Practise supporting someone
Supporting a person who dissociates is a skill, and skills are easier to learn before the moment arrives than during it.
❤️ Loved one simulator
Fictional situations, no scores. Choose a response and see why it tends to help or not. There's often more than one good answer.
Someone you love looks around your living room and says, quietly, that they don't recognise this room. What do you do?
🚦 Consent traffic light
For partners especially. Dissociation can happen at any moment, including in intimacy, and it's a reason to pause and re-establish clear consent — not a reason for blame in either direction.
Green — Clearly comfortable
Present, responsive, actively participating, able to say no as easily as yes. Green is not the absence of a no — it's the presence of a clear, awake yes.
- • Answering in their own words
- • Making eye contact or initiating
- • Able to joke, redirect, or ask for a change
Yellow — Pause and check in
Something has changed: they've gone quiet, seem far away, their voice or manner is different, or they're agreeing very quickly. Stop what you're doing and ask a simple orientation question.
- • “Are you still here with me?”
- • “What's today?”
- • “Do you want to keep going, pause, or stop?”
Red — Stop
Blank or absent expression, no response, seeming much younger, distress, or any uncertainty about whether they are present. Stop completely, move to orientation and comfort, and don't resume in that state.
- • Someone who isn't present can't consent
- • Uncertainty is a red light, not a yellow one
- • Resuming later, when clearly present, is always an option