When Your Body Feels Like a Stranger: Medical Trauma, Dissociation, and the Long Road Back to Yourself

In the midst of a bustling subway station, a woman finds tranquility with her headphones on, eyes closed, and effortlessly tunes out the world. She is reflecting on healing from medical trauma and chronic pain.

You know that feeling when someone asks, “How’s your body doing?” and you genuinely have no idea how to answer?

Not because you haven’t thought about it. But because somewhere along the way, between the emergency room visits and the appointments that went nowhere and the doctors who told you it was all in your head, you stopped checking in with your body altogether. Or maybe, you learned to tune it out, because listening only ever seemed to bring bad news and fear.

If this resonates, what you may be experiencing is dissociation; one of the most common and least talked about responses to medical trauma.

What Is Dissociation, Really?

When most people hear the word “dissociation,” they picture something dramatic. They think of movies where a character suddenly becomes a completely different person or blacks out entirely. And while those experiences do exist on the dissociative spectrum, that Hollywood version leaves out the much more common, quieter forms that millions of people live with every single day.

Dissociation is, at its core, a disconnection from your experience of yourself. It is a protective mechanism your brain and nervous system use when an experience feels too overwhelming, too painful, or too threatening to fully process in the moment. Researchers describe it as a disruption in the normally integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, behavior, and sense of self (Brand et al., 2012; Spiegel et al., 2011). Your brain essentially says, “This is too much. I’m going to create some distance between you and what’s happening right now so you can survive it.”

And here’s the thing, your brain does this as a survival strategy.

The problem is that survival strategies designed for a crisis don’t always know when to clock out. They can linger long after the threat has passed and become a default way of moving through the world. Research published in Frontiers in Psychology (Basso et al., 2024) found that dissociative experiences, particularly depersonalization, are closely linked to heightened states of physiological and emotional dysregulation, as well as impaired decision-making. In other words, when you feel disconnected from yourself, it’s not just an emotional experience. It is a whole-body, whole-brain event.

What Dissociation Actually Looks Like When You Live with Chronic Illness

So what does dissociation look like in everyday life, especially when you are navigating chronic pain or a condition like endometriosis?

It does not always look like “spacing out,” although that happens too. It can be far more subtle.

You only notice your body when something hurts. When things feel neutral or even good, there is a strange blankness where body awareness should be. You go through your morning routine, you sit at your desk, you move through your day, and your body might as well not be there. But the moment a cramp hits or a flare begins? Suddenly, your body is the only thing you can feel.

Your mind says “safe” but your body says “brace.” You might be in a genuinely stable period, feeling good emotionally, knowing rationally that things are fine right now. And yet there is this undercurrent, a deep sense of being off kilter, as though your body is coiled and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Your mind has caught up to the present, but your nervous system is still living in a past full of unpredictable pain.

Medical environments trigger a strange numbness. You walk into the doctor’s office and suddenly everything feels a little distant, a little muted. The lights seem brighter. The sounds seem farther away. You might answer questions robotically, almost as if someone else is doing the talking. And afterward, you cannot remember half of what was said.

You feel like you’re watching your life from behind glass. You are present, technically. You are doing the things. But there is a pane of something between you and your actual experience. Researchers call this depersonalization: the sense that you are detached from your own mental processes or body, like an outside observer of your own life.

Your emotions feel either overwhelming or completely flat. There is not much middle ground. You might swing between feeling everything at once and feeling absolutely nothing, which is its own kind of terrifying.

If any of that made your heart beat a little faster with recognition, stay with me. There is science behind why this happens, and there is a path forward.

Why Medical Trauma Creates This Kind of Disconnection

Medical trauma is a specific type of trauma that arises from experiences within healthcare settings or in response to serious health diagnoses, painful procedures, dismissive providers, prolonged diagnostic uncertainty, or loss of bodily autonomy. It does not require a single catastrophic event. In fact, for many women with chronic conditions like endometriosis, the trauma accumulates slowly over time, building layer upon layer of unprocessed distress.

