Losing Time Without Remembering Anything For Periods Of Time??

[Sing2me]

Has anyone else lost time without remembering what happened? You look at the clock and its 8:00pm, you literally feel like a minute later you look again and it's 10:30pm and you have no clue what happened the last couple hours? That long has only happened once to me but I've done it for like 30 min or so throughout the day a few times and apparently if someone speaks to me I respond(as myself) and have been busy doing whatever, like my body is on auto pilot and my mind took a break for awhile. I don't have schizophrenia or anything similar. I just... leave for awhile I guess. My therapist said she notices me during it several times throughout my appointment but it last only about 30 seconds or so. It seems it is triggered by stress. I have had cat scans, MRIs, and what not. Nothing physically wrong.

 

[Deleted member 12723]

I am no authority but I am guessing you are dissocotiating. It means you blank out when things get so stressful. You really need to take this into therapy with you. Mabe somebody who experiences the same thing will come along and explain it better. I wanted you to have a response. I am sorry this is happening to you. Take care.

 

[Abstract]

Hi Cherokee,
Yes, I do and I suspect I have always done so. Most of my childhood is a total blank actually. I have only started realising it in recent years.

D
Two different dissociative mechanisms can cause symptoms like this but the most common is depersonalisation. Really its like we go into a different level of consciousness or what they call dissociative trance. It never used to bother me but now it does.

Has anyone taught you about "grounding" and is your therapist a proper trauma T?

 

[Lionheart]

I am pretty sure this is caused by dissociation and it has happened to me a lot... mostly during the beginning of therapy. It doesn't happen very often anymore, but still does happen when I am stressed..it seems I just automatically and mentally 'check out' for a little while. At first I found it to be disturbing, but once I understood it better it ceased to be as disturbing to me.

Once, while watching a preview for a movie, I "lost time" and later learned that it was due to a rape scene. It seems this is our brains way of protecting us until we are stronger and more prepared to process the stressful situation or event.

At the time I was dissociating, I told my significant other to watch for 'blank expressions' and that 'far away' look in my eyes, to help her recognize when I was dissociating. It was helpful, as she then knew to let me be and to just keep an eye on me until I returned back to the present. In this way I was often able to discover the cause for the lost periods of time. Fortunately, the frequency of these experiences decreased as I began to heal from trauma.

My "t' once told me that only intelligent people dissociate. I don't know if this is true, but I took it as a compliment.

I wish you success, peace and comfort in dealing with these experiences!

 

[Sing2me]

I will definitely go along with that compliment:). Thank you for explaining, it can be a little scary. I have always had a really good memory; but for awhile I tend to not remember the simplest things (example: what I did yesterday, last week ect...). I think I do this even more than I thought.

 

[confusedcaregiver]

At the time it was believed to be a side-effect of a whack-load of experimental medication I was on (and it may still have been) but during my most stressful years I started getting bad blackouts. Like, I would be typing an email on my computer and I would blink and it would be hours later and I would be on a bus. No idea where I was going, or where I had come from. Just all of a sudden I was there. Really messed with me, but I also got a lot of seizures around then too.

 

[ClearAsMud]

This happens to my hubby...he just loses time, blacks out. Nothing seems unusual until he gets this bewildered almost childlike innocent look on his face. He than asks to know what is going on, where he is, what we are doing, what day/time it is. Sometimes it happens when he wakes up from a nap, which can be as little as literally 10 seconds. Other times it happens to him completely awake and in the middle of something. He just 'goes away' and comes back completely lost. He doesn't seem afraid, but just completely bewildered is the only way I can describe it.

At other times he has vivid recollections that something happened that certainly did not...that he was just talking to a buddy or experiencing some event, usually in Afghanistan. It must be so disconcerting, so I just casually explain what's up, don't make a big deal of it, and we carry on.

I'm not speaking from experience, but I believe this is a common symptom.

 

[Draiocht]

I had this once when I was on a psychiatric ward. Apparently I was just stood in my room, staring ahead, not responding to anyone for an hour. I don't remember it happening and I only found out when the on-site doctor mentioned it in a later appointment.

