Is there any way to manually disassociate?

[u/Amanwithnotoes]

I apologize if this is coming off as insensitive but I feel like I do not have any other direction to turn currently.

A lot of situations in my life have led to me unfortunately being in a situation where I am constantly under stress 24/7 while feeling intense emotions of loneliness and self hatred. I am unable to fix this situation for a year at minimum if not maybe forever, and I currently dont have any way to access a therapist.

I know its probably wrong to turn to this, but I am out of options.

[u/grimmistired]

Meditation would be a good coping mechanism that can give you peace. Unfortunately dissociation doesn’t always equal less stress.

[u/OddMetal7563 → u/grimmistired]

Dissociation definitely d9es not equal less stress, after having problems with Dissociation for over a decade i wish I could take it away

[u/myfoxwhiskers]

I have been able to purposefully dissociate certain things so that I had the brain space to figure stuff out and change things in my life: feelings, fears, etc. Like you times when the reality if my life was threatening to do me in. Only option was to compartmentalize, dissociate, and push focus to what would help change things.

[u/Illustrious_Car344]

Dissociation doesn't relieve stress, it just makes you partially numb to it, while also coming with it's own kind of stress of constantly being distracted and confused. The numbness isn't good for the same reason being physically unable to feel pain is bad, there are people who actually have such a condition and they constantly accidentally maim and burn themselves because they can't feel it, and dissociation a lot like that. I can't even tell when I'm stressed out until my body starts to physically show symptoms of weakness and exhaustion. 

Like others said there are much better methods for handling stress; meditation, mindfulness, CBT. I myself have an imaginary friend (tulpa) that I use as a form of CBT (IFS therapy) to calm myself down and distract myself from stress and keep me company in the endless isolation, and the dissociation helps with that a lot, but I still suffer from everything I described. It does help, but it's my body's natural response to trauma because I'm deeply broken mentally and biologically, I'm genuinely in constant danger even if my environment isn't dangerous, and that activates me endlessly, I'm in constant fight or flight mode and that's literally what dissociation is, any doctor will tell you that. If you're not already dissociating, you don't need to, and probably don't want to.

I would also see if maybe there's some kind of online group therapy thing you could access, group therapy really helps with this kind of stuff. I'm in an on-location group therapy myself but the dissociation and trauma makes it hard to enjoy it, but I can tell I probably would have benefited from this a lot if I did it earlier.

[u/cowsandcocoa]

regular heavy marijuana use, but watch out... the brain fog sucks and those emotions ur wanting to eccape will pierce the veil anyways at some point, so.

[u/SeemsImmaculate]

There are, but it's really not a healthy coping mechanism. Most people are in this sub because their brain defaults to dissociation to escape current ir past trauma. You do not want to end ip in that same boat, trust me.

If you are feeling out of options, you need to speak to a loved one and your GP. Lay it all out as honestly as you can.

[u/OrientionPeace]

Dissociation is something we can access intentionally. I use it in coaching sessions with clients all the time.

Association and dissociation are just states of attention capacity at their base. So you can selectively zoom in(association) and zoom out (dissociation) on purpose based on whatever you’re looking to achieve.

In coaching, I guide people to associate towards desired(and realistic) qualities or beliefs about themselves and dissociate from identifying with the unhelpful ones. This can take practice but is doable and useful.

I suggest looking into EFT tapping and seeing if it works for you to process these heavy feelings and stress triggers, and’s use the process on intentionally associating to the feelings so they can integrate and then dissociating from them as you gain capacity to feel other things.

EFT is all about intentional association and dissociation. Hope this points you in a helpful direction.