Fully Present

Q:

My 18-year-old daughter sometimes experiences dissociation at crowded venues such as shopping malls, auditoriums, wedding halls, and so on. She says it started in tenth grade when she was under pressure from the social scene in high school. It doesn’t happen often, but she’d love to have some methods to enable herself to be fully present at all times.

Stress can definitely cause symptoms of dissociation in some people. It’s the brain’s way of “zoning out,” taking a break from what it perceives to be some sort of overload, a situation that feels too much to handle.

A more intense clinical dissociative disorder can occur in response to traumatic experiences which are, by definition, a form of overload to the nervous system.

Interestingly, the brain is a learning machine, and once it has figured out how to take respite in this form of escape, it will often use the strategy again and again throughout life. However, being a learning machine has its benefits: Just as the brain has learned to dissociate under stress, it can also learn how to use other coping mechanisms for gaining relief and staying present when doing so serves the person better.