Here is a statistic that should stop us all in our tracks: Black women wait an average of 8 to 12 years for an endometriosis diagnosis, longer than nearly any other demographic group. That is 8 to 12 years of being told you are exaggerating, that it is just a bad period, that losing weight will fix it, that it is probably stress. That level of sustained medical invalidation does something to a person. It teaches the nervous system that the body is not a safe place to be.

Research published in PLOS ONE (Cantoni et al., 2025) found that women with endometriosis show significantly altered interoception, the ability to accurately sense what is happening inside the body. Compared to healthy controls, women with endometriosis demonstrated poorer ability to detect internal signals such as gastric and urinary sensations, even as they simultaneously reported heightened sensitivity to pain. The study noted that these dissociative episodes may function as a coping strategy in response to continuous or repetitive pain.

A separate study published in The Journal of Pain (2024) confirmed that endometriosis-related pain severity directly predicts increased negative body awareness and decreased interoceptive self-regulation, both of which mediate the relationship between chronic pain and depression. In plain language: pain changes the way you perceive your own body, which changes the way you feel emotionally, which makes the pain even harder to cope with. It is a vicious cycle, and dissociation can perpetuate heightened sensitivity of the nervous system that increases pain as well.

A Personal Story: When Your Body Braces for What Hasn’t Happened Yet

I want to share something personal here, because I think it matters when therapists are honest about their own humanity.

I began experiencing endometriosis symptoms at 11 years old. I had heavy bleeding, frequent ER trips, gastrointestinal symptoms, musculoskeletal pain, and brain fog that followed me through school and into adulthood. At 27, I lost 60 pounds after being sick and tired of my symptoms being blamed on my weight. I worked out, I ate well, I did everything I was told to do and I actually got sicker. These and more experiences did not just leave me with an endometriosis diagnosis. It also left me with medical trauma. And one of the ways that trauma still shows up is through dissociation.

I have noticed that my endometriosis tends to relapse on roughly a two-year cycle. As I come up on that mark this year in 2026, I noticed this strong disconnection from my body as I get closer to key dates from previous relapses. I always feel pretty good emotionally. I can even say I feel content. Physically, things are stable as well; no new symptoms or unmanageable pain. But I still feel deeply disconnected from my body in a way that is both confusing and jarring. It is like my mind knows I am safe, that I am not having a relapse, but my body is bracing itself for another relapse. There is this persistent feeling of being off kilter that I could not quite name until I did a check-in with myself.

I am realizing now that what I am experiencing is fear-based dissociation. There is so much anticipatory fear living in my nervous system that my brain has decided the safest thing to do is to disconnect me from the experience of my body altogether. I only really notice my body when I am in pain. And when it feels neutral or ok it doesn't feel like my body belongs to me. I share this not because I have it all figured out, but because I want you to know that if this is your experience too, you are not alone in it. Therapists are not immune to the things we treat. And sometimes, naming the pattern is the first and most courageous step towards seeking help. I hope the language I gave to my experience of dissociation helps you to express your experiences as you continue to advocate for yourself.

The Science of Why Your Nervous System Does This

When your body has been a source of unpredictable pain for years, your nervous system adapts. It does what it was designed to do: protect you. The problem is that protection can start to look a lot like prison.

Research from McLean Hospital’s Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program has demonstrated that dissociative symptoms are associated with distinct neurobiological mechanisms, including altered patterns of brain connectivity that can be predicted through functional imaging (Lebois et al., 2021; 2022). This is not something you are making up or choosing to do. There are measurable changes in the brain that correspond with the disconnection you feel.

A 2025 study in the European Journal of Pain (Pasternack et al., 2025) found that endometriosis patients scored significantly lower across all subscales of a widely used interoceptive awareness measure, while also reporting heightened fear responses compared to pain-free controls. The researchers noted that trusting bodily sensations and feeling your body as safe and trustworthy are essential for processing physical signals without anxiety-driven interpretations. Remember, the more anxiety you have about experiencing pain, the more sensitive your nervous system becomes to pain; this, in turn, increases the intensity of the pain you experience as well.

