A sense of being disconnected from events (past, present or future).

Many change processes in ["NLP" NeuroLinguisticProgramming] make use of an induced temporary disassociation to allow the person concerned to mentally "step back" from challenging events, reducing the associated emotional charge and allowing them to re-evaluate or rehearse alternatives.

A common way of inducing disassociation using visual language is to ask the person to imagine a projected picture of the events concerned which they can watch from a safe distance. The classic NLP fast phobia Cure uses a nested disassociation of this kind.

Disassociating is a meta-stating process (a thought about a thought).