It is a scene that is all too familiar: you’re sitting in a class, on the bus, standing on the side of the road listening to someone chat, and you zone out. It’s not intentional; your brain goes blank, and you end up staring into a void of nothingness. The extent of zoning out could be a professor droning on for 20 minutes, putting you right to sleep, or even the soft lull of ocean waves at the beach, sending you into a blank stare. However, for individuals with autism, zoning out takes on a unique and often misunderstood form of dissociation. Come with me as we explore this unique experience of dissociation.
The first step to understanding dissociation is to get a general feel as to what dissociation is. According to the ever-helpful Merriam-Webster dictionary, dissociation is “the act or process of dissociating,” which is a pretty useless definition (which one may consider a clue to a lack of understanding of dissociation). However, a more inept definition of dissociation comes from the Mayo Clinic, where they explain that it is “experiencing a loss of connection between thoughts, memories, feelings, surroundings, behavior and identity.” In simple terms, dissociation is like falling asleep in the middle of the day while just being out and about.
For me and others with autism, dissociation is just a part of life. It’s unpredictable and can result from a myriad of factors. For me, anything from over-stimulating (or under-stimulating) environments, what’s left in my social battery, how much sleep I got, or if I am thinking of something else throws me into dissociation. It’s like a sudden switch in my brain, triggered by the environment or my thoughts. For example, if a room is too loud, sometimes my brain says, “Whelp, it’s too loud. It’s time to stop paying attention to the outside world.”
However, while dissociation can be like zoning out, it can become more severe and cause problems with functioning. Dissociation can extend to staying inside all day, not communicating with friends and family, and even lead to memory loss of a time during an episode of dissociation.
Dissociation and what it looks like and feels like can be hard to explain, so here’s a little story to help you understand. Imagine driving in a car or walking down a road you follow daily (like walking to class or work). Since your brain is so used to that route that it doesn’t need to pay attention to get you where you’re going, it starts to think of other things (like what you’ll have for dinner or a funny joke from a sitcom). Once you get where you’re going, if you try to think back and remember what it was like getting there, you can’t remember. That feeling of zoning out and not being able to remember is dissociation. While it’s a neat trick your brain can do (who doesn’t love a self-driving car, so imagine a self-driving you!), imagine if you dissociate for an entire day, a week, or even longer for individuals with autism, and that can be a scary reality.
Dissociation can be a scary thing, but learning about it can help some realize that they aren’t just zoning out in class but are experiencing dissociation, so they can take steps to make sure they get help if need be before dissociation gets too severe which is something we will discuss next week. I hope you learned a little about dissociation and want to keep learning about life with autism. And who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself zoning out — about zoning out!