When your body has been the messenger of bad news over and over and over again, you stop wanting to open the mail. Avoidance in the form of dissociation makes so much sense when you think of the experience of chronic pain and chronic illness.

A major review published in The Delaware Journal of Public Health (2022) found that people with dissociative disorders spend an average of 5 to 12.4 years in active treatment before receiving an accurate diagnosis. The review emphasized that appropriate identification and treatment of dissociation leads to significant improvements, including 25 to 64% reductions in healthcare costs, shorter treatment duration, and fewer emergency visits. This tells us something critical: dissociation is treatable. It is not a life sentence. But it does need to be recognized first.

What Healing Looks Like

If you have spent years disconnected from your body, the idea of reconnecting with it can feel counterintuitive. Scary, even. Why would you want to tune back into the thing that has caused you so much pain?

That is a fair question. And the answer is: because your body is not your enemy. It never was. It was doing its best under impossible circumstances, just like you.

Healing from medical trauma related dissociation is not about forcing yourself to “feel your feelings” or powering through with willpower. It is about slowly, gently rebuilding the relationship between your mind and your body in a way that feels safe.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is one of the most effective evidence-based treatments for trauma; research is still developing on the use of EMDR for medical trauma, but there is still efficacy for its use in treatment. At Cheerful Heart Mental Health Counseling PLLC, we use EMDR to help clients process the specific traumatic memories and experiences that keep the nervous system stuck in survival mode. EMDR does not require you to talk in detail about every painful thing that happened to you. It works with how the brain naturally processes information, gently unlocking memories that have been frozen in time and allowing them to be filed away where they belong: in the past.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps clients develop a new relationship with difficult thoughts and sensations, not by getting rid of them, but by learning to hold them differently. For women with chronic pain, ACT can be transformative in shifting from avoidance (which feeds dissociation) to a stance of open, curious engagement with the present moment, pain and all.

Somatic and interoceptive work supports the gradual process of turning back toward the body rather than away from it. Research has shown that mind-body therapies emphasizing attending to and accepting bodily sensations, rather than distracting from them, enhance self-efficacy and self-regulatory capacities, both of which are critical for chronic pain management (Mehling et al., 2024; Voss et al., 2023).

Healing is not a straight line. It is not always comfortable. But it is possible. And you do not have to do it alone.

You Deserve to Feel at Home in Your Body Again

If anything in this post felt like reading a page from your own story, I want you to know that what you are experiencing has a name. And it is not something you have to white-knuckle your way through.

At Cheerful Heart Mental Health Counseling PLLC, we specialize in helping women of color navigate the intersection of chronic illness, medical trauma, and their faith. We get it, not just clinically, but personally, because some of us have lived it too.

We offer virtual therapy sessions across New York, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina. Whether you are mid-flare, can barely get off the couch, or you are in remission and wondering why you still feel so disconnected, there is space for you here.

Ready to take the next step? Book a consultation with Cheerful Heart Mental Health Counseling PLLC on our website by completing a consultation form or booking a consultation directly in the Sessions Health portal. You can also email us at hello@cheerfulheartmhcpllc.com. You can also give us a call, leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you in 24 to 72 hours.

You can watch Shakira’s full trauma story: My Trauma Story on YouTube (trigger warning, this video contains details about surgery, medical trauma, suicidal ideation, and depression).

Follow us on social media @cheerfulheartmhcpllc on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube for more resources on medical trauma, endometriosis, and faith-based encouragement.

Join the Conversation: Dissociation and Medical Trauma Community Talk

If this post resonated with you, I have something else you might want to be part of. I will be joining Sarah Stasica, LMSW, founder of Medical Trauma Support, for a Monthly Community Conversation inside her Befriend Your Body Community on February 19th at 12 noon EST/11am CST. We will be diving deeper into dissociation and medical trauma together, and this is not a lecture. It is an engaged, interactive conversation where you can ask questions, share what you are navigating, and hear from someone who specializes in helping people rebuild trust with their bodies after medical experiences.

