What are the effects of dissociative disorders?

Dissociation can affect perception, thinking, feeling, behavior, body and memory. So, the person with a dissociative disorder has to cope with many challenges in life. The impact of dissociation varies from person to person and may change over time. How well a person appears to be coping is not a good way of telling how severely affected they are. People can be doing responsible jobs or raising families. By using dissociation, and compensating for it with other exhausting strategies, people put up a good front.

Almost everyone coping with these difficulties strives to keep them hidden from others. Few people with a dissociative disorder will switch rapidly and openly between identities, in the way that is often portrayed on TV and film. Nor is the classic ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ shift of identity common.

The effects of dissociative disorder may include:

• gaps in memory

• finding yourself in a strange place without knowing how you got there

• out-of-body experiences

• loss of feeling in parts of your body

• distorted views of your body

• forgetting important personal information

• inability to recognize your image in a mirror

• a sense of detachment from your emotions

• the impression of watching a movie of yourself

• feelings of being unreal

• internal voices and dialogue

• feeling detached from the world

• forgetting appointments

• feeling that a customary environment is unfamiliar

• a sense that what is happening is unreal

• forgetting a learned talent or skill

• a sense that people you know are strangers

• a perception of objects changing shape, color or size

• feeling you don’t know who you are

• acting like different people, including child-like behavior

• being unsure of the boundaries between yourself and others

• feeling like a stranger to yourself

• being confused about your sexuality or gender

• feeling like there are different people inside you

• referring to yourself as ‘we’

• being told by others that you have behaved out of character

• finding items in your possession that you don’t remember buying or receiving

• writing in different handwriting

• having knowledge of a subject you don’t recall studying.

next: What is Psychological Trauma

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Reviewed: 04/2006