Is Dissociation Bad? (No.) 🧠
Why Your Brain’s “Shutdown Switch” Might Be Its Most Brilliant Survival Feature (9min Read)
TL;DR Summary
Dissociation isn’t a flaw — it’s your brain’s intelligent fallback when emotional overwhelm becomes too much.
It’s not a shutdown; it’s a network switch between key brain systems like the DMN, CEN, and SN.
Anxious achievers are especially prone to hidden forms of dissociation — including overworking, over-exercising, or even appearing high-functioning while feeling emotionally flat.
From an IFS perspective, dissociation is the work of a protective part doing its best to keep you safe.
Healing doesn’t mean “getting rid of” dissociation — it means building a relationship with the parts of you that use it as a survival strategy.
Your dissociation isn’t dysfunction — it’s brilliance under pressure.
Dissociation Isn’t Your Enemy
I don’t know what’s gotten into me recently, but hot takes are just flowing outta my fingers right now.
So, why not take on another one?
Dissociation isn’t bad.
Yep, I said it.
We’re taught to fear dissociation.
But what if the thing we keep trying to “fix” is actually one of your brain’s most elegant survival strategies?
It’s framed as a disorder, a dysfunction, a disconnection from reality — something to avoid, suppress, or eradicate.
But what if that instinct to disappear, to numb, to float away… wasn’t a problem at all?
What if it was the most brilliant tool your nervous system had at that moment?
And what if dissociation isn’t just a trauma response — but a strategic, network-level shift in the architecture of your brain?
This one’s gonna blow your mind… Let’s break it down.
What is dissociation, really?
Have you ever experienced that feeling where you’re floating above your body, or it feels like you’re just going through the motions mindlessly?
I know I have, and I don’t shame myself for it.
Dissociation is often described as a sense of disconnection from your body, sense of self, time, and memory.
But those are just experiences.
What's happening underneath those experiences is far more interesting.
Neuroscientifically, dissociation is not the absence of brain activity.
It’s a switch in network activity — especially between the Default Mode Network (DMN), Central Executive Network (CEN), and Salience Network (SN).
These three networks are like rival managers in your brain’s corporation.
They don’t all run the show at once.
When one is active, others tend to quiet down.
Here’s a quick breakdown:
Default Mode Network (DMN) = self-referential thinking, rumination, and autobiographical memory.
Central Executive Network (CEN) = logic, planning, focus, executive functioning.
Salience Network (SN) = traffic controller, deciding which other network should take the lead.
Dissociation as a network-switching process
Now here’s where it gets fascinating:
Dissociation appears to involve shifts and disconnects between these systems — especially a disruption of communication between them.
For example, in trauma-induced dissociation, you often see reduced connectivity between the Salience Network and Central Executive Network, and increased hyperactivity in the Default Mode Network.
Essentially, the Salience Network, the gatekeeper, may go offline or route activity to the Default Mode Network instead of the Central Executive Network.
This means dissociation isn’t a shutdown.
It’s a reorganization.
The Default Mode Network might stay active, looping you in stories about who you are, or pulling you into dreamy, out-of-body self-watching.
The Central Executive Network may go offline, making emotional regulation and tasks feel hard, foggy, or impossible.
The Salience Network may struggle to prioritize what’s important or relevant, especially in emotionally charged situations.
What you’re experiencing as “spacing out” or “going numb” is your brain pulling resources away from one system and redistributing them elsewhere.
It’s not a dysfunction. It’s a reallocation of energy under threat.
In many high-functioning trauma survivors, especially anxious achievers, dissociation becomes second nature, a silent superpower that lets you endure in the face of overload.
Until it no longer serves.
So, what might this actually feel like?
You’re sitting on the couch. Someone you care about is trying to help you, maybe they’re asking what’s wrong, or maybe they’re offering comfort.
You know they’re being kind. You know you should respond. But your body is frozen. Your mouth won’t move.
Everything feels far away, like you're underwater, and they're on the shore. Inside your head, thoughts spin: “Say something. Don’t just sit here. Why are you like this?”
But instead of reaching for their support, you feel yourself slipping further inward.
Your mind is loud (that’s the DMN looping), your thinking brain is offline (the CEN can’t come online), and your salience network is the part of your brain that normally flags, "Hey, this moment matters!” isn’t helping you reconnect.
You’re stuck inside yourself, but not with yourself.
So is that dysfunction… or genius?
Let’s ask a hard question:
If your brain could no longer ensure safety through movement, action, or escape… what else could it do?
Answer: it could reduce the need to be present altogether.
Dissociation is the nervous system’s “last resort” survival state.
When fight and flight don’t work, and even fawning won’t guarantee safety, your brain pulls the ripcord: freeze, shut down, disappear.
The trauma and stress going on around you has gotten to such an insanely high level, that this is what your nervous system does to keep you safe.
This isn't random. It's deeply evolutionary.
In mammals, this is the tonic immobility response.
Think of a gazelle collapsing limp as a predator approaches — playing dead, dropping its metabolic demand, and waiting for a chance to escape.
Your brain does the same thing. It chooses preservation over presence.
You’re not broken. You’re adapted.
The brilliance of a disappearing act
Imagine you’re in a house that’s on fire.
You can’t leave the room. The smoke is choking you. The flames are closing in. There’s no exit in sight.
So, without even thinking, your mind pulls the emergency lever.
You close your eyes. You play a song in your head. You imagine you’re somewhere else.
