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Dissociation

This man has stopped driving the car now. No one seems to understand why and they tell him he is being stupid. "Pull yourself together," they chant. Why did he stop driving the car? Every time he pulled up at the traffic lights, he seemed to float out of his body - commonly called Depersonalization (or dissociation caused by staring or trancing). It scared the hell out of him - panic attacks followed closely. What he wanted to know was, could he really drive the car while hovering a foot above his body?

This is a very common story that we hear in regards to dissociation. People seem to have panic attacks and dissociation as a common link. Imagine driving your car and suddenly find yourself dissociating. Of course, you react with fear. It is so out of the 'normal' everyday reality. You do panic, the adrenaline does start to flow. Then you do start to wonder "what if" it happens again. The cycle begins.

Sebastian had one of the most relaxing (i.e. non-stressful) careers in the entire world. He loved it with a passion. He was a large, ocean-going tanker navigator, the kind that wander the open seas for days on end. He loved the ocean, the open skies, the stars at night, but especially that velvet nothingness of the black of night.

Imagine this, Sebastian developed Panic Disorder as a result of his career. He even took leave without pay. He contemplated never doing his job ever again. How did this happen, you ask? It seems that the shifts as navigator of the tanker would run for about 12-hours. Sebastian always chose the night shift. Sitting there, in the middle of the ocean, enveloped in darkness he often just stared into space tranced. As a result, he dissociated very badly, and with the dissociation came all the weird and strange visual and physical effects. He had no idea what was happening and reacted with fear. The fear built, and over a period of time, he started to become very anxious about it happening again. Viola .. enter stage left .. panic attacks. Next exit ... Panic Disorder. After he discovered what was happening, that he was just dissociating, and he learned how to deal with dissociation and the Panic Attacks, he recovered very quickly and sailed out of a port near you.

The symptoms of Dissociation are many and varied. They include the following:

• feel as if you are a "witness" of what is happening to your body
• feel as if you are falling into a void
• feel as if you are "outside of your body" either situated alongside, above or behind it
• feel as if you are floating
• feel as if you and your surroundings do not seem real
• you experience a visual sensation where stationary objects appear to move
• experience your surroundings through a diffused light, fog or mist
• experience your whole body enveloped in light
• feel as if your body is expanded so that it feels huge/larger than normal
• feel as if your body has shrunk to minute proportions/ smaller than normal
• feel as if your body is being pressed to the ground
• sensitivity to light and sound
• tunnel vision

Many people indicate that they dissociate first, that is - experience a dissociative experience and then panic or have a panic attack. The link between panic attacks and dissociation has been well documented. See Research - Severity of Symptoms, Research - Dissociation

Other dissociative indicators are as follows (usually defined in % of time occurs)

• Driving a car and suddenly realize you don't remember what has happened during all or part of the trip
• Listening to someone talk and realize did not hear part/all of what was just said
• Find themselves in a place and have no idea how they got there
• Experience feeling as though standing next to themselves and watching themselves do something
• Have no memory for some important events in their lives eg. wedding, graduation
• Experience feeling that their body does not seem to belong to them
• Experience of sometimes remembering a past event so vividly that they feel as if they are reliving it
• Experience of not sure whether things that they remember happening really did happen or a dream
• Experience of being in a familiar place but finding it strange and unfamiliar
• When watching TV or movie they become so absorbed they are unaware of the events happening near them
• Become so involved in a fantasy or daydream it feels as though it is really happening
• Find that they are sometimes able to ignore pain
• Sometimes sit staring off into space, thinking nothing and not aware of the passage of time
• May act so differently from situation to situation they feel as if they were two different people
• Sometimes can't remember whether have done something or just thought about doing that thing
• Feel as if looking at the world through a fog so that people and objects appear far away or unclear

People with Anxiety Disorders, specifically Panic Disorder, score very high on the Dissociative Experience Scale; ie., they experience these dissociative phenomenon more frequently than the 'normal' population.

For instance, one lady used to do the ironing and suddenly was shocked to find that time had passed and it was all done. Another example is the man that set off in the morning to go to work. He suddenly realized he had actually driven the whole way there and didn't remember doing so.

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