Normal and Abnormal Dissociative and non-Dissociative Experiences
This is another (genuinely quick) PSA to address confusion that we’ve seen in the community and to expand on a topic that we frequently get asks about.
This post is meant to help clarify what being diagnosed with a dissociative disorder entails: where the line is drawn between normal, abnormal, and pathological experiences. What’s important to understand is that experiences can fall under several categories: normal experiences; abnormal but not dissociative; dissociative but still normal; potentially dissociative depending on context; and clearly both dissociative and pathological. It’s also important to understand that people with clinical dissociative disorders are likely to have experiences from all of these categories at some point or another; having issues with dissociation does not mean that all of your issues are dissociative or that all of your dissociation is an issue!
Normal non-dissociative experiences
Humans are diverse beings with a wide range of potential experiences. Only a minority of these experiences have anything to do with dissociation. All or most people will experience these at some point in their lives. Examples include:
Normal, everyday forgetfulness: not remembering where you put your keys, sometimes forgetting what other people tell you, getting distracted and losing your train of thought
Difficulty remembering what happened while you were half asleep or drunk
Not remembering early childhood; having no memory of being a toddler or infant and very few memories of being in early primary school
Occasionally not remembering something that friends or family tell you happened
Sometimes being surprised when you’re reminded or shown evidence of something that you said, wrote, or did, especially if the event in question happened a little while ago or when you had a lot else on your mind; not remembering all of the details or specifics until you’re reminded
Sometimes acting impulsively and then having trouble understanding why you acted that way
Acting different in different contexts: being more professional at work and more relaxed with friends
Roleplaying; feeling connected to your characters; having a sense for how your characters would react under different circumstances
Talking to yourself; internal self chatter; imagining conversations with other people
Abnormal but not dissociative experiences
Some experiences may look dissociative but aren’t. The underlying cause of an experience can determine if it’s dissociative or not. Individuals with dissociative disorders may experience these due to comorbid conditions. Examples include:
Anxiety, depression, or other intense distress
Constant forgetfulness and distractibility due to ADHD
Rapid and intense mood changes due to a bipolar disorder
Hearing voices because of auditory hallucinations
Feeling like your body is being controlled by an external force, such as the government through radio waves
Acting out of character and later being being unable to remember or explain your actions because of alcohol or another substance
Losing the memory of something traumatic because of an associated head injury and subsequent neurological dysfunction; not remembering something traumatic because it occurred while you were blackout drunk or drugged
Organic (neurological) seizures
Normal dissociative experiences
Despite this being a blog to talk about abnormal and pathological dissociative experiences, some dissociative experiences are normal and even healthy! Many people will experience these periodically or while stressed. These include:
Absorption: getting so mentally and emotionally invested in a good piece of media that you disconnect from everything around you
Over-identifying with a fictional character and using them as a comfort object
Mild feelings of depersonalization or derealization (that you or the world aren’t real) when you’re very stressed, tired, or anxious
Feeling like your memory for a very stressful experience or time is cloudy, abnormally sharp, or otherwise altered
Being able to react calmly to a stressor in the moment and only feel frightened or upset once you have the space to
Putting stressors at home out of mind while you’re at school or work
“Faking it until you make it”: acting like a more confident version of yourself until you feel confident or at least calmer
Potentially pathological dissociative experiences
Most things in life are not cut and dry, and dissociative experiences are not an exception. There are many experiences that are not inherently dissociative but can indicate the presence of dissociation. Other dissociative experiences can be normal or pathological depending on their frequency and severity. Examples include:
Constantly checking calendars
Some people are just disorganized and need the reminders
Some people feel compelled to check everything repeatedly to make sure that they’re not going to lose track of a commitment
Some people with dissociation-related memory issues need to keep checking to see if a part has written down commitments that they won’t otherwise remember
It’s normal to not know exactly who you are or who you want to be (especially as a teenager); it’s normal to have trouble deciding between careers; it’s normal to want to experiment with looks and change your appearance frequently
