Last week, I talked about dissociation in the traumatized adopted child and how to help a traumatized adopted child to stop dissociating. This week, I am going to focus on dissociative disorders.

According to Martha Stout’s book, The Myth of Sanity, dissociation occurs on a continuum. On the far left is normal dissociation that everyone experiences, such as “losing yourself” in a good movie and “forgetting” that you are sitting in a crowded theater. In the middle of the dissociation continuum is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On the far right is dissociative identity disorder (DID), which used to be called multiple personality disorder. (I have written extensively on my personal blog about DID).

Dissociative disorders fall on the dissociation continuum between PTSD in the middle and DID on the extreme right, which makes them more severe than PTSD but not as severe as DID. If you are parenting a traumatized adopted child who experienced severe trauma and has PTSD, it is possible that your child is also struggling with a dissociative disorder.