Dissociation Made Simple

A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Daily Life

By: Jamie Marich PHD, Jaime Pollack - introduction M.ED.

Narrated by: Jamie Marich PHD

Dissociation 101: The go-to guide for understanding your dissociative disorder, breaking the stigma, and healing from trauma-related dissociation.


Guided by psychologist Jamie Marich--a trauma-informed clinician living with a dissociative disorder herself--this book tells you everything you need to know about dissociation...but were too afraid to ask.
Here, you’ll learn:
• What dissociation is--and why it’s a natural response to trauma
• How to understand and work with your “parts”--the unique emotional and behavioral profiles that can develop from personality fragmentation
• There’s nothing shameful about dissociating--that, in fact, we can all dissociate
• Skills and strategies for living your best, authentic, and most fulfilled life
• What to look for in a therapist: choosing a healer who sees you and gets it
• Foundational elements of healing from trauma, including PTSD and C-PTSD
With practical guided exercises like “The Dissociative Profile” and “Parts Mapping,” this book is written for those diagnosed with dissociative disorders, clinicians and therapists who treat trauma and dissociation, and readers who are exploring whether they may have dissociative symptoms or a condition like dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociation Made Simple breaks it all down accessibly and comprehensively, with empowerment and support--and without stigma, judgment, or shame.

Information with normalization

It’s helping me get over my fear and bias. Working on inpatient psych units taught me to see DID patients as other and not to be trusted. Thank you.

Seriously Ambivalent about Recommending

Best info of the entire book was found in appendixes; the main body of the book was equal parts [deeply personal] journal entry, angry soapbox, and letter to the editor. A better title would have made all the difference. JM showed great courage though (and righteous indignation) by 'coming out' as having DID, BUT... simultaneously reinforced my trauma survivor dissociation shame with all the anonymous caregivers as contributors. If they can't model self compassion in this circumstance, how can they ever expect a client to resist internalizing cruel criticisms and self hatred? Last thought...., I never liked anything labeled as being "made easy", especially THIS subject! Nothing about CPTSD and it's resulting dissociative mind could be made simple.

For lay person

This text is aimed at lay person , if your a therapist and you want to learn how to treat DID type related disorders this book won’t do that . It does however give you a general overview of DID and other related disorders. I wish the book had more clinical content as I found it relied heavily on other peoples experiences . It often times felt all over the place and just telling me general Information about a modality or practice , then going into how “contributors “ experience eg IFS or yoga etc . I was hoping for a self help book that would walk you through treating DID , this is more of a literature review .

It was okay

I liked the info. The tone of the book felt too angry. useful but wouldn't really recommend.

Great intro on dissociation and its complexities

Great work overall. Gave overviews of the various models of understanding and treating dissociative disorders. Many instances of complaining about the lack of inclusivity of specific experiences of people with dissociative disorders when it’s understandably challenging to creative conceptualizations and models that fit everything case or makes every patient or client feel heard and validated. At the end of the day, we do need some labels, and that’s going to make some people feel left out or boxed in. But that’s why mental health is so nuanced.