Dissociation is more than a buzzword on social media. While the term is sometimes tossed around to describe feeling temporarily checked out, dissociation is a very real process that involves a serious disconnect from reality. In essence, dissociation feels as though you have completely left your body.

It's an attempt to remove yourself from a past — possibly traumatic — situation. The caveat is that it leaves you unable to get in touch with your current environment, explains Scott Ira Krakower, DO. Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, saw this firsthand in his 2020 Stanford study , with one participant describing dissociation as "[feeling] outside the pilot's chair, looking at, but not controlling, the gauges.

" If any part of this sounds familiar, there's a chance you may have already experienced dissociation yourself. On social media, creators sometimes misuse the term "dissociate" to describe a kind of coping mechanism . Instead of treating it like the actual mental process it is, platforms like TikTok and Instagram make dissociation seem like a relatable hack for tuning out of anxiety-inducing situations .

To better understand what dissociation really is, we asked experts to break it down further, including three different types of dissociative disorders. Read on to find out more about the symptoms of dissociation, and what each dissociative disorder feels like. Scott Ira Krakower , DO, is a psychiatrist and associate professor with the Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northw.