Everybody’s Talkin’ About Dissociation. But What Is It, Exactly?

You’re scrolling through social media and, (seemingly) suddenly, two hours have passed. What happened? According to researchers at the University of Washington, you might have been dissociating.

Which is only ironic because, thanks to social media, “dissociation” is suddenly the word du jour.

What is dissociation? It’s defined by the American Psychiatric Association as “disconnection between a person’s thoughts, memories, feelings, actions, or sense of [self].”

Dissociation is the latest mental health term to get the TikTok treatment, with 703 million videos using the #dissociation hashtag alone. And while the depictions it gets in 7-second videos aren’t always accurate, having the term move beyond clinical circles and into more general lexicon can have its positives.

Dissociation is, in essence, a coping mechanism, but it can occur both in harmless, everyday situations…and as a result of serious trauma. To learn the basics, we spoke with Rebeca Scherman, Psy.D., a clinical psychologist based in New York City and expert on trauma and dissociation. Here are five things to know.

1. Dissociation is a temporary escape from reality

It’s tricky to pin down the D word, because different people experience dissociation in very different ways. Many mental health experts view it on a continuum, explains Dr. Scherman. “There’s healthy dissociation on one end of the spectrum, and what we call pathological dissociation on the other, and there’s a big range in between,” she says.

GOTTA READ: Emotionally Reactive? 4 Types of Therapy to Tame Your Outbursts

Healthy dissociation is your brain’s way of taking a break from triggers like stress or boredom. Hypnosis can put you in a dissociative state, but so can drug use, Dr. Scherman says; eating disorders and self-harm behaviors are other unhealthy ways people dissociate. 

Wherever the dissociation lives on the spectrum, however, the behavior itself temporarily disconnects people from their feelings and thoughts, and sometimes even their physical bodies. Behaviors like self-harm can act “as a passage or gateway” into dissociation, says Dr. Scherman, helping contribute to that sense of disconnection.

2. Most people dissociate from time to time

About 75 percent of us will dissociate at least once in our lives, science reveals. Common and harmless forms of dissociation include daydreaming or losing yourself in a book or movie. 

“Or maybe you don’t remember taking your usual highway exit because your mind was somewhere else,” Dr. Scherman says. (Also called “highway hypnosis,” this is when you go into a state of “automaticity,” she says, where you perform an action without consciously thinking about it because your mind was elsewhere.)

3. Dissociative disorders are a different thing

They’re much more rare, affecting an estimated 2 percent of Americans, and a diagnosis means that dissociation is causing major problems in your daily life. Examples of dissociative disorders found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the guidebook of mental health conditions, include:

• Dissociative amnesia. This is marked by an inability to remember important details about yourself. Most commonly, the amnesia is tied to a traumatic event or time period. The amnesia can last for just a few minutes or for many years. One type of dissociative amnesia is dissociative fugue, in which people also travel or wander suddenly and unexpectedly. They may wake up in an unfamiliar place with no recollection of how they got there.
• Depersonalization/derealization disorder. This can manifest as a feeling of being outside your own body, or by feeling that the people and things around you aren’t real. These sensations usually begin before the age of 16 and tend to be recurring. People who experience these feelings are aware that something unusual is going on—they generally don’t lose touch with reality (that’s what distinguishes this from something like a psychotic break, Dr. Scherman says).
• Dissociative identity disorder (DID). Formerly known as multiple personality disorder, DID is a complex condition that we don’t comprehend all that well. “Even mental health professionals often struggle to understand and diagnose it, because they’re not taught enough about complex trauma in their graduate training programs,” Dr. Scherman says. DID is characterized by having two or more distinct personality states with different behaviors, thoughts, and voices. People with DID also have ongoing gaps in memory.

The authors of a 2022 study about dissociative disorders study said they hoped their work would help reduce not just stigma, but misdiagnosis. “We hope it will increase awareness of dissociative symptoms—and that, ultimately, clinicians will be more likely to assess for and consider these symptoms, and to connect patients with timely and appropriate treatment,” said co–senior author Milissa Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program at McLean Hospital.