What is dissociation and how can you help someone who is struggling with it? Okay, first of all, what is dissociation? It's amazing. Dissociation is basically a learned response to trauma from our brains. So what it feels like for the person who's experiencing it is as if they're disconnected from the world around them. They might not have any memory of the time at which they were dissociated or they might talk about almost like an out-of-body experience, watching things happening rather than feeling them happening, just a kind of feeling of a lack of connection, almost like they're not there, not present. This can last anything from a few minutes to weeks or months for some people, but largely it will be relatively short periods of time. Now why it arises, this is the really clever bit, our brains are amazing. Essentially dissociation is a learned response to trauma when we are not able to do anything about that trauma. So something bad is happening to me right now and I can't run and I can't fight. There's nothing I can do to change this situation or make myself safer. So what my brain does is it goes, hey, I don't want to be here. I'm tapping out and we leave. We go to a different place in our head. The situation continues, but we are emotionally kind of absent. So physically present, emotionally absent. That is a remarkable thing for our brain to do and a way of managing really traumatic moments in our life. But, but if someone has experienced this, perhaps they have been abused during their younger years several times, then it's a learned response that the brain will continue to employ even at a time when actually it's not a helpful response anymore. So for example, if someone has experienced trauma particularly if it's been sustained over a longer period, then anything that might trigger memories of that trauma and cause kind of a flashback of memories or feelings might trigger that dissociative state too. So it might be that a certain smell will suddenly cause someone to enter a dissociative state for example. So I hope that helps you understand a little bit about what dissociation is and who might experience it. Next we're thinking about how you can help. So the first thing is explain it. And I say this like I plea do with this, please if you are working with someone who experiences dissociation, give it a name and tell them what the hell is happening with their brain. I only learnt about dissociation after it had been happening to me for years and years and years and it was terrifying. And for me, dissociation could happen in quite a big way and I would find myself turning up at accident and emergency having really significantly self harmed and not remembering that happening at all on my journey to A&E and honestly of all the various different issues that I faced in my life, this is the one where I felt like I was going properly, properly crazy and it didn't make sense and it was terrifying. And my therapist said to me, you're experiencing dissociation. This is what it is, this is what it happens, other people experience it too. I could have cried with relief. It didn't make it go away but it made me realise A, my brain's pretty incredible and how amazing is it that it does that. I mean not necessarily very convenient and could put me in danger but it was incredible that my brain did that based on you know earlier experiences it had. But it also helped me to understand this is a thing I can research, learn about there is strategies for managing that and again that was really helpful. And imagine if you're working with a child who's experiencing this, actually being able to say is an adult that they trust, this is what's happening to you and this is why and these are the things that we can do to help, that's so helpful. So explain it, talk about it, name it is the first thing and probably the most helpful thing you can do. Next, you can work with the child to begin to recognise some of the triggers so there might be certain sounds, so for me sirens was always one, there might be certain sounds or smells or places or people that trigger dissociation and it's possible that the child or you might be able to pick up on the early warning signs that that's beginning to happen. So for some of us as we begin to understand it more we can recognise that we're at risk of dissociating. So it might be that things begin to feel a little bit fuzzy around their edges for example or sometimes we might have sort of changing in our breathing or how we sound. There's all sorts of different things and it's different for different people so you'd want to get to know the individual but you and they might begin to be able to pick up on those early warning signs and sometimes if we can see it happening about to happen or we know that we're in a situation where something might trigger this then there are things we can do to try and keep ourselves grounded in in the now and prevent the dissociation happening or to make sure that that person is kept safe during the period of that dissociative episode. A really helpful thing to do is at a time of calm and I always come back to this at a time of calm planned for those moments of crisis when the dissociation happens and have a plan in place. What is it good for them to do? What is it good for you to do? Where could or should they go? If they fear that dissociation might happen? What could or should you do if you think this is going to happen? Failure a plan for you and them as individuals that works for you. Explore what has worked well in the past. Explore the things not to do. The things that have made this worse in the past and have a plan. Write it down. Share it. Keep it together. Share it with any other relevant adults who might need to know. There are three different kinds of strategies that you might employ during periods of dissociation or try to prevent it happening. If we feel that we've been triggered or seen those early warning signs. So our grounding strategies, our self-south strategies and our distraction strategies. So grounding strategies, you can google it and there's loads out there and there's plenty on my channel. Grounding strategies essentially try to help us say right here right now. So that might be doing things to connect us with the room. Counting how many red things can I see in the room. Listening out for four different sounds that I can hear. Listening to the sound of someone's voice. Feeling my feet on the floor. Perhaps even taking off my shoes and socks aren't actually feeling the floor beneath my feet. So we're trying to connect with the hearing now to stay present in this moment. So that's the grounding techniques. Next we've got our self-south techniques. So these are the things to try and help to calm us. So essentially understanding that dissociation is a trauma response and will happen at a time and kind of overwhelm. So we're trying to calm things down. So we might be using things like our breathing or our mindfulness techniques. Anything that helps to calm us and that might include things like going for a walk or doing some colouring. Anything that works for the individual to help to soothe. Some people will find touch helpful. Some people won't. Some people might find it helpful to be talked to. Some people won't. So you're good to explore with the individual what helps to soothe them. What helps them to feel calmer. And then the other strategy we can use is our distractions. So this is when we're trying to remove the thoughts and the feelings from the thing that's causing the stress to something else entirely. That can be something as simple as playing a game of candycrash or music tiles on your phone or iPad just to kind of take your mind to somewhere totally different. It might be looking at pictures of something that you really enjoy talking about your dog, stroking a pet. Anything that takes the thoughts away from this thing here to something else entirely. And this can be something that feels really superficial and you know they've got this big difficult stuff going on and you're like hey let's talk about my pet dog. But actually it's anything that takes the mind away from this here to something else entirely. Equally here this might be a time when you use music or a favourite book. It can be anything. It's really helpful again to think about what are good distractions ahead of these moments so we can turn to them at times of distress. Finally in moments where there's a risk of dissociation then it can be really helpful to either physically or emotionally move to a safer place. So you might with the child actually walk with them somewhere where they feel safe taken to a safe place perhaps that they've used before there might be somewhere within your school or your home where they feel safer and they're surrounded by things that feel located them so taking them to a safe place or if that's not possible you could do something like your safe space visualisation where we bring to mind somewhere where we feel calmer and happier than we do right now. So we might previously have explored with them a really happy memory that they have of playing with their siblings on a beach and then we talk about, okay let's go back to the beach you told me about that before. Think about the sea girls that you can hear and the sound of the waves lapping on the shore. What can you smell? What can you see? How does it feel? And we'd explore that place in our head to try and take ourselves away from the distress that we're feeling right now. And remember in these moments when you're supporting someone who's at risk of dissociation your number one job is to try and appear calm even if you don't feel it. Put your best game face on and be the adult they need you to be. I hope that helped a little bit as always leave your comments down below with your ideas about how you can support someone who's struggling with dissociation and please subscribe. New videos every Tuesday and Friday. I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye.