Term: Dissociation

Dissociation can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people. But this is the most straight forward way of describing it. Dissociation can be a coping strategy that the mind uses when whatever is happening to a person is too much and there is no way to escape. When survivors don’t remember chunks of what happened, we call this dissociative amnesia. Some people dissociate from their body and are not connected to what is going on there. Although dissociation is a common experience, it is not something widely discussed or recognized in general and even within the mental health field in particular. While dissociation itself is a common experience and can be a very creative survival tool for the mind, when it becomes out of control and starts causing problems in a person’s life, that’s when professional help is needed. And it is very important to find a clinician who knows about and works with dissociative processes.