Have you ever zoned out?
Maybe you have experienced it too highway hypnosis, I have no recollection of driving from point A to point B. Or perhaps you’ve driven one. I have zero memory of what I just read..
These are mild forms of dissociation, the ability to disconnect from thoughts, feelings, environment, and actions.
Psychologist Janina Fischer, who has treated dissociative disorders for decades, says that dissociation can, for example, “allow people to focus on the most salient or life-saving aspects of a situation” without psychological intervention. He said that it could also be useful for the work of athletes. .
However, people sometimes experience a major form of dissociation, which often occurs in the aftermath of overwhelming trauma. In this case, dissociative symptoms become more extreme and frequent.
Public interest in dissociation and its disorders has been ongoing for many years. Examples include “Sybil” and “The Three Faces of Eve,” which were made into hugely popular feature films about women with “multiple personalities.”
Now people are recording their experiences of dissociation and posting them on social media. TikTok video with hashtag #Dissociative identity disorderor DID, has been viewed over 1.7 billion times. #dissociation has been viewed over 775 million times. Some show what dissociation feels like or use visual effects to explain the eerie feeling of living outside the body. In others, people describe their different identities, also called aliases or parts.
Celebrities like “Saturday Night Live” star Bowen Yang an openly spoken struggle and dissociative hindranceAs conversations around mental health continue to shift into public spaces;
However, research shows that much of this content is not provided reliable information. We asked several mental health experts to explain more. dissociation.
What is a dissociative disorder?
Dr. Frank W. Putnam, a professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and an expert on dissociative disorders, says that some people “freeze up” in stressful or threatening situations rather than fight or flight. He says there is. “It’s a dissociative state where you close your mind and become distant.”
Dissociation can help you mentally escape when you’re under threat, but if it persists in benign situations, it can interfere with your daily life. For example, someone may arrive in a new place without knowing how they got there.
Dr. Putnam says that frequent such experiences can make dissociation pathological. Once you’re out of space for long enough to “lose time,” it becomes a disability and becomes a serious hindrance to your life, he added.
The three most common and well-known dissociative disorder These are dissociative identity disorder, depersonalization/derealization disorder, and dissociative amnesia.
What they all have in common is a collapse of identity.
The most severe is dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. People who have experienced DID report having two or more identities. According to research, about 1 to 1.5 percent But some say the prevalence could be even higher.
“I think this is so underdiagnosed,” says Dr. Judith Herman, a psychiatrist and pioneer in the field of trauma research. The main reason is that “I still hear people in my field saying, ‘I don’t believe in DID.'”
Despite DID being included in the American Psychiatric Association’s official manual on mental disorders, DSM-5; some psychiatrists and psychologists Patients with symptoms of DID may actually have borderline personality disorder. Others believe this is a fad or could be caused by the provider.
have had a difficult experience early childhood traumaSeveral experts have said that behaviors such as sexual abuse are predictive of developing DID.
“It’s hard to believe this diagnosis unless you see it,” Dr. Fisher acknowledged. Patients are showing changes in body language, facial expressions and cognitive abilities, she added. “It sounds kind of dramatic, almost fantastical.”
Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder is approximately 1-2% Dr. Putnam says the condition is often associated with a history of verbal abuse, such as shaming or shaming, which makes the person want to remove themselves from a traumatic environment.
by Apa, a person experiencing depersonalization may feel as if they are disconnected from their own mind or body, as if they are alienated from themselves, and that they see events that happen to them as if they were alienated from themselves. Derealization, on the other hand, refers to feeling disconnected from the environment, as if people and objects in the world are not real, and in some cases appear like cardboard cutouts.
The epidemic of dissociative amnesia not well established. It occurs in response to various types of trauma and involves a loss of identity and a period of time in which a person is unable to remember important information about their life, such as their name.
Both dissociative amnesia and depersonalization/derealization symptoms commonly accompany DID
Why are dissociative disorders receiving so much attention?
“I thought the internet and app-based world would bring us all closer together. And it’s had just the opposite effect,” says David, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University who has been treating patients with DID for nearly 50 years. Dr. Spiegel said. “It has divided us.”
What he meant, he explained, was that many of us have retreated into online echo chambers. Truly he says that some people have DID and various mental health disorders, but they mislabel themselves because they are stuck in a loop of DID information, either by choice or by aggressive social media algorithms. Some people may be.
Experts say the idea of having an alternate reality or different identity can be especially resonant during adolescence, when many teens struggle with the question, “Who am I?”
Dr. David Lettu, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and medical director of Lane County Behavioral Health in Eugene, Oregon, learned about dissociative disorders on social media and wondered if he too had one. I have worked with many young people who are in need.
Dr. Rettew encouraged anyone interested in a particular disease to speak carefully and thoughtfully. medical worker; medical institutionespecially the following people understand traumato clarify what’s going on.
“Almost everything in mental health is dimensional. It exists on a spectrum,” he said. “It doesn’t make our situation any less real, but it does make it more complicated.”
