i have experienced various types and degrees of dissociation. years worth of things were fuzzy for me or i'd get things confused thinking something happened say a year or two ago when it was several years ago.

or i had an incident when highly dissociated where i was with family and they seemed like strangers to me yet part of me knew they were not.

so, i think that people can experience dissociative symptoms in various ways.

i also had times where i was so far in that i barely recognized things around me because things were so fuzzy yet knew it existed on some level.

but my sense of reality varies, so i think people can experience a wide range of things, and it won't be same for each person.

i thought the whole reason for dissociation was to create a protective barrier as a coping mechanism which can distort your sense of self, disconnect you from your self/body/emotions, etc. as well as distort/alter your sense of reality (like in derealization when the world around you seems like it's a dream/not real, etc.)