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Dissociation preventing any progress in therapy

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@jameson , I had a panic attack while walking today because it was there were leaves changing color (fall is an anniversary time for me and is hard). I was able to use some reality checking, return home, and then distract myself. Have you tried reality checking a situation before? Took me a while to catch on to it, but it helps to just look around and see and tell myself what is actually happening. I'm having a really hard day today so even though I have a lot of skills that I didn't have before it's harder to access them, but I still can.
 
@jamesonfall is an anniversary time for me and is hard

Same here, the initial thing that caused me so much grief was sep 1 2015, the weather itself is stressful to be around. I find reality checking isn't really helpful to me, I never lose conscious understanding of what's happening to me, I can usually maintain awareness the entire time that I'm just experiencing really bad symptoms, but like having an extremely bad headache or something to that effect, it doesn't really help all that much besides preventing me from doing really dangerous things.
 
Ah ok. I see what you mean.
I tend to spend money and binge eat compulsively during panic attacks.
Common maladaptive coping tools. Most compulsive behaviors are miserable (I've struggled with two of my own) and can often reach to a point of getting out of control.

Do you want to stop?

What do you think will happen over time if you don't stop spending and binge eating?
 
What do you think will happen over time if you don't stop spending and binge eating?

I can control the spending completely but the urge to do it is hard to control. The eating is different because right now I weight about 185 pounds, that is after losing 130 pounds, and then gaining 25 of it back in about a year, but still I can control it enough to avoid practical consequences. The main issue is the urge to do it in the first place which is intense.
 
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Man, I thought I was getting close to reaching a significant turning point and then just started regressing hard, this is hard to deal with. We quit doing any EMDR a while ago because I'm so far from present that it offers no benefit whatsoever, just started talking about specific things to try and get my mind to loosen up. It looked like I was making progress but then it turned out everything was reacting the opposite of how its supposed to. Talking about core issues was way too much, so we put up distance, talking about fear of those issues, then fear of talking about those issues even, but instead of making it easier, the more distance in between the more anxious I got. All grounding strategies are still hurting instead of helping. My therapist thought it was a good idea to go back to eye movements just based on sensations in the body and emotions I'm feeling, couldn't feel anything in my body or emotionally, and every set of eye movements made me feel significantly worse to the point where my mind just shut clean off.

There's something very rewarding about getting to the deepest root of all the problems, but honestly I'm not sure if I can beat it.
 
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