Escape from One's Own Body: What Dissociation Is and the Price We Pay for It

In psychology, there is a concept of "primitive defenses" — mechanisms our psyche uses to cope with difficult experiences. Most of them are normal stages of our personality development that become a problem only if we get "stuck" in them for too long.

However, dissociation stands apart. It differs drastically from other defenses in that normal development is not enough for it to form. Dissociation is always a reaction to trauma. It is so powerful that it can globally encompass the entire personality, and in its extreme forms, completely transform a person's identity.

Anyone of us, facing an event whose scale exceeds our capacity to endure it (especially if it involves unbearable pain or the terror of death), might dissociate.

The benefits of this process in an extreme situation are obvious: the person seemingly disconnects from suffering, fear, panic, and the feeling of imminent doom. When in mortal danger, it is much easier to be "outside" the anticipation of one's own destruction, observing events as if from the sidelines, than to remain inside that horror.

Real-life example: Imagine a person who gets into a severe car accident. At the moment of impact, when the body experiences intense pain and the psyche experiences colossal shock, the brain activates dissociation. The person later recalls: "I felt like I flew out of my body and looked at the wrecked car and myself in it from above. I didn't feel pain or fear; I was absolutely calm." At this moment, dissociation fulfilled its direct function — it saved the psyche from being destroyed by an unbearable experience. It can even give a person the composure and courage to save others.

Young children who are systematically subjected to terrible abuse or cruelty cannot escape physically. Therefore, they learn to "escape" psychologically. Dissociation becomes their habitual reaction to stress.

In recent decades, clinical research shows that dissociative phenomena occur much more frequently than previously thought. If such a child survives and grows up, this constant mechanism of splitting can lead to a serious consequence — a characterological dissociative disorder, known in popular culture as "multiple personality."

Real-life example: A seven-year-old girl who regularly experiences abuse at home, unable to defend herself, "flies away" into a fantasy world during another episode. She convinces herself that this is not happening to her, but to someone else, or simply stops feeling her body, turning into a "doll." Over the years, this defense becomes so firmly established that her psyche creates separate "identities" (subpersonalities), each taking on different emotions and memories so that the core personality can continue to live and not go insane.

A huge disadvantage of dissociation as a defense mechanism is its automatism. Having formed as a reaction to a real threat to life, it begins to trigger in everyday stress situations where there is no actual threat to life.

Traumatized people tend to react to ordinary conflicts or tension as if they were facing mortal danger again. This leads to sudden memory lapses (amnesia) or sharp, inexplicable changes in behavior, causing general confusion among those around them.

Real-life example: An adult man with a history of trauma receives a critical remark from his manager at work. Instead of feeling ordinary irritation or responding constructively, his psyche perceives the raised voice as a threat to his life. He dissociates instantly: his eyes glaze over, he completely loses the thread of the conversation, and an hour later he literally cannot remember what exactly the boss said to him.

A person who does not know about the traumatic past of their friend or partner is unlikely to suspect a complex psychological mechanism. If a loved one suddenly forgets something extremely important, emotionally "shuts down" during an argument, or radically changes their behavior, it is perceived as neglect.

Partners might consider such a person simply unbalanced, irresponsible, in a bad mood, or even a blatant liar (after all, "how could you forget something like that?!"). Thus, the price for using dissociation as a constant shield is ruined interpersonal relationships, alienation, and total misunderstanding from those closest to them.

Insight from MriyaRun: Dissociation saves us in moments of disaster by seemingly putting all sensations on pause so the psyche can survive. However, our main task on the journey to healing is finding a safe way to lift that pause. True emotional literacy begins where we find the courage to return to our own bodies and learn to tolerate our feelings, rather than escaping from them.