Depersonalization: Where Does it fit in?

Let’s talk about dissociation and trauma. First, dissociation is normal and all people have varying degrees of it from daydreaming in class, getting absorbed in a book or binge watching a show to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) where there are periods of amnesia where you lose track of time like finding yourself in a place you don’t remember getting to or wearing clothes you don’t remember putting on.

Dissociation is an adaptive response to trauma. No one decides to dissociate, but your nervous system dissociates in response to danger. It is a natural, protective, and adaptive to an unsafe person, environment, or situation where you are trapped.

Many of our trauma responses are about maintaining attachment often at the cost of ourselves. Let’s say that a child lives with their alcoholic mother who rages and cries when she is drunk. That child will automatically sacrifice her own needs to take care of her mother and support her for her own survival. In childhood, it is not helpful for the child to know the truth about her own sacrifice because she cannot afford to be angry with the one person who she depends on 100% of the time.

Dissociation needs to be seamless and invisible for the child to continue to be attached to a dangerous or irresponsible caregiver. Only once you are not physically dependent on that caregiver do you have the luxury of knowing the truth about them and when you are equal in size and intellectual capacity can you consider successfully confronting that caregiver.

Dissociation is part of the freeze response in fight, flight, freeze, and shutdown. It is when you feel numb, disconnected, “not there”, or can’t say no. It is a state where you actually feel physically numb to provide pain relief. My short hand for dissociation is “an escape when there is no escape”.

Dissociation exists on a spectrum and derealization and depersonalization are between PTSD and complex PTSD. What do these terms mean? Depersonalization is looking in the mirror and not recognizing yourself or feeling as though your body is not your own. On the other hand, derealization is feeling like people, objects, or the world around you are not real. One is you are not real and the other is that the world is not real.

While it may initially feel alarming that you have signs of dissociation, please remember that it is an important clue to what happened to you in the past and working on the source of the dissociation can help you feel more connected to yourself again. Dissociation is a natural response to an unnaturally dangerous situation. Your body is helping you forget and go numb until it is safe to remember and feel.

How does EMDR help with depersonalization? A major component of EMDR is to get back into your body and identify that numb feeling. Your EMDR therapist can help you realize and become more aware of when you are dissociating. Then, EMDR can help you by identifying and processing present day triggers to their source thereby alleviating the source of the disconnection and helping you feel more present in your body today.