Dissociative Disorder Treatment

For those who are avid readers or film buffs, it is quite obvious that they get totally engrossed and lost in the book or the movie. This getting lost is temporary and spontaneous. Moreover, it is not at all unhealthy and unnatural. But there are those who are lost even without that. These are those who consistently are living in a state of depersonalization or de-realization. They have multiple personalities, each having its own characteristics and perception of interaction with the environment. In some cases, some individuals lose track of their real self and surroundings. All these and some more allied conditions fall under the category of dissociative disorders. These are psychological disorders and thus, the mainstay of dealing with them is psychotherapy.

Dissociative Disorder

These disorders include a set of psychological symptoms like amnesia and alternate identities. These normally come about as a response to trauma and to keep disturbing and difficult memories at bay. As mentioned earlier, these disorders bring about a breakdown of memory, identity, awareness and perception. There are 4 major dissociative disorders - depersonalization disorder, dissociative amnesia, dissociative identity disorder and dissociative fugue. In short, the person is totally dissociated from reality, be it his own self or be the surroundings. It is one of the most intriguing concepts of psychology.

Treatments for Dissociative Disorder

As evident as it is, the nature of the treatment depends upon the severity of the problem and of course the cause of the problem, which could be either organic or psychological. Accordingly the treatment has to be given. What is focused here is to reduce symptoms like memory loss, incorrect perception of people and things around you; people think they are unreal. The sense of identity is blurred. The standard methods of treatment, which mostly encompasses psychotherapy, are:

Creative Art Therapy
This form of psychotherapy involves usage of creative process for helping people facing the difficulty in expressing their thoughts and feelings. Creative arts like dance, drama, music can help people realize their inner self and deal positively with traumatic experiences. If you see all these performing arts are a fantastic way to get to know your real self and can vent your emotions totally.

Medications
Anti depressants, mostly benzodiazepines, antianxiety medications and tranquilizers to help control psychological symptoms are normally subscribed. However, the cure for these disorders, like benzodiazepines, sometimes are the cause of these disorders due to their addictive nature.

Cognitive therapy
This is a kind of therapy which refers to talking with the individual. You could call it a regular dose of pep talk. But on a serious note, cognitive therapy helps the individual through the method of talking or rather speaking out to get rid of negative thoughts and beliefs and replace them with positive and healthy thoughts. The idea is that you cannot control what happens around you, but you can control what happens inside you and what can you do about it. For instance, you would not be able to control if something unpleasant happens to you. But you can surely change the way you think and react to it. Read more on coping with dissociative identity disorder.

Another aspect of dissociative disorder treatment is hypnosis. Although it is not amongst very commonly used dissociative identity disorder treatment options, it could prove effective. Hypnosis is a way to relax and calm the frayed mind. When you are hypnotized, you tend to concentrate totally on a specific thought, memory and sensation, blurring out everything else. Your mind is more open to suggestions than usual. But this factor has whipped up a storm amongst experts that wrong memories by suggestions can be implanted through this technique. However, if done by a credible and well trained therapist, it is a safe option as a method complimenting other areas of treatment.

Treatments for dissociative disorder need patience, for both the therapist as well as the patient. If the patient is willing to get back to his 'own and original self', no one can stop him or her from having that 'happy self realization'. Take care!