modalities include EMDR Therapy and Somatic Therapy . Expert and author, Kathy Steele, MN, CS suggests that the healing of early developmental trauma must occur within a safe relationship that is respectful, predictable, consistent, non-defensive, and that has clear boundaries. The process of healing complex PTSD involves:

Observing your patterns of dissociation.
Accepting and loving yourself with all of your defenses.
Compassionately recognizing the impact of dissociation on your life and relationships today.
Recognizing that a traumatic event happened to you.
Realizing that increased awareness brings increased choice.
Increasing tolerance for rejection, loss, disappointment, shame, conflict, and uncertainty.
Recognizing that the frightening or dangerous events are over now.
Distinguishing between the past and present more clearly.
Reclaiming flexibility in your body and mind.
Developing new, healthy expectations about relationships.
Having a clear understanding of the impact of relational traumas experienced in childhood cultivates compassion.

How To Manage Dissociating

Think about all the times youve had to read a text over because your mind was elsewhere, or you pulled into your driveway with no memory of the actual drive home. Thats dissociation and it happens to everyone at least sometimes.

Dissociation is detachment, whether from your body, your emotions, or your surroundings. Its the opposite of being present in the here and now.

Dissociation isn’t a genetic trait its a response that gets honed through experience and necessity. Sometimes, it can be useful. Think of heroic soldiers wounded on the battlefield who blocked out their pain to save others. Even the highly sought-after state of flow is technically dissociation: you become completely absorbed in whatever youre doingwriting, drawing, baking, or the likeand disconnected from your surroundings and time.

Dissociation can also be an emergency survival tactic during intense pain or trauma. It cuts you off from your experience, making you numb when pain or panic would otherwise overwhelm you. This means that in the short-term, dissociation can be necessary for survival.

Its as if the initial tapping out of reality only postponed the psychological pain, making it worse later.

What does dissociation feel like?

There are two most common forms of dissociation: depersonalization and derealization. Both depersonalization and derealization exist on a spectrum. If youve ever stared into a campfire or a strobe light, you may have glimpsed how this feels.

How to stop dissociating

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What Are Some Symptoms Of Dissociation

According to scientists, many people who are going through stressful works will feel dissociated at some point in their lifetime. Dissociation symptoms will not be permanent and are recoverable. Yet, in some cases, the symptoms remain the same as they were in the first time.

How to deal with dissociation? Well, dissociation also triggers other brain illnesses, such as anxiety.

When anxiety happens with dissociation, you may feel disconnected from your body, or you are having the senses around yourself but cant react or feel them as your own. This state is more likely known as panic attack dissociation.

There can be many dissociation signs and symptoms. But, the most common ones are,

Amnesia or Memory Loss

Dissociative people will not remember their personal stuff from the past. They may even forget the most recent things, such as 2 to 3 days earlier information.

Losing Self-Identity

You may feel like you are not connected with your own body and mind. But, sometimes you will feel the world around you co-consciously.

Losing Self-Awareness

You have the feeling and sensation of your body and mind, yet you feel like you are not connected to the world around you. Moreover, you will distance yourself from others. This state is more likely known as social anxiety dissociation.

Confused Identity State

Dissociative disorder also can make the person confused about their own identities. That person will more likely adopt a totally new identity or mimic someone elses.

Awkward Feels

Coping With Flashbacks And Dissociation In Ptsd

Steven Gans, MD is board-certified in psychiatry and is an active supervisor, teacher, and mentor at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Seek Treatment

Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder struggle in coping with flashbacks and dissociation, which may occur as a result of encountering triggers, that is, reminders of a traumatic event.

To the extent that people are not aware of their triggers, flashbacks and dissociation can be incredibly disruptive and unpredictable events that are difficult to manage. However, you can take steps to better manage and prevent flashbacks and dissociation and stay in the present.

Why Does Dissociation Happen

There are several reasons that may cause mind dissociation. Scientists state that people who have experienced traumatic events or have a history of post-traumatic stress disorder may have a higher chance of dissociation.

Not just dissociation, these individuals have a higher chance of other brain disorders and body dissociation.

One of the primary aspects of dissociation is, this problem starts ordinarily for any human. If not checked, these problems ultimately lead to a dissociative disorder. So, it can be compared to a slow-paced brain disorder.

Some other reasons that cause dissociation are,

Experiencing physical and mental abuse in a past life.
Stressful environment.
Meditation.
Hypnotic state.

However, the stressful working and living environment is one of the core reasons for typical dissociation.

If any individual experiences the above reasons repeatedly may cause a permanent dissociation problem. It will be hard for them to return to their natural consciousness, remember things from a recent hour, or grow different identities. But, different identities are another part of dissociative disorders.

Some comprehensive statistics show dissociative identity disorder has a chance of only 0.1% to 1% percent in the general population. Moreover, Some research states that some individuals feel like they are in the movies , and 7% of the people may have a chance of having an undiagnosed dissociative disorder.

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Keep A Journal And Start Identifying Your Triggers

Dissociation happens for a reason. You may not know what that reason is right now, and thats okay! But if its having an impact on your life, its crucial to make sure youre working with a mental health professional to learn better coping tools and identify your triggers.

Keeping a journal can be helpful for illuminating what some of your triggers might be.

When you have a dissociative episode, take some time to retrace your steps and look at the moments leading up to it. This can be crucial to better understanding how to manage dissociation.

