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Flop response (fight, flight, freeze, faint, flop)

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Snowglobe

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I have a very strong flop response to stress. I tend to faint or flop or freeze. I can't seem to find much information about the flop response and ways of managing it. It kind of merges into dissociation and leaves me very numbed and literally floppy and often I pass out into a deep deep sleep but if I'm not somewhere where I can sleep I am like a zombie and it's like I've had a stroke and can't answer people properly and I walk slowly like I'm wading through thick mud and I am just completely numb and weighted and feel horrendous. When I'm like this nothing works to ground me at all. Sleep is the only solution and that deep need to flop into a heavy deep sleep can last for a few hours right up to a few days or even a week during very high stress times. Can anyone relate?
 
I'm still trying to get my head around all this but this only happens to me in therapy.

Apparently I have structural dissociation down pat so in my work life I respond to stress really well. Personal life not so much but more on the hyperarousal side. After a therapy session I can be struggling to stop the cotton wool feeling for days. Especially if I've had a dissociative flashback. Which I can't remember. But feel shattered. I usually put aside the rest of the day to sleep. Thought I knew better than my therapist and learnt that the hard way.
 
I'm still trying to get my head around all this but this only happens to me in therapy.

Apparently I...
Cotton wool feeling is a really good way to describe it. I'm currently immersed in that feeling and have been for about 2 or 3 possibly 4 weeks. I can't shake it off. I used to be able to dissociate and compartmentalise at work but I had a breakdown after an assault it literally was the last straw and I am dissociative most of the time and have never been able to come fully back. I want to be able to compartmentalise my dissociation enough again to get back to work. It's like a dam broke between my compartments and I can't get it all tidily back. So I do understand the compartmentalised dissociation working amazingly well - I think it's definitely a strength not a deficit. How do you cope after dissociative flashbacks? Can I ask do you remember any part of it or just the sense or sensation of the idea that you've had or are having one? Just curious as I experience those to & I often hold onto a sense I've had or am having one but also much is lost to me especially once it's over. It goes from intense to deleted pretty quickly but a sense of it stays behind in a muddled way.
 
It is one of my grounding tools to help me reset my parts. If it's during the day I just rest for awhile,...
Yes I find I need to quiet my mind and keep very very still which then results in a blackout deep sleep. If I don't get that blackout sleep I get a terrible migraine. Can I ask what you mean by reset your parts? How do you know your parts are stirred up and then how do you know they are reset? Is it like a noise or sensation for you? I ask because I feel like I have parts which get very loud in me but are not as individually defined as some other people seem to experience so I'm not sure if it's possible to have parts but that are kind of glooped together so it's hard to grasp & identify their seperate influences - does that make sense? How is it for you - if that's ok to ask?
 
I can totally relate, except I don't do the deep sleep part, cant sleep that deeply :/ But when I get r...
I tend to have a deep blackout sleep and it resets me - if I'm lucky. I sometimes have to literally lay myself down and keep still & wait for it to happen but eventually it does. Sometimes though it's instant like a faint. How do you come out of feeling on autopilot and like a zombie? Do you suddenly notice your back or is it slower and more subtle? (If it's ok to ask)
 
I tend to have a deep blackout sleep and it resets me - if I'm lucky. I sometimes have to literally l...
Sometimes I do faint, although I also have medical issues that might account for that. I just power through or rather slug through the day, watch some tv show that makes me laugh, do something thatvdoesnt require much effort like a jigsaw puzzle so I don't put extra strain on myself when I'm already stress overloaded. I have something to drink, sometimes taking a shower helps sometimes makes it worse.
 
Cotton wool feeling is a really good way to describe it. I'm currently immersed in that feeling and h...

We kinda decided to slow things down in session as it was becoming re-traumatising rather than productive. My therapist has been away for a few months so I've had a chance to build that wall again...not looking forward to tearing it down lol

So....the dissociative flashbacks...they are whacky. Definitely lose all sense of time. I lose my senses very rapidly - can't hear, talk, see or move. Sometimes I'm aware of chaotic feelings. Sometimes I can't remember anything at all. But coming out of them always feels the same. I feel completely wrecked and broken. Just shattered. Physiologically drained. And yet the first thing I say is "I'm ok." Leaves me in such a fog of exhaustion and emotional sensitivity.

I really don't understand that I've experienced anything traumatic by the way. But I'm realising that going back and forth between numb/avoidance and over sensitive/emotional just feels normal to me *sigh*
 
I have a very strong flop response to stress. I tend to faint or flop or freeze. I can't seem to find much information about the flop response and ways of managing it.

Flop response (fight, flight, freeze, faint, flop) I would also add fawn, which to me is another form of flopping. I also flop into fawning.

... and leaves me very numbed and literally floppy and often I pass out into a deep deep sleep but if I'm not somewhere where I can sleep I am like a zombie and it's like I've had a stroke and can't answer people properly and I walk slowly like I'm wading through thick mud and I am just completely numb and weighted and feel horrendous.
I have slept a significant part of my life away. Almost a decade more or less.

When I'm like this nothing works to ground me at all.
I have this problem as well. I don't have good grounding skills full stop though, but there are states like yours where I can't do this (yet).

Sleep is the only solution and that deep need to flop into a heavy deep sleep can last for a few hours right up to a few days or even a week during very high stress times.
Sleep was my drug of choice for a long time, but I didn't know that I thought I had CFS.

Can anyone relate?
Yes
 
Wow, i can really relate to a lot of what you are all saying. Other than the blackouts which I have only had with my miscarriage in July and when I smoked pot, which I had to give up 7 yrs ago as it was making all the symptoms worse.
I've been sleeping.loads but waking in the night loads so i then sleep half the day. I'm not working or studying formally at the moment either.
What has worked for me lately, as I've been really not good, and the foggy, i call dirty-cotton-wool-in-my-cerebral feeling has been really bad lately; but what keeps working for me, is communicating.

I also resorted to a bit of alcohol which I'm not real happy about but it eased the unbarableness of my quite acute symptoms.

Whether it was connecting and expressing on here, or talking with my trauma counsellor on the phone or spending time with peers, I've had a marked improvement from a very contracted, triggered, dissociative highly-dysfunctional state of late.

I'm starting to be very mindful of compartmentalizing and the use of alters. I've just recently, dubbed my most unwell part "the crazy lady in the attic" inspired by Jane Eyre and the prequel by Joan Rhys Wide Sargasso Seas. Giving that not well part a name means it's not the whole of me, just a part that's been very damaged from gaslighting, abuse, neglect and too much trauma.

I have other other functional alters or parts of me, and some are very childlike or adolescent or even baby and need to be mothered by myself and other support people. Mothering myself seems to be very key, even holding myself and stroking my arms and face sometimes.

Then I have amazing musical, poetic and spiritual aspects than come in and perform beautiful creative works that are very healing and restorative and/or remind me of love, hope, redemption, forgiveness, inner strength and beauty etc.
I hope that helps :-)
 
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