North Star Conversations Transcript: Why Some People Dissociate—Tovah Means, LMFT

Brandon Gimbel

Why do some people dissociate and some people don't?

Tovah Means

Children are way more prone to dissociation than adults. And the reason for that is their size and stature cannot meet terror with fight or flight responses. So before dissociation, people actually move into fight or flight. If we can't fight and we can't run away, we have to freeze-collapse. Children are most vulnerable to collapse and freeze. And if it happens so regularly, without safe interventions from safe people, then you've got a system wired around checking out when something stressful starts to happen.

Brandon Gimbel

Our mind's first defenses are anxiety, depression, defenses that people are aware of. It's when the mind says, "It's too much! Uncle!" That's when we go to these larger, more significant defenses that are both more protective and more problematic. They're more protective. The dissociation is protecting that child or that adult from something horribly traumatic. It's more problematic because it doesn't allow the person to function in that moment. And then two, it leads to longer term symptoms.

Tovah Means

As adults, I see this a lot in my clients. There would be clients who, as children, could never utilize their fight or flight response, which is more powerful. They can't get out of bed. They can't work. They can't eat well. They can't shower. That's because of the overwhelming amount of threat and trauma in their childhood space was such that they needed to freeze like that.