Because dissociation can impact your memory, writing it down also ensures that when you meet with your therapist youll have reference points that you can go back to, to build a clearer picture of whats been going on for you.

If you arent sure where to start, this No BS Guide to Organizing Your Feelings can give you a template to work with!

How Do You Ground Someone Who Is Dissociating

Coping With Flashbacks and Dissociation in PTSD

Dissociation is a mental process that produces a lack of connection in our thoughts, a separation of emotions, physical sensations, memories, actions or even our sense of identity. Most of us experience mild dissociation in our everyday lives. These examples of dissociation are normal, and a mild form of amnesia.

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The Shutdown Dissociation Scale

The Shut-D is a structured interview consisting of 13 items. Responses to all items were given on a scale including 0 , 1 , 2 , to 3 . Summed scores can range from 0 to 39. When completing this interview, interviewers should establish the time frame for which these shutdown dissociation symptoms have been reported. The interviewer should select a time frame within the past 6 months in order to acquire an overview of the patient’s suffering in their everyday life. If the trauma occurred less than 6 months ago, symptoms are to be explored since the traumatic event.

When Does Dissociation Become A Disorder

While many people may experience dissociation, often related to past trauma, the symptoms dont always meet the criteria for a mental health disorder.

Episodes of dissociation vary in length they might last a few hours or days, or they could last much longer, into weeks or months. If you learned to dissociate from a young age, dissociation may be a common experience as an adult, and it might be the main way that you cope with stress. This may signal a dissociative disorder.

As dissociation is the bodys response to extreme stress, research from 2014 suggests it can be present, in some form, in almost all psychiatric disorders. This includes anxiety disorders, panic disorder, and depression.

Below, we look at some mental health conditions that commonly involve dissociation.

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Can Emotional Abuse Cause Dissociation

Dissociative disorders are usually caused when dissociation is used a lot to survive complex trauma over a long time, and during childhood when the brain and personality are developing. Examples of trauma which may lead to a dissociative disorder include: physical abuse. emotional abuse.

Dissociation is a process linked to lapses of attention, history of abuse or trauma, compromised emotional memory, and a disintegrated sense of self. It is theorized that dissociation stems from avoiding emotional information, especially negative emotion, to protect a fragile psyche.

Subjects And Demographical Data

Grounding Techniques for Dissociation

Study sample 1

Study sample 2

The study sample 2 consisted of German psychiatric patients and healthy controls . The level of dissociation was assessed using the Shut-D and the DES . The responsible psychologist or the psychiatrists in charge made the current diagnoses based on the International Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders Tenth Version .

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Get An Emotional Support Animal

Im not saying run to the nearest animal shelter and bring home a puppy because bringing a furry friend home can be a trigger in itself .

I can tell you from experience, though, that my cat Pancake has completely changed my life. Hes an older cat thats incredibly cuddly, intuitive, and loves being hugged and hes my registered ESA for a reason.

Any time Im having a mental health issue, youll find him perched on my chest, purring away until my breathing slows down.

So when I tell you to get a support animal, it should be something you put a lot of thought into. Consider how much responsibility you can take on, the personality of the critter, the space you have available, and contact a shelter to see if you can get some help finding your perfect match.

The Link Between Trauma And Dissociation

Trauma is, by definition, an overwhelming emotional response to a horrific event. Dissociation can be a critical part of your survival instinct during trauma. When a horrific event happens, your nervous system kicks in to protect you from mental and physical pain.

Dissociation is part of the fight-or-flight response, which is an involuntary survival network that helps protect us from threats or danger, says Sabina Mauro, PsyD, who specializes in treating patients living with trauma in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

During traumatic experiences, the fight-or-flight is activated in order to protect the individual, she explains. If fight-or-flight is not a viable option or if fight-or-flight becomes inactive due to the body feeling overwhelmed, the freeze response is activated.

According to Mauro, its during the freeze response that you can experience disconnect. Because there arent any other options available, you essentially sever contact between your brain and body in order to survive the experience. This is a similar survival response to a mouse playing dead when caught by a cat to increase its chances of getting out of there alive.

While dissociation is a helpful strategy at the time, it can also arise long after the trauma is over, causing problems in your daily life. Dissociation might occur when you encounter a situation or object that reminds your nervous system consciously or subconsciously of the trauma.

Signs and symptoms that you are dissociating include:

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The Defense Cascade Model

The item generation of the Shut-D was based on patients symptom descriptions, clinical observations, and expert judgment, and was conceptualized on the basis of the outlined defense cascade model. The scale has been applied in several studies that have shown the close relationship between trauma-related psychopathology and shutdown dissociation.

Types Of Dissociative Disorders

How to Reconnect with Your Body if Youre an Abuse ...

There are a few different types of dissociative disorders that include:

Dissociative amnesia involves the inability to recall the details of stressful or traumatic experiences. It can include having no memory at all, but it can also include patchy or incomplete memories.
Dissociative fugue is a disorder where memory loss is common, and a new identity may even be created as the person has no memory of their past or who they are.
Depersonalization derealization disorder involves feelings of being detached from ones body or mental processes. It can feel like youre watching someone elses life, and sometimes, you cant even recognize yourself in the mirror.
Dissociative identity disorder, which is also referred to as multiple personality disorder, involves the presence of two or more distinct personalities within the same person without any awareness that the other personalities exist.

Fortunately, there are quite a few things you can do if you find yourself experiencing altered states of consciousness due to dissociation, regardless of the severity of your symptoms.

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