You can be awake, capable, and getting through your day and still feel disconnected.

For years, I had long periods of being dissociated as the result of childhood PTSD. I didn’t feel badly, just spacy. Sort of a brain fog, almost an altered state of consciousness. I thought that everyone felt like that and I just didn’t handle as well as they did. When people hear “altered consciousness,” they may think about a person who has passed out or out of control. But you can go to work, actually be a high performer, pay bills, and look perfectly “normal” while feeling detached from yourself and the world around you. Outside appearances are a lousy test of what it feels like to be inside a mind living with trauma.

PTSD doesn’t affect everyone in the same way. And I’m using “conscious mind” to mean your everyday awareness: whether your feel in touch with your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. (I didn’t, btw.) Trauma can sever these connections in a number of ways.

Dissociation Can Make You Feel Sort of…Removed from Life

Have you ever been in a conversation and heard every word, yet felt a little spacy or kind of removed from it? Or have you gone through your daily business and felt disconnected. from your body or feelings, like a brain fog?

That kind of disconnection can be dissociation. It isn’t a single experience. For some people, it means feeling detached from themselves, called depersonalization. And for others, your surroundings can feel distant, unreal, or dreamlike, called derealization. You still know where you are, but feel that something about being there isn’t quite real. The VA recognizes depersonalization and derealization as features of a dissociative subtype of PTSD. That’s where I was for decades and had NO idea.

It didn’t feel dramatic, at all. And that’s exactly why it went on for so long.

Why Trauma Can Trigger Dissociation

When you’ve felt overwhelmed by a situation (or series of experiences) and escape isn’t possible, disconnection can make the experience feel less threatening…it’s like a merciful fog comes over you. That’s one way that researchers explain trauma-related dissociation: a way of enduring what a person cannot get away from. The VA describes how a sense of unreality or detachment can allow someone to keep functioning under overwhelming conditions.

It’s a good scientific explanation, but it shouldn’t become another demand to admire what trauma did to you. A response that helped someone survive can later interfere with feeling present in a safe moment, noticing what you want, or recognizing when something has changed. Trauma responses don’t always switch off just because someone else has said that the danger over. And if the danger is still present, your vigilance may be a response to reality, not a symptom to be talked out of. YOU decide.

It’s important to know that dissociation can also make it harder to notice if you are currently in danger = the physical cues that sometimes inform your intuitive safety—your chest or stomach tightening or that sudden feeling that something is wrong and that you should step back. Those physical signals might be harder to notice when you’re all up in your head and disconnected.

PTSD Flashbacks Can Pull the Past Into the Present

A flashback is another way that your awareness can shift. You might feel as though part of the traumatic event is happening now, with thoughts, sensations, or physical reactions that you felt before with the earlier danger. Flashbacks vary in intensity; they don’t all look like the movie version, with a person completely unaware of the room around her. NIMH lists flashbacks among PTSD’s re-experiencing symptoms.

Someone around you may see you go quiet, become scared or react strongly to something that seems minor to them. “But nothing happened” isn’t a useful response. Something happened to you, even if the person around you doesn’t realize it.

Hypervigilance Can Change What You Notice

PTSD can also affect awareness, even without dissociation. A person who feels constantly on guard may notice a door opening, a change in someone’s tone, or a sound down the hall and forget what she was talking about. Concentration and sleep can suffer, too. All of these are recognized PTSD symptoms.

This is different from depersonalization. The distinction is an important one: heightened alertness and disconnection can both change how you experience your day, but they are not the same process. And neither one is indicative of your judgment. There’s a lot going on, especially for the traumatized person and there is no way to expect anyone else to understand at first glance.

Why Dissociation Can Go Unrecognized for Years

Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides. When you become familiar with disassociation, it might begin to feel like a way of life, And when you keep showing up and handling what has to be handled, people may minimize it and assume you’re fine. Sometimes you’ll assume that you are too. But you are FAR from fucking fine.

Research describes trauma-related dissociation that can become an entrenched pattern over time. That does not mean that someone spends years in one uninterrupted flashback or that everyone with PTSD dissociates. It means recurring or persistent disconnection can become part of daily life, sometimes without the person recognizing it as a trauma response.

What to Do Next

Start with being curious about what’s going on with you, not a self-diagnosis. You might tell a trauma-informed clinician: “I often feel disconnected from myself,” “Things sometimes seem a little unreal,” or “I’m functioning, but I feel a little fuzzy.” Describe, as best you can, when it happens, how long it lasts, whether you lose time, and what else is going on. Those details help a professional assess whether you have dissociation, PTSD, or other possible causes. NIMH recommends working with a mental health professional experienced in PTSD, and notes that caring for someone facing ongoing abuse needs to address the situation as well as the symptoms.

If you’re living with an active threat, your safety comes first. You deserve help that takes the circumstances seriously. And if the threat has passed, you still deserve to understand why you still don’t feel like you have your life back.

I didn’t have the language for my dissociation for years. While realizing that it has a name doesn’t erase my history. naming it enabled me to develop the tools to deal with it. And it gave me a more honest question to ask: What has my mind been doing to get me through, and what do I need now? You may surprise yourself, and you deserve to know the answers.