Sarah’s Befriend Your Body Community is a gentle, welcoming space that offers weekly peer support groups, somatic practices for nervous system regulation, and monthly conversations with experts in the medical trauma space on topics like “Healing While Still in Treatment” and “The Quiet Wounds of Medical Trauma.” If you have ever felt alone in your healing journey, this is a community that gets it.

Learn more and join the Befriend Your Body Community here.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is medical trauma?

Medical trauma is psychological distress resulting from experiences within healthcare settings, including painful procedures, dismissive providers, misdiagnosis, prolonged diagnostic uncertainty, or loss of bodily autonomy. It can develop from a single event or accumulate over years of negative medical experiences.

Can chronic pain cause dissociation?

Yes. Research shows that individuals with chronic pain conditions, including endometriosis, are more likely to experience dissociative symptoms. The body may use dissociation as a coping mechanism in response to continuous or repetitive pain (Cantoni et al., 2025).

What does dissociation feel like?

Dissociation can feel like being detached from your body, emotions, or surroundings. Many people describe it as feeling “numb,” watching their life from a distance, feeling like their body is not their own, or only being aware of their body during pain. It can also show up as gaps in memory, emotional flatness, or a persistent sense of being “off.”

How is EMDR used for medical trauma?

EMDR helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories that are “stuck,” including memories from medical experiences. It uses bilateral stimulation (such as eye movements or tapping) to help the nervous system move from a state of chronic threat detection to one of safety. It is particularly effective for people who find it difficult to talk about their experiences in detail.

Can therapists experience medical trauma too?

Absolutely. Mental health professionals are human beings who navigate their own health challenges. At Cheerful Heart, our founder Shakira O’Garro has lived experience with endometriosis and medical trauma, which informs the depth and authenticity of the care we provide.

References

Basso, J. C., Satyal, M. K., McKee, K. L., Lynn, S., Gyamfi, D., & Bickel, W. K. (2024). Dissociation and other trauma symptomatology are linked to imbalance in the competing neurobehavioral decision systems. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1317088.

Brand, B. L., Classen, C. C., McNary, S. W., & Zaveri, P. (2009). A review of dissociative disorders treatment studies. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197(9), 646–654.

Brand, B. L., & Lanius, R. (2014). Chronic complex dissociative disorders and borderline personality disorder: Disorders of emotion dysregulation? Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Dysregulation, 1(1), 13.

Cantoni, A., et al. (2025). Impaired gastric and urinary but preserved cardiac interoception in women with endometriosis. PLOS ONE.

Kaufman, M. L., & Lebois, L. A. M. (2021; 2022). Research findings from the Dissociative Disorders and Trauma Research Program, McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. American Journal of Psychiatry.

Mehling, W. E., et al. (2024). Interoceptive interventions for chronic pain: Mind-body therapies emphasizing attending towards and accepting bodily sensations.

Pasternack, S., Suvilehto, J., Härkki, P., Heikinheimo, O., Sipilä, R., & Kalso, E. (2025). Pain, Emotions, Interoception, and Bodily Sensations in Patients With Endometriosis. European Journal of Pain, 29(10), e70144.

Spiegel, D., et al. (2011). Dissociative disorders in DSM-5. Depression and Anxiety, 28(12), E17–E45.

The Journal of Pain (2024). Pain Severity and Depressive Symptoms in Endometriosis Patients: Mediation of Negative Body Awareness and Interoceptive Self-Regulation.

Voss, A., et al. (2023). Mind-body interventions for interoceptive self-regulation in chronic pain populations.

Weine, S., Brand, B. L., & Engel, C. (2022). Trauma-Related Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: Neglected Symptoms with Severe Public Health Consequences. Delaware Journal of Public Health, 8(2), 78–84.