Dissociation: The Disconnection That Once Protected You
The word dissociate means to “disconnect or separate.”
There’s a particular kind of fog that comes with dissociation. You’re here… but not quite. Going through the motions. Functioning, yes—but feeling? Not really.
You might say:
“I can talk about what happened to me, but I can’t feel it, it’s like viewing a movie without the sound on.”
“I know what triggers me, but I can’t stop it, I don’t know hot to turn the switch off”
“It’s like I’m not fully in my life… like I’m watching it happen from the wrong end of a telescope, or I’m floating above myself.
This is dissociation. And if you’ve lived through trauma—especially early or ongoing trauma—it’s likely that your nervous system used this as a survival response.
It protected you. You weren’t weak. You were wise. You adapted. In the context of trauma, dissociation is the mind and body’s way of protecting you from experiences that feel too painful, unsafe, or overwhelming to fully process. It is a separating from emotions, felt sense and thoughts. It can show up as a response to both PTSD and Complex Trauma.
Bessel van der Kalk describes “Dissociation, a key component of trauma, disrupts the integration of experiences into a coherent whole, creating a dual-memory system where traumatic memories remain isolated and can be triggered as reactions rather than memories.”
It can show up as:
• Feeling “spaced out,” numb, or detached from your body
• Losing chunks of time or forgetting parts of conversations
• Watching yourself from the outside (as if in a dream)
• Feeling emotionally flat or disconnected from your feelings
• Escaping into daydreaming or fantasy
• Struggling to stay present during stressful or mundane tasks
On the surface, it might seem like you are zoning out or “just being forgetful,” but for many trauma survivors, dissociation becomes a default way of navigating life. If it has been present from childhood, you may not realise that this is what you are doing, because it is normalised. You might just assume everyone does that. Dissociation isn’t a flaw—it’s an adaptive response from a body that has worked hard to protect you. Freud has time and again established that dissociative personalities result from a defense mechanism created by our ego as a safeguard to protect us from traumatic memories. The memories trigger often get pushed to the unconscious mind and are forgotten.
Why Does Dissociation Happen?
When we experience trauma—especially during childhood—our nervous system learns to protect us, using either flight, fight, freeze or fawn. It also tends to favour one or two as our “go to” coping mechanism.
If fight or flight isn’t possible, the body may shut down instead. This freeze or numbing response allows us to survive experiences that would otherwise overwhelm our system.
Over time, this survival strategy can become deeply ingrained:
• A child who couldn’t escape a chaotic or unsafe home may learn to disconnect from their emotions to cope.
• A body that endured repeated stress might dull sensations to avoid feeling pain.
• An adult who experienced emotional neglect may continue to “leave” their body during conflict or vulnerability.
Dissociation is not a flaw. It’s a function.
When the overwhelm was too much—when your body, heart, or mind couldn’t process what was happening—your system did what it had to do: it shut certain doors.
You learned to disconnect from sensation, from emotion, from parts of yourself… because that’s what was safest.
But here’s the thing:
What protected you then might be keeping you from living fully now. Everyone dissociates from time to time, like getting in the car to drive to the shops and not recollecting any of the journey. Most of the world dissociates through the use of their phone, hours can be lost in social media or watching Netflix. But, persistent dissociation is often rooted in unresolved trauma.
While dissociation may have once been lifesaving, and sometimes for trauma survivors can still be a useful tool - living in a chronic state of disconnection can make it difficult to:
• Feel safe in your body
• Regulate emotions
• Form healthy relationships
• Stay grounded in daily life
Signs You Might Be Dissociating
Dissociation exists on a spectrum but some common signs include:
• Frequent daydreaming or just blanking out
You find yourself mentally checking out, even during moments that you would like to be present for but your body is finding stressful. Or perhaps a difficult conversation, you might find it hard to concentrate or keep the thread of what is being said.
• Feeling detached from your body
You may not notice you are hungry, tense or tired until it’s extreme. Or you might feel like you’re watching life encased in cottonwool or through the wrong end of a telescope.
• Emotional numbness
Struggling to access your feelings or feeling like you’re going through the motions.
• Memory gaps or losing time
Forgetting parts of your day or feeling unsure how you got from one place to another.
• Out-of-body experiences
Feeling like you’re observing yourself from outside your body during stressful situations. This can also be confusing if you are on a spiritual path. It is easy to confuse real spiritual awakening with dissociation
Overanalysing or intellectualising everything
And here’s something that might surprise you:
Many “high-functioning” people dissociate. Professionals. Helpers. Healers. People who do yoga, meditate, journal… and still feel disconnected.
You can look like you’re thriving, while inside you’re split. This was me, from the outside I functioned really well, I was successful as a yoga teacher, people remarked how they felt so calm in my presence. But I knew there was something not quite right - I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
The Path Back to Your Body
Reconnecting after dissociation takes time, patience, and a deep sense of inner safety. Because dissociation is a nervous system response, healing happens slowly—through gentle, embodied practices that help rebuild trust with your body.
Dissociation often shows up in people who’ve been in therapy for years and feel frustrated.
You understand your trauma—but your body still reacts. You still shut down. You still feel like you’re not really here.
That’s because healing can’t happen through the mind alone.
The nervous system needs to feel safe enough to come back online.
The body needs to be met gently, with presence.
And that takes more than talking—it takes feeling.
What helps?
Slow, somatic practices that invite sensation (without overwhelm)
Grounding techniques to help anchor you in the here and now
Relational safety—being seen and met by someone who isn’t trying to fix you
Movement that’s mindful, not performative
Yoga that invites presence, not performance
Some supportive practices could include;
• Grounding exercises
Noticing your feet on the floor, the texture of what you’re sitting on, or taking slow breaths while naming things you can see, hear, and feel.
• Somatic movement or trauma-sensitive yoga
Gentle, intentional movement can help you reconnect with physical sensations becoming aware of interoception
• Body scanning
Bringing awareness to different parts of your body with curiosity (without needing to change anything).
• Orienting to your environment
Looking around the room and noticing what feels calming or pleasant can help signal safety to your nervous system.
• Creative expression
Writing, drawing, or using sound can help process emotions that feel difficult to verbalise.
Find videos of supportive practices here.
It’s important to approach these practices with compassion. There’s no rush to “fix” dissociation—your nervous system learned this response for a reason. Healing is about creating new pathways for safety and presence, little by little.
If this resonates, you’re not alone.
This is the heart of the work I do—supporting people who’ve hit a wall in their healing and want to come back to their body, gently and safely.
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