SEAN CUTHBERT 

In Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy (and trauma therapy in general), dissociation is a protective strategy to understand, rather than one to try and eradicate, or get rid of. When a client zones out, becomes foggy, goes blank, loses track of the conversation, or suddenly feels disconnected from themselves, something very intelligent is happening in their internal system. The client is showing how they survived overwhelming circumstances, or their childhood as a whole.