You float above the room, away from the heat, away from the pain.
Just for a moment, you feel nothing. The fear dulls. The panic quiets.
The burning fades, not because it stopped, but because you can’t afford to feel it right now.
Did you solve the problem? No.
Did you escape the danger? Not really.
But did you survive something your system couldn't otherwise handle? Yes.
This is what dissociation does. It doesn’t save you from the fire — but it lets you endure it when there's no way out yet.
It’s not healing. It’s not a resolution. But it’s preservation.
A brilliant, temporary withdrawal from sensation so your system doesn’t shatter under the strain.
And for many anxious achievers who are sensitive, high-functioning, and hyper-adaptive, this mechanism isn’t failure.
It’s the exact reason you're still here.
Why anxious achievers are especially prone to dissociation
If you’re reading this, you might be one of the high-functioning, high-achieving, always-on types, created by some kind of trauma.
The kind of person who gets praised for pushing through, for holding it all together, for “doing it anyway.”
The kind of person who uses performance to feel safe.
Me too.
You likely developed that strategy early — not because you’re ambitious by nature, but because you had to be.
But what happens when that high-output strategy stops working?
When the anxiety spikes too high, the emotional noise gets too loud, or the nervous system simply can’t sustain the performance?
When your usual go-to — achieve, fix, do — doesn’t cut through your emotional overwhelm?
The brain pulls its next-best lever: dissociation.
Not because you’re weak — but because your usual survival strategy has maxed out.
And underneath the productivity and perfectionism is a nervous system that’s still scanning for danger, and sometimes, the only way it knows how to stay safe is to leave the building.
This insinuates dissociation always looks the same for everyone, but what does it really mean to “leave the building”?
You’d be surprised…
Dissociation doesn’t always look like “spacing out”
When people hear “dissociation,” they often think of someone staring blankly into space or feeling completely detached from their body.
That’s one version — but it’s far from the only one.
In reality, dissociation is any adaptive disconnection from present-moment experience, sensation, or self.
And it can show up in high-functioning, socially sanctioned, or even praised behaviors.
Here are some forms of dissociation that anxious achievers often miss:
Hyperfocus at work to the point of losing time or ignoring body signals (no hunger, no bathroom breaks, no fatigue).
Doomscrolling, gaming, porn, drugs, binging, or micro-dosing distractions during emotionally intense moments.
Excessive working out not for joy or connection, but to escape emotion, punish the body, or override the nervous system. If you only feel “OK” after pushing yourself to physical extremes, or you get anxious skipping a workout, your brain might be using exertion to bypass emotional states.
Detached compassion meaning showing up for others but feeling totally numb or robotic while doing it.
Sudden emotional deadness when a conversation gets vulnerable or triggering.
Over-intellectualizing your feelings instead of being in them: “I understand my trauma, so I don’t need to feel it.”
Sometimes it looks like doing everything right but feeling nothing.
And for anxious achievers, especially those praised for their resilience some of these patterns get rewarded.
Which means they become reinforced.
Which means the dissociation gets baked into your identity.
You start to believe it IS YOU when in reality, it’s a PART of you.
Yep, you guessed it, that’s our segue into IFS, my friends, are you surprised?
Who is Dissociating?
From an Internal Family Systems (IFS) lens, dissociation isn’t just something that happens to you — it’s something a part of you is doing on purpose.
That part isn’t trying to ruin your day. It’s trying to protect you.
When you dissociate, it’s often a protector part stepping in to pull the plug on overwhelm.
It may have been doing that for decades. You don’t need to fight that part.
You can get to know it.
Try this:
When you notice yourself dissociating, pause and gently ask inside,
“Who’s here right now? What part of me needs space, or safety?”Where do you feel it in or around your body? What do you notice when you focus on it?
Listen without forcing. Let images, sensations, or phrases arise.
If you can, thank that part for how it’s trying to help — even if it’s not helping at the moment.
Ask it how old it thinks you are. Go with the first number that pops into your head. Gentle update it on how old you actually are, and show it that you’re safe now, you’re older with new resources to support you.
This turns dissociation from a mysterious fog into a relational moment.
You're not "gone."
You're in connection just internally, with the Parts of you that still think you’re in danger.
And that’s where healing starts: not by yanking yourself back, but by building trust with the Parts that leave for a reason.
You don’t need to get rid of dissociation.
You just need to build a relationship with it.
Dissociation only becomes a problem when it runs the show all the time — when it’s your only available gear.
But what if you could understand it, appreciate it, and expand your options?
What if your true Self could lead from a place of calm, presence, courage, and clarity in times of immense emotional turmoil?
It can, and this superpower is always available to you, you’ve just gotta take a second to remember how powerful you really are.
This is why I love IFS so much.
Final thought: You’re not bad at being present. You’re brilliant at staying alive.
Dissociation isn’t the opposite of healing.
It’s part of the path — a clever, neurobiologically savvy survival tactic.
Once you stop fighting it, you can start understanding it.
You can learn to decode the message behind the floaty, foggy moments.
You can learn when to thank it… and when to gently come home.
Because it’s not bad. It’s not broken.
It’s your brain being brilliant.
By reframing dissociation as an adaptive response, you remove the shame and open space for curiosity, compassion, and integration.
I believe in each and every one of you.
You are so strong, so powerful and so loved!
Good luck, and until next time… Live Heroically 🧠
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Supporting Research
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van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. New York, NY: Viking.
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There’s always a reason for everything your body does, it’s true.