Therapy for Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders In Pembroke Pines, FL and online
Written by Karli Gallo, LMHC | EMDR-Certified Therapist | Pembroke Pines, FL
What Is Dissociation?
Dissociation is often misunderstood, and sometimes feared. Dissociation is creative and adaptive. It’s the mind's way of protecting you from something that was too overwhelming to fully experience. It can range from mild experiences, like zoning out during a stressful conversation, to more significant experiences that affect your memory, your sense of identity, and your ability to stay present.
Dissociation often develops in response to early or prolonged childhood trauma. It is not a character flaw, a sign of weakness, or something you invented. It is a survival response. It worked when nothing else could.
What does dissociation feel like?
Many people experiencing severe dissociation spend years not knowing what's happening to them. They may have been misdiagnosed, dismissed by other healthcare providers, and therefore learn to hide what they experience because it is often misunderstood.
Often those experiencing significant dissociation experience:
Feeling like you're watching your life from outside your body, like a passenger rather than the driver
Losing time: coming back to yourself mid-conversation, mid-task, or in a different location with no memory of how you got there
Feeling like the world around you isn't real, or like you're moving through a fog or behind glass
Not recognizing yourself in the mirror, or feeling like your body doesn't belong to you
Finding writings, drawings, texts, or items you have no memory of creating or buying
People telling you that you said or did things you have no memory of
Feeling as if your emotions, reactions, or thoughts don’t belong to you
Switching between very different emotional states or ways of being, so different that it confuses you or the people around you
Feeling emotionally numb or cut off from feelings that you know should be there
Gaps in your memory of your childhood, or of recent events
These experiences can feel frightening, confusing, chaotic, or deeply isolating. They are also recognized, valid, and something a skilled therapist can help you navigate.
How Dissociation Connects to Other Concerns
Dissociative disorders rarely show up alone. They are often accompanied by other significant experiences that on the surface may not seem connected.
Eating Disorders
For many people with significant dissociation, eating disorder behaviors are common. Usually this is not primarily about food or body image but managing internal states. Restricting, bingeing, or purging can be ways of numbing overwhelming emotions, feeling a sense of control, or communicating distress that has no other outlet. Different parts may have very different relationships with food, hunger, and the body. When dissociation is not addressed in eating disorder treatment, recovery becomes significantly harder.
Addiction or Chronic Relapse
Substances are often used to quiet a loud internal world, to silence distressing parts, reduce switching, stay grounded, or simply feel some relief from exhaustion. Blackouts from substance use can feel confusingly similar to dissociative amnesia, and the two can be difficult to distinguish. Recovery from substance use is complicated when the underlying dissociation and trauma remains untreated, because the substance was serving a real function.
Abusive or Difficult Relationships in Adulthood
People with significant dissociation or reoccurring childhood trauma are at significantly higher risk for finding themselves in abusive or harmful relationships in adulthood. Different parts may have very different perceptions of the same person. Attachment to harmful people can be split across parts, making it difficult to hold a consistent picture of what's happening. Amnesia between parts can mean that red flags experienced by one part are not available to another. Early relational trauma shapes what feels familiar, safe, or "normal" in close relationships. These patterns make sense when you understand the system they developed in. Therapy addresses them not with judgment, but with curiosity.
What Therapy Looks Like
Working with dissociation, and specifically with DID and DDNOS, requires a different approach than standard trauma therapy. Some important things to know about how I work:
I work with the whole system. Parts are not pathology. They are creative adaptations that developed for a reason. The goal is not to eliminate parts or force integration, but to build internal communication, increase collaboration, and reduce conflict.
No part is the problem. Even parts that seem destructive, angry, or frightening developed in response to something real. Every part has a function, and every part deserves to be understood.
Stabilization comes first. Before processing trauma directly, we work on building internal safety, communication between parts, and grounding skills. This is not a detour. It is the work.
EMDR can be adapted for dissociative presentations. Standard EMDR protocols are modified when working with significant dissociation to ensure safety and stability. We move at a pace that the whole system can tolerate.
Integration is not a requirement. Some systems move toward full integration. Others find a functional multiplicity that works for them. This is your process, not a predetermined destination.
A Note to Whoever Is Reading This
Sometimes the person reading a page like this isn't the one who made the appointment or searched for a therapist. If you are a part of a system exploring whether this is a safe place, you are welcome here too.
Healing happens in relationships. That includes the relationship between parts, and the relationship between a therapist and the whole system. I don't work against any part of you. I work with all of you, at a pace that feels manageable, toward a life with more safety and meaning.
If you're ready to take the next step, I invite you to reach out.
I offer a free 15-minute consultation call to all prospective clients. No pressure, just a conversation to see if we're a good fit.
No part of you has to figure this out alone.