I started dissociating really bad at 13. I started getting anxious around girls then I got really sick, felt really strange and couldn't feel anything around my friends or family anymore and became VERY detached from myself (I couldn't feel myself and I couldn't talk anymore - I couldn't put words and sentences together to save my life) and developed derealization very bad (I didn't feel real and everything around me seemed unreal which is very hard to understand, I know).
Psychologists have told me that an event triggers dissociation but I really don't believe getting anxious at 13 triggered it. I had all 4 stages of dissociation in my teens, 20's, 30's mainly being that I had EXTREME trouble identifying with myself (I guess this is called dissociative amnesia) throughout my entire life and I'm 60 now and still struggling very bad. I especially have trouble identifying with myself when I'm around people (I can't find anything to say around people). I just figured what happened to me maybe 10 yrs ago when I did research online and I've talked about it with tons of therapists and psychiatrists since then and none of them will discuss it. And my parents NEVER got me help in my teens/20's. (My best friend in HS asked my brother what happened to me!)

I told the head psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins all of this (and that I developed severe mood/anxiety disorders as a teen) 3 yrs ago and told him it damaged my personality and took away everything I had going for me (humor, all my qualities) and he was completely dumbfounded! He didn't say one word!!! I lost all of my neighborhood, high school and college friends because I couldn't hold a conversation.(I was perfectly fine before I was 13 with lots of friends and very happy.)

My experience over the last 35 yrs is that the mental health system doesn't work at all! All hospitals and Drs have done with me is experiment with me (5 trials of ECT, every medication and diagnosis with no relief). I don't think there's a solution for all of this...