Many people may experience dissociation (dissociate) during their life.

If you dissociate, you may feel disconnected from yourself and the world around you. For example, you may feel detached from your body or feel as though the world around you is unreal. Remember, everyone’s experience of dissociation is different.

Dissociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event.

Experiences of dissociation can last for a relatively short time (hours or days) or for much longer (weeks or months).

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Dissociation can be experienced in lots of different ways.

• Having difficulty remembering personal information
• have gaps in your life where you can't remember anything that happened
• not be able to remember information about yourself or about things that happened in your life.
• A doctor or psychiatrist might call these experiences dissociative amnesia.
• Travelling to a different location or taking on a new identity
• You might travel to a different location and take on a new identity for a short time (without remembering your identity).
• Feeling like the world around you is unreal
• feel as though the world around you is unreal
• see objects changing in shape, size or colour
• see the world as 'lifeless' or 'foggy'
• feel as if other people are robots (even though you know they are not).
• Feeling like you're looking at yourself from the outside
• feel as though you are watching yourself in a film or looking at yourself from the outside
• feel as if you are just observing your emotions
• feel disconnected from parts of your body or your emotions
• feel as if you are floating away
• feel unsure of the boundaries between yourself and other people.
• Feeling your identity shift and change
• feel your identity shift and change
• speak in a different voice or voices
• use a different name or names
• switch between different parts of your personality
• feel as if you are losing control to 'someone else'
• experience different parts of your identity at different times
• act like different people, including children.
• Difficulty defining what kind of person you are
• find it very difficult to define what kind of person you are
• feel as though there are different people inside you