How Do You Know Someone is Dissociating? (Tell Me Lies Edition)
The popular Hulu TV series Tell Me Lies finished it’s third and final season last month.
If you haven’t seen the series or read the book yet, the main focus is on a very unhealthy and toxic (bordering on abusive) relationship between two college students, Lucy and Steven.
In the third season, Lucy is experiencing a significant amount of stress and begins to display symptoms of, what I would recognize as, dissociation.
At the beginning of the third season, Lucy uses the drug MDMA (aka Molly) at a party, and I read some discussion online with viewers speculating that the symptoms Lucy experienced could be due to long-term effects of using MDMA.
While it is possible to experience long-term effects after drug use and the show didn’t explicitly explain the reasons behind Lucy’s symptoms, I believe that her symptoms were meant to show the intense impact of the stress she was under.
I think dissociation is misunderstood, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share information about dissociation that can help bust some of the common myths about dissociation and help reduce the stigma around it.
What is Dissociation
From my experience, there is a common misconception that dissociation only occurs as a result of trauma and/or in the context of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID; formerly Multiple Personality Disorder).
While it is true that dissociation is a common trauma response, especially for complex trauma, you can also experience dissociation without having experienced trauma, and you can absolutely experience dissociation without having DID.
Dissociation is a common, and very intelligent, psychological response to high stress, high emotion, and or extreme fatigue.
It is a disconnection from reality, from yourself, or from your surroundings that kicks in as a way to protect you from fully feeling the effects of the intense stress, emotion, and or fatigue.
Signs and Symptoms of Dissociation
Dissociation, like most mental health symptoms, exists on a spectrum.
On the more mild end, dissociation can be experienced as zoning out or daydreaming, and on the more severe end, dissociation can be experienced as shifts in identity, as experienced with DID.
The more severe symptoms of dissociation may be indicative of a dissociative disorder, like dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue (a specific type of dissociative amnesia), dissociative identity, and depersonalization-derealization disorders.
Common signs of dissociation include:
Zoning out
Daydreaming
Emotional numbness
Not recognizing yourself in the mirror
Memory gaps
Feeling detached from yourself, as if you’re watching a movie of yourself (depersonalization)
Feeling a disconnection from your surroundings, as if the world is not real (derealization)
Identity confusion (feeling unsure about who you are)
Identity alterations (distinct shifts between personalities - e.g. DID)
In the third season of Tell Me Lies, Lucy experiences significant lapses in memory. In one scene, she is seen repeating the same exact conversation with someone because she had no recollection of having already had the conversation the day before.
Lucy may have even been experiencing dissociative amnesia, which is a dissociative disorder where you experience significant and unexpected gaps in your memory.
I’m going to try to explain this next example without any spoiler alerts, so please bear with me.
There is another scene where Lucy is given some very bad news, and she seems to not understand what is being said to her.
It seems like she’s not mentally or emotionally present in the conversation and may have been experiencing emotional numbness or possibly depersonalization and or derealization.
Now, this is all just my interpretation of what the character was experiencing, but I hope it’s helpful and interesting to explore dissociation in this way.
How to Ground Yourself During a Dissociative Episode
Grounding techniques are a great way to bring yourself back to the present moment when you’re experiencing a dissociative episode by disrupting the fight-or-flight response and calming your nervous system.
There are many different grounding techniques you can try. Here are three examples:
Describe your surroundings in as much detail as possible. Use your senses to notice everything you see, smell, hear, feel, and (if applicable) taste. Continue describing your surroundings until you feel like the dissociative episode has passed.
Create a grounding statement. A statement like “I’m here in this moment” or “I’m safe here” can be helpful. Test out different statements to find the one(s) that work for you. When you find the one(s) that work, you might also find it helpful to have it written down somewhere you access quickly and easily, like in your phone, on the wallpaper of your phone’s lock screen, on a Post-It note stuck to your computer screen, etc.
5-4-3-2-1. Use your senses to notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. I like to combine this technique with the grounding statement by replacing the 1 thing you can taste (because that’s not always applicable anyways) with your grounding statement. So, you would notice 5 things you can see, 4 things you can feel, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and say 1 of your grounding statements. If you try this method, let me know what you think!
When is Dissociating a Bad Thing
Although dissociation has a stigma around it, it’s not always a “bad” thing.
Like mentioned above, dissociation is a very intelligent and protective psychological response, and we don’t always need to do something about it.
For example, and you may be able to relate, dissociation started at a very early age for me.
It started when I was stuck in situations that I couldn’t escape from, because I was a child, and my system learned to cope with those situations by “checking out” of them.
As an adult, there are usually, but not always, far fewer situations like that. Adults have more power, choice, and control over the situations we find ourselves in. However, there may still be some instances when dissociation works and is necessary (e.g. being around difficult family members).
I share this to let you know that dissociation does not always need to go away.
That realization was really helpful for me, and, if relevant, I hope it’s helpful for you, too.
It was helpful to know and accept that I wasn’t doing anything wrong by dissociating in these situations where it’s still helpful and necessary.
So, when does dissociating become a problem?
If you’re dissociating in situations where it is not needed or helpful, you may be interested in finding ways to reduce symptoms in those situations.
For example, if you dissociate during meetings at work, you may benefit from coping skills, like grounding or breathing techniques, and from therapy to explore and heal the deeper root that is behind this dissociation.
If symptoms are severe, frequent, and negatively impacting your life, I recommend seeking support from a mental health professional who specializes in, or at least has completed training in, treating dissociation.
Final Notes
Dissociation is a common, highly intelligent, and protective psychological response to high stress, emotions, and or fatigue.
In Tell Me Lies Season Three, Lucy has major gaps in her memory and seems to display emotional numbness, which seemed to be symptoms of dissociation as a result of the extreme stress she was experiencing.
Other signs of dissociation include zoning out, daydreaming, not recognizing yourself in the mirror, depersonalization, derealization, identity confusion, and identity alterations.
Grounding techniques can be a great way to bring yourself back to the present when you’re experiencing a dissociative episode.
There may be situations in which dissociation continues to be helpful and necessary for you, and for the situations in which it’s not helpful or necessary, you may find grounding techniques and therapy to be beneficial.
When dissociative symptoms are severe, frequent, and negatively impacting your life, you may want to seek support from a mental health professional who is trained in or specializes in treating dissociation.
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