I also lost some time after trying to confront someone. She had walked off and my closest friend tried to talk me down for a while afterwards. After she left I don't remember about half an hour. I just knew it was a bit later by looking at my watch and I was soaked through because it was raining a bit.

I have a pretty bad memory as it is but these two things stood out for me. The doctor in the ward said when your mind can't cope with something you just kind of shut down for a bit, to dissociate from it. That you say you are stressed at the time, maybe it's a similar thing.

 

[mothsorbet]

It's a scary thing to happen. Dissociation can be crippling for me, at times. Recently I've been made aware of different "personalities" that I have. Just the other week, my recent ex-boyfriend told me one day he opened the door and I was yelling in a child's voice about not wanting to "be on this stupid airplane anymore" and crying about being late for a birthday party. No recollection, no idea who or what I could have been talking about.

Anybody notice triggers when this happens, or is it just random? For me it seems random, but the tiniest hint of the possible idea of a mayyyybe flashback will cause someone else to take over.

I wish all of you luck with this. Keep the replies coming!

 

[ada1987]

Hi Cherokee,
Yes, I do and I suspect I have always done so. Most of my childhood is a total blank actually. I have only started realising it in recent years.

I have the same problem, and I have just recently come to realize it. It came as a shock to me once I realized I didn't remember most of my childhood. I'll also have times where I blank out throughout the day - I can actually kind of recognize when I know it's happening, but haven't gotten so far as to prevent it/ground myself or anything. It's really frustrating. I also have OCD-type behaviors that I'll start when I'm dissociating - I pick at my face/pull my hair out and I'll lose hours at a time. Granted, this works to my advantage when I'm stuck at my retail job standing for hours on end with no customers, but in any other situation it's obviously problematic.

 

[Draiocht]

I also have OCD-type behaviors that I'll start when I'm dissociating - I pick at my face/pull my hair out and I'll lose hours at a time.

I get this as well, picking at my face anyway. I think I've been stood there for 5 minutes but have been told I've been away for a good hour or so. It's very compulsive.

 

[Resilientbibliophile]

Same here too,

Structure is difficult for me, whereas sometimes intent focus is 'on call' and may be directed to select tasks. At such moments, I can be deliberate, patient, and capable of much that is good. I think it a mistake to simply label these periods as workaday manic in tone, whereas in my relative isolation much depends on having fine reading material and exposure to the arts a constant in my life. Awful or under-performing works, or the force-feeding of material that I have trouble with - and soon I start to slip. I live in terror of slipping, and yet so comfortable are my dissociative states that the entire basis of life effectiveness is thrown into question. Spooky it is to internally register a dissociative trance as equating to life effectiveness when such a state is the antithesis of being present, of being strictly responsible to both self and others.

If I 'slip', then weeks can pass before my bearings are established again. Color goes out of my life, and no sudden snap of the fingers can so-quickly restore my capacity to be present in the moment. In particular, my past writing appears as though it were written by a different hand entirely, while the sum effect is nothing less than disturbing. Fueled by the unpleasant (and inevitable) possibility of mindless wandering equating to unfocused time, I chase down what for me register as 'quality inputs' for I'm toast if I should fail to have such materials close. I greatly regret that I have to conduct myself as though I were some mad professor half out of his mind and so severely divorced from others - but one must do what they must.

The comfort of having people around me or those that might insulate me from the experience of more upsetting shocks or setbacks hasn't been mine to reliably tap, hence that which I read must substitute for emotional comfort and emotional warmth that even if fleetingly present in my life, leaves me cold and untouched. I'm one of Harlow's severely neglected monkeys that cannot be adequately consoled regardless of the warmth of intent on the part of late arriving 'help'. Tell me matters are 'looking good' or some such, and I'll predictably redouble if not triple my efforts to better understand what others seem capable of comfortably containing. My anxiety is the proverbial itch I cannot scratch, for safety has not been mine to internally register as such.

