02/18/2026
People misunderstand dissociation because it doesn't look like traditional distress.
You're not crying or panicking. You're just...gone. Unreachable. Somewhere else.
But dissociation isn't peaceful or calm. It's your mind's last-resort strategy for handling something it can't integrate. When you dissociate, you're not choosing to check out. Your system is choosing to preserve you by creating distance from something too big, too fast, or too much.
The work is about slowly building a sense of safety that makes presence feel possible.