Keith Reed
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Many of us have sat through numerous lectures, conversations, and readings in which afterwards we retained nothing. This has happened to me countless times. Dissociation is the word that best describes this. It means the lack of connection to one’s thoughts, memories, and sense of identity. The severity of dissociation is seen as a spectrum from daydreaming to forgetting what you have read in a book or the walk home from class. More severe cases are classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Dissociation disorders are more common than you might think; 7 percent of the population may have had one at one time or another, according to Mental Health America. Dissociative disorders, like many other mental disorders, are difficult to spot in patients and many go undiagnosed for years.

Mental Health America states that almost one-third of people say they occasionally feel they are watching themselves in a movie. Four percent of the people in the above demographic say that they feel that way one-third of the time. These incidents occur generally in our juvenile years and decline after our 20s. As a child of the digital age, this could be owing to the fact that our young brains have become accustomed to transient faint facts in such a fickle time in our lives.   

Daydreaming can sometimes become conflated with dissociation. Psychology today conducted a survey that indicated that about 96 percent of adults engage in daydreaming on a daily basis. I can see where the two can become easily confused for each other.

Daydreams are fantasies that do not necessarily reflect your everyday life. They can be controlled but they take the effort to maintain. Even though daydreams may seem insignificant, they can shape our interactions and cause happiness among other things. Dissociating can happen when completing tedious tasks, or walking or driving home. They are usually brought on by triggers, which can vary from person to person. The obvious benefits of daydreaming outshine those of dissociating. It can feel as though the body is merely a vessel and a detached feeling.

While wandering the deep recesses of my brain through daydreaming, I have found comfort and solace. In class, I have found something different, a detachment from the entire class. This could be attributed to the lack of sleep or the general preoccupancy that I have with the past weekend. Owning up to this is the needed push I need to increase the already lacking attention I pay in lecture and life. There is a stark contrast between dissociation and daydreaming, and there has to be an acknowledgement of the two. There needs to be an open conversation about mental health regarding those who engage in actions that are maladjusted to daily function.