Researchers and clinicians believe that dissociation is a common, naturally occurring defense against childhood trauma. Faced with overwhelming abuse and their inability to flee or fight to protect themselves, it is not surprising that children would psychologically flee (dissociate) from full awareness of their experience. Understanding dissociation and its relationship to trauma is basic to understanding Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative disorders. Dissociation is the disconnection from full awareness of self, time, and/or external circumstances. Dissociation exists along a continuum from normal everyday experiences (like highway hypnosis - a trance-like feeling that develops as the miles go by; "getting lost" in a book or a movie so that one loses a sense of passing time and surroundings; and daydreaming) to disorders that interfere with everyday functioning.

Dissociative disorders are disturbances or alterations in the normally integrated functions of identity, memory, or consciousness. There are several types of Dissociative Disorders. Dissociative Amnesia with acute loss of memory may result from wartime trauma, a severe accident, or rape. Dissociative Fugue involves travel to a new location and the assumption of a new identity  along with loss of memory. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), although not officially a dissociative disorder, can be thought of as part of the dissociative spectrum. In PTSD, recall/re-experiencing of the trauma as in flashbacks, alternates with emotional or physical numbing, and avoidance. Atypical dissociative disorders are classified as Dissociative Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS). If the disturbance occurs primarily in identity with parts of the self assuming separate identities, the resulting disorder is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), previously called Multiple Personality Disorder.

The dissociative continuum extends from normal dissociation to poly-fragmented DID. All of the disorders are trauma-based, and symptoms result from the dissociation of traumatic memories. For example, an  accident victim with Dissociative Amnesia may have no conscious memory of the accident, yet experience depression, numbness, and distress resulting from environmental stimuli such as colors, odors, sounds, and images that recall the traumatic experience. The dissociated memory is alive and active--not forgotten, merely submerged. Major studies have confirmed the traumatic origin of DID (Putnam, 1989, and Ross, 1989), which arises most frequently before age 5 as a result of severe physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse.

The combination of PTSD-DDNOS is the most frequent diagnosis in survivors of childhood abuse. These survivors experience the flashbacks and intrusion of trauma memories, sometimes not until years after the childhood abuse, with dissociative experiences of distancing, "spacing out", feeling unreal, the ability to ignore pain, and feeling as if they were looking at the world through a fog, a cloud or a veil. The symptom profile of adults who were abuse as children includes posttraumatic and dissociative disorders combined with depression, anxiety syndromes, and addictions. These symptoms include

• chronic depression;
• anxiety, panic, and phobias;
• anger and rage;
• low self-esteem, and feeling damaged and/or worthless;
• shame and guilt;
• somatic pain syndromes
• flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and images of trauma;
• hypervigilance;
• eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia, and compulsive overeating;
• sleep disturbances: nightmares, insomnia, and sleepwalking; and
• relationship and intimacy difficulties;
• sexual dysfunction, including addictions and avoidance;
• self-destructive thoughts and/or behavior;
• time loss, memory gaps, and a sense of unreality;
• alternative states of consciousness or personalities
• substance abuse

Dissociation was used by many of us to deal with the abuse as children and adults. In situations of trauma dissociation is an automatic process. It protected us as children or victims in situations where we could not run or fight. For many of us it saved our sanity.

Unfortunately it doesn’t work so well in the  real world. Now when we most need to be aware to protect ourselves we may find that we are spacing out and unable to do what we need to do to stop the abuse.

You can become aware of dissociation by looking for the ways you dissociate or learning how it feels. Some people can read a book or watch a movie and become totally unaware of their surroundings. If a person calls your name you might not hear them until they begin to raise their voice.  That is a signal that you have dissociated or spaced out. Other people find themselves reading or watching TV and find that they haven’t understood anything in the last five or ten minutes or haven’t got a clue what the last paragraph said even though they have read it three times. You have just dissociated.

As you become aware of dissociating you can learn to be in control of it instead of it controlling you. Let yourself feel what it is like to be spaced out. I used to practice controlling it by looking at an object and then letting my vision go into and through it. (If you are a very high dissociator you might not want to try this). Just allow yourself to feel yourself losing sight of your present surroundings and  enter some safe zone. Pull your vision back to the present surroundings. Practice this and let yourself feel the sensation of moving in and out of the dissociation. As you get more experience with the process you will be able to maintain more control over it. 

Dissociators will often space out when they are in a present-day abusive situation. For example when I was married every time my husband criticized me for something I would space out. The louder he yelled, the smaller I felt. Most often when I dissociated I felt like a little child - the same child my father would yell at. I would stand there unable to speak or move. That was the "play-dead response" kicking in to protect me from the past. The problem as an adult was that dissociating was preventing me from stopping the abuse in the present.

At this point the breathing exercise becomes very important. Breaking out of the dissociation means that we must first force ourselves to BREATHE and then MOVE. The breathing gets oxygen back into the lungs and brains and unlocks the freezing from the  "play dead response". The oxygen in the brain lets you start to think again and plan out a course of action.  Practice letting yourself space out and then breathe to break yourself out of it. The more easily you can do this in a relaxed state the easier it will be to stop when you really need it.