Your inner world deserves the same care and attention you offer to everything outside you. Meaningful change often begins with simple intentional steps toward awareness. This article offers a clear and compassionate look at how dissociation and trauma shape the mind and body and how awareness can support healing.
What is Dissociation
Dissociation is a disruption in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, and bodily sensations. It is a survival response that develops when a person experiences an overwhelming threat and cannot fight or flee, as described in Trauma and Recovery (Herman 1992)
Individuals often describe dissociation as feeling spaced out, numb or disconnected; losing time or having memory gaps; feeling unreal or feeling that the world feels unreal; feeling detached from one’s body; or shutting down emotionally or physically. These descriptions are consistent with decades of clinical findings, including those presented by Lanius and colleagues on the dissociative subtype of PTSD (Lanius et al. 2010) and in van der Kolk’s work (Van der Kolk 2014).
The clinical meaning is that dissociation is not a failure but a protective mechanism rooted in the nervous system. It helps the person survive trauma but later becomes disruptive, a concept central to the Theory of Structural Dissociation (van der Hart, Nijenhuis, and Steele 2006)
Why Trauma Causes Dissociation
Trauma, especially repeated or early-life trauma, overwhelms the body’s capacity to regulate stress. When fight or flight is impossible, the nervous system shifts into freeze or shutdown, which feels like dissociation, described extensively through the lens of polyvagal theory and affect regulation research by Allan Schore.
Neurobiological components
- Overactivation of the amygdala (fear center)
- Under activation of the prefrontal cortex
- Dysregulation in the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)
- Impaired integration of memory in the hippocampus
Because of this, the trauma is not stored as a narrative memory but as sensory fragments: body sensations, emotions, sounds and images.
How Trauma Lives in the Body
Trauma is held in the body through:
- Chronic hyperarousal (tension, pain, startle response, insomnia)
- Hypoarousal (numbness, low energy, shutdown, dissociation)
- Somatic memories (tight chest, stomach pain, headaches, trembling)
- Inflammatory stress response
- Muscle bracing from constant threat monitoring.
Many Individuals say things like:
- I feel it in my chest
- My shoulders freeze
- My body goes offline
- I do not feel real
This is the body reacting faster than the thinking brain.
How Trauma Triggers Work
A trauma trigger is any internal or external cue that resembles the original trauma. Examples include a tone of voice, a smell, a physical sensation, a facial expression, feeling trapped, small or unheard, and emotions such as anger, shame or fear. These responses are well documented in the clinical literature (Lanius R et al. 2010)
Triggers activate implicit memory rather than explicit memory, meaning the body reacts as if the trauma is happening now and may result in physical symptoms such as heart racing, dizziness, shaking, intrusive images, sudden dissociation or cognitive shutdown.
Why Old Trauma Comes On Board During New Stress
When current stress exceeds capacity, old trauma responses reactivate. This involves:
-
- Neuroception: The body detecting threat before conscious awareness
- Survival Circuitry: The same pathways the body used during trauma
- Protective Dissociation: The body shutting down overwhelming emotional load
- Implicit Memory Activation: The body reacting, not the thinking mind
This is why individuals may suddenly dissociate, become hypervigilant, or regress. These are protective responses, not deficits.
Impact on Daily Functioning
Trauma and dissociation can disrupt
- Concentration Memory
- Emotional Regulation
- Relationships
- Daily Tasks
- Sense of Identity, and
- Physical health, including chronic pain, migraines and fatigue.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3181836/ (Bremner 2006)
When dissociation becomes frequent, life can feel difficult to manage because the nervous system is prioritising safety over engagement.
When Dissociation Becomes Significant
Dissociation becomes important to monitor when it occurs frequently, interferes with work or daily life, disrupts relationships, leads to memory gaps, causes safety risks or increases under stress. Dissociation reflects nervous system overload, not inadequacy, an insight central to both Trauma and Recovery (Herman 1992).
Grounding Techniques
Grounding techniques help the brain shift out of dissociation and back into the present and are core tools in somatic approaches such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and in the nervous system work of van der Kolk (Van der Kolk 2014).
- Identify five objects you can see
- Press feet firmly into the ground
- State the current date time and location
- Touch a cold surface
- Slow exhale with longer outbreath
Recommended Therapist Interventions
Bottom-up approaches
- Grounding (sensory, movement,
- Breathwork that stabilises (not deep breathing initially)
- Somatic tracking
- Orienting to the environment
- Polyvagal-informed strategies
Top-down approaches
- Psychoeducation
- Cognitive Restructuring
- Narrative Integration
- Parts Work (IFS, Ego state therapy)
Trauma processing
- EMDR
- Somatic Experiencing
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Trauma-focused CBT.
You Do Not Have to Navigate This Alone
Many people live with dissociation for years without understanding what their body is trying to communicate. Healing begins when you work with someone who understands trauma, the nervous system, and the pace your body needs. If you feel ready to explore support or want to understand whether therapy may help you, we welcome you to reach out.
Contact ZehnSaaz & book a session today.
References
This article is provided for educational and informational purposes only and the cited references should be consulted for full context and verification.
Books and Authors
- Van der Kolk B 2014 The Body Keeps the Score
https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
- Ogden P Fisher J 2015 Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
https://janinafisher.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/sensorimotor-psychotherapy-trauma.pdf - Herman J 1992 Trauma and Recovery https://beyondthetemple.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/herman_trauma-and-recovery-1.pdf
- Porges S 2011 Polyvagal Theory https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3490536/ https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory
Peer Reviewed
- Lanius R et al 2010
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20360318/ - Bremner J 2006
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3181836/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6513846_Traumatic_stress_Effects_on_the_brain
Therapy Models
Shapiro F 2001 EMDR
https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/
Levine P. Somatic Experiencing
https://traumahealing.org/
