Dissociation can help someone survive trauma by creating distance from overwhelming fear, pain, emotions, or memories. When physical escape from a situation isn’t possible, dissociation makes mental escape possible. When a situation feels too overwhelming to cope with, dissociation can make a person feel numb, detached, unreal, foggy, or “not there.” Dissociation can reduce awareness of physical pain, emotional distress, fear, or helplessness during traumatic experiences. It can allow a person to continue functioning in situations that would otherwise feel unbearable.
In Dissociative Identity Disorder, different parts may hold different memories, emotions, or survival roles so that no one part has to carry everything at once.
This page is part of the Survival Strategies: How Trauma Responses Made Sense at the Time section of the CommuniDID site, which explains how behaviors like hypervigilance, people-pleasing, shutdown, or perfectionism originally helped someone stay safe during overwhelming circumstances.
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