It’s not so normal to be extremely confused about who you are to the point where this distresses you; to feel like completely different people in different contexts; to experience internal backlash and conflict every time that you consider cutting your hair short
When coming to terms with being LGBT, it’s normal to be unsure what your gender or sexuality is and to consider using different labels; it’s normal for someone who’s bisexual to experience fluctuating levels of attraction to different genders over time; it’s less normal to experience periods of being attracted only to the opposite sex when you’re normally gay and repulsed by the opposite sex or to feel like a man but be confused and upset when you sometimes find yourself identifying and presenting as a woman; it’s not normal to begin taking steps to medically transition to male only to suddenly be extremely distressed by the idea of being perceived as anything other than female and to have no understanding of why you were trying to transition
Fluctuations in your memory, skills, preferences, and views
It’s normal to occasionally forget a well-rehearsed fact, but it’s not normal to have no idea where you live or even what state you live in or to not recognize your spouse even when they try to remind you who they are
It’s normal to have trouble with something that you can usually do well because you’re tired or burnt out, but it’s not normal to never know if you’ll suddenly have trouble with basic math or reading clocks; it’s normal to occasionally get lucky and do well at a task you usually struggle with, but it’s not normal to occasionally find yourself excelling at something that you normally can’t do and don’t remember learning to do
It’s normal to get tired of something you used to like or to want to change things up a bit, but it’s less normal to have drastic alterations in your likes and dislikes that are unpredictable and confuse you
Changing your mind when presented with new evidence or over time is normal; repeatedly going back and forth on an issue when trying to figure it out can be normal indecisiveness; alternating between periods of extreme views over the course of days, weeks, or months can be dissociative
It’s not normal to find yourself doing something that you would normally never do and know that you’ll be angry at yourself later but be unable to stop
Occasionally feeling younger or childish is normal; sometimes enjoying watching old cartoons is normal; enjoying playing children’s games with younger relatives is normal; feeling like you’ve regressed back to a child is abnormal; finding yourself thinking or acting like a child and being unable to stop (or even recognize what happened until after the fact) can indicate a dissociated child part
Some people have trouble remembering what they said or did while upset, but this can be abnormal if it happens frequently or if the actions in question are very out of character or extreme; it can be abnormal to be genuinely shocked to realize how you acted or to be confused or disoriented when faced with the consequences of your actions until you’re reminded of the actions
Pathological dissociative experiences
Some experiences, no matter how rare or no matter the context, are inherently dissociative and often indicate a clinical dissociative disorder or related condition (such as posttraumatic stress disorder, a conversion disorder, or borderline personality disorder). Examples include:
Flashbacks in which you relive a traumatic memory; becoming disoriented and thinking that you’re still being hurt; becoming overwhelmed by the emotions, thoughts, or urges that you had at the time of the trauma
Experiencing seizures, muscle weakness, transient blindness, or other seemingly neurological or medical symptoms due to stress in the absence of a neurological or medical cause
Chronic episodes of depersonalization or derealization that frighten you, make it difficult for you to maintain relationships, or make it difficult for you to care for yourself and keep yourself safe
Whenever you get too upset, becoming so disconnected that you have an out of body experience and watch yourself acting from a third person perspective
Having no memory for an adult trauma that you for all intents and purposes should remember (ie, that occurred while you were awake, did not involve psychoactive substances, and did not involve a head injury or other potential cause of organic memory loss)
Having a significant gap, such as years or decades, in your memory of your teen or adult life; not remembering many important life milestones such as graduating from college, the birth of your child, or the death of a close family member
Becoming upset and suddenly “coming to” somewhere else
Finding evidence that you very recently wrote a paper, cut the lawn, had a long text conversation with a friend, changed your appearance, or hurt yourself and having no memory at all for this (without this being associated with substance use, sleep walking, or organic memory loss)
Loved ones telling you that something upset you and caused you to act in a very different way, to go by a different name, or to not recognize them, and you don’t remember this
Hearing the voices of dissociated parts; hearing distinct people holding conversations internally; hearing internal crying
Having a part of you that can take over and act seemingly autonomously
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