Term
dissociation
The second reaction to threat in Perry’s model: when neither fighting nor running is possible, a person freezes and seems to step away from what is happening. It comes in different strengths, from slight distraction to the feeling that it is all happening to someone else.
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook, Bruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz
Explained in
- The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist’s Notebook, Bruce D. Perry, Maia Szalavitz
- Good Morning, Monster: Are You Brave Enough to Remember Your Past?, Katherine Gildiner
A defense mechanism of the psyche in which a person in a sense detaches from what is happening to them, and what they have lived through is stored apart from ordinary consciousness.
- The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk
a state where a person feels disconnected from their own feelings or body, as a way of not drowning in them