The concept of dissociation is beginning to make its way into popular culture. This is great! Let’s talk about mental health and de-stigmatize it! The concept of dissociation is even brought up in the new Inside Out movie- I can’t wait to see it!
I’m not on social media (I found that my mental health is correlated with less time on social media. The more time I spent there, the less content and more anxious I became, but I digress), but I hear from people who are on these platforms that this idea is discussed on Tik Tok and Instagram.
Unfortunately, often the word that is being (mis)used on these platforms is “disassociation.” There’s an extra syllable in there, and there’s a big difference between these two words.
To dissociate is to leave your body somehow.
It can be anything from going on autopilot while driving, to repressing memories. Often we compartmentalize in big or small ways, and we can leave certain things in a file deep in our subconscious. This is a normal part of life for all humans, even though there are extreme uses of this as deemed necessary by trauma.
To disassociate is to separate the connection between two things or ideas that are blended together.
In fact, right now, I’m trying to disassociate the word disassociate from dissociate. Make sense?
For example, my friend’s dog learned that when the word “cheese” was said, they would receive a treat from the fridge. This dog lost its mind when a photo was being snapped and everyone said “cheese” but they didn’t get the snack! They needed to disassociate the word “cheese” from the dog receiving a snack if they ever wanted to meal plan or take a picture while the dog was around. In this case, they might have wanted to re-train the dog to associate the word “treat” with the cheese treat. Disassociating is a hard task!
You can see how easy it is to mix these ideas together.
Sometimes associations happen when a traumatic event occurs. For example, a woman who is sexually assaulted associates the smell of the cologne of her attacker with the attack itself. In this case, as she works through her trauma, eventually the smell of the cologne may be disassociated with the trauma.
She might even have this association, even if she dissociated during the attack and doesn’t remember other details. Her body may remember the smell deep in her subconscious.
In this case, both disassociation and dissociation are important aspects of the conversation, and the meanings of these words are significant.