Demystifying Dissociation

In putting this issue together, a deceptively simple truth came to light for me: dissociation isn’t some frightening anomaly, nor is it always extreme or dramatic. More often, it’s subtle—a slight shift in awareness when something feels painful, uncomfortable, or simply too much. And the more I sat with that, the more I saw how often that happens in my own life—not as a dysfunction, but as a built-in buffer, almost like a volume knob for when things get too loud. It made me appreciate neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel’s framing of dissociation as a perfectly understandable, creative act of adaptation in the face of overwhelm. And once I started thinking about it in that way, things began to shift for me.

Now, when my five-year-old is hiding in a closet because I suggested it was time to leave for school, and the house is a minefield of coats and shoes and half-eaten snacks, and I feel my awareness slide away so I’m somewhere else—a remote Australian beach in my distant memory … I pause.

Or when a difficult interaction with a friend cracks something open—an anxious wobble I can feel in my diaphragm—and I notice myself drifting, scrolling through my phone as if the glow of it could carry me off, somewhere cleaner and quieter than my own reactions … I pause.

Or when a pressing deadline looms and I’m at my desk long after I meant to be, rereading the same tangled sentence for the 13th time—yes, this one—and the room gets slightly distant as the pressure to get it exactly right drowns out the meaning of the words themselves … I pause.

Oh. I’m dissociating. Not failing. Coping.

Sometimes I let it be—the nervous system taking the edge off. And sometimes, gently, I pull myself back with a breath, or a hand to my chest. There’s something powerful about naming it for what it is. The moment I do, it becomes less mysterious, more human.

But that’s in the realm of everyday stress. When dissociation develops in the context of chronic or extreme trauma, the mind isn’t just turning down the volume—it’s leaving the room entirely. Awareness fragments. Memory disconnects. The body goes offline. What began as protection becomes a pervasive pattern of vanishing. Maybe you’ve seen this in your therapy room. Or maybe you’ve suspected something subtle was happening, but couldn’t quite put your finger on what it was—or on why your work with a client seemed to be stalling.

In a truly groundbreaking interview we feature in this issue, trauma experts Ruth Lanius and Bethany Brand make this point explicit: you cannot do meaningful trauma processing with someone who isn’t sufficiently present to experience it. Grounding isn’t a warm-up exercise—it’s the work. For people with significant trauma histories, learning to notice dissociation—to track it in real time, to name it, to gently anchor back into the body—is not just helpful, it’s foundational. Without that capacity, trauma treatment risks retraumatization. With it, the nervous system builds tolerance for experience rather than defaulting to the circuit breaker of dissociation to escape it.

In other articles, trauma treatment pioneer Janina Fisher traces the history of dissociation as a misunderstood symptom and offers practical tools for treating it. Trauma expert Frank Anderson maps its full spectrum, showing how the more “ordinary” ways we disconnect can be easy to miss. Therapist Sally Maslansky, a former client of Dan Siegel’s who recovered from dissociative identity disorder, gives a personal account of what integration can look like. And renowned trauma expert Lisa Ferentz reminds us that dissociation isn’t the enemy: sometimes helping clients discern when it serves them and when it doesn’t is transformative work.

We hope you’ll come away from this issue with a deeper understanding of the many expressions of dissociation and practical ways to work with it in your practice—because ultimately, the goal isn’t to eliminate it from our clients’ lives (or our own). It’s to gain flexibility: to stay present more often, and long enough, for healing to occur.