A common refrain here, for I too feel 'broken'. One can't stop there though, for how hapless and pathetic to be rebel sans cause? I suppose this statement should be translated as stab on my part to justify personal assertion directed towards the cause of disentangling many an unspoken trauma legacy. I gather evidence to construct for myself a coherent narrative of many an undesired experience clocked, an undesired perception registered, although no one will ultimately stand trial - typical regrets then.

For myself no help is coming. The help I seek is afforded mainly via individual assertion even as I've made (and continue to make) a great many mistakes. Employing a film reference, I think of Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky - or at least the end. Across the final scene, the lead character is afforded the option of continuing to 'live' based upon the perpetuation of an illusion consistent with the leading an effective life, or he may signal (via deliberately jumping off the roof of a skyscraper no less) to clearly face down his fears of experiencing an actual and invariably imperfect life come what may. Making that choice is wildly painful for so many impacted by trauma, so acclimated to dissociate in the midst of recall of much terrible. 43 years lived, and yet so many of those obscured by the dissociative bank of fog I purposely laid down. How to live with that, how to recognize that and still thirst for life - however imperfect is the crux of the challenge.

Returning to the theme at hand, I've blacked-out much, and marvel again and again at people who evidence the most remarkable ability to recall in minute detail aspects of their childhoods that for myself is demonstrably inaccessible. Employing another film reference, I feel like a character from the rather interesting late '90's dystopian feature Dark City, existing as though my entire slate of disjointed memories was implanted just the night before. People credit me with possessing a detailed and accurate memory, but I don't believe this to be the case. Instead, what I have is a very porous memory where I take new input and constantly pour in material that I hope at any given time will equate to a coherent and grounded identity not purely subject to legacies that would suggest a certain corrosive determinism was at work; i.e. I can be effective and 'better' contrasted to an abstract and ever-threatening 'you'.

The larger world is thus construed as judging, cold, and devoid of relationship opportunities that could somehow afford me that which I missed or was denied. I have a yearning for 'what I need', but no strict compass to guide the way. As the years pass, the very existence of such a state of comfort takes on a mythical quality, while the most acute pain is suffered for being in close proximity to others who enjoy interpersonal relations that undeniably translate into a qualitatively different (and better) experience of life. I see myself age and note the seeming dull course of many a life lived in my proximity - but at least there exist couples, friendships visible here and there that offset the existential loneliness.

There have been broad periods where and when I'll carry reading materials everywhere I go, trying if you will to artificially sustain focus that may evaporate in an instant. Reading in traffic, reading at stoplights, laboring as I do to imbue myself with courage, with faith that constant contact with the focused creative output of others will enable me to contribute in like fashion for otherwise life (such as it is) seems an abyss. When interrupted or bogged down in conversation with others not so wired (and this written by what would seem an emotionally flat poster boy of sorts), I can think of nothing more than getting away from tediously dull they to re-embrace what textual and decidedly para-social 'supplement' passes for 'connection' in my life. I so desire not to be so much indistinct protein on the hoof. Inclined then to hold out hope that divorce from much that lends agreeable texture to many a life (i.e. popular culture, a range of normative experiences that seem bewildering and cruel to contemplate for not having been mine to claim as my own) can somehow be converted into a strength. To simply (or not so simply) 'miss out' without hope of creative renewal is too grave a burden to live with.

Too few good people - or at least the paucity of good conversational partners and outlets where new contacts might be formed. Mix this with a large backlog of uninspiring experiences not worth remembering or recording, and a social skill kit not so much atrophied but painfully underdeveloped - and very little changes. I have no desire to be passive, and yet to habitually dissociate in the face of anything remotely unfamiliar is to fail to register as a person. I so hope that I can break what seems a complex cognitive behavioral deadlock and take reasoned and grounded ownership of my life versus the endless cultivation of what seems a multi-layered fantasy existence. I'm operationalizing an effort to secure entry into a select slate of Ph.D. programs, premised in part upon the hope that hidden facets of my identity might yet be drawn out, my sense of self better actualized for assertion so configured. A challenge then; i.e. to be present and in the moment, charting pathways ahead based upon cumulative effort and insights gleaned, and yet disentangle the wiring if you will to turn dissociative tendencies into habits of disciplined assertion come what may. Thanks.


M.