[cherybery]

Most of the time I don't think I can tell the difference between the two

Thats because there isn't a difference between the two.

Daydreaming is thinking about other things then what you are actually physically doing - for example sitting in class and instead of mentally listening to the teacher you are thinking about that upcoming weekend party.

Dissociating is - thinking about other things instead of whay you are doing.

Normal acts of dissociating - physically driving a car down a street that you have been on before. Instead of thinking about the mechanics (push the break here, turn flashers on there, speed up, turn right turn left, mentally you are thinking boy I had fun last night, got to remember milk at the store and so on.

Every human being has and uses these normal dissociation skills.

How much a person dissocaites (daydreams is what makes it a disorder or not.

Dissociation happens on a scale of 1-10. 1 -5 being normal acts and 6-10 the various dissociative disorders - dissociative fugue, depersonalization and so on.

Dissociative Identity Disorder - where the person has dissocaited to the point where their memories have been separated and stored at the unconscious (unaware) level and are acting out those memorys without realizing the memory content and what they are doing while acting out those memories is 10 on the dissocaitive scale.

[cherybery]

Thank you myself. My doc didn't even explain it that well too me

yeah thanks. That made more sense than half the stuff ive been told or have read.

[Fuzzybear]

thank you....

(ugh )

[SalingerEsme]

Thank you for such a clear response

[amandalouise]

my location goes by a different standard..

that there is a difference between dissociation and daydreaming...

my treatment providers follow the definitions that .....

daydreaming is when a person willfully and consciously imagines a story or conversation or mentally playing pretend....

example I can sit here at my computer and daydream ...imagine I am somewhere tropical maybe the caribbian laying on a nice warm beach drinking a pina colada

Dissociation is a normal response (feeling numb, spaced out, disconnected, ....) to a trigger (anything that causes a person to feel emotional)

Example....while sitting here at my computer I hear a clap of thunder. thunder is triggering to me because I was abused during a storm and had to make my way home in a storm after the abuse. thunder causes me to feel numb, spaced out and disconnected. feeling spaced out, numb and disconnected is my automatic response to the trigger of thunder.

dissociation here with my treatment provider is something that unconsciously happens to me not something I can plan and purposely do.

I do not purposely set out to be spaced out, disconnected or numb example I dont go around saying or thinking oh my gosh I am bored I think I am going to be4 numb now or be spaced out now or be disconnected like I can say and think oh my gosh I am so bored what if I was sitting on a beach in the Caribbean drinking a pina colada instead of all this snow and cold weather.

[Michael W. Harris]

I have always been a chronic daydreamer. My family was so dysfunctional that I did not get normal communication and companionship. That led to me living in my head too much.

You know that the daydreaming is normal because you remember doing it on the ride home. The times that you switched while driving are when you snap back to realize that you do not recognize where you are on the loop road and you do not remember what you were thinking about.