Can Dissociation Get Worse?

[Crayon]

Hey everyone,

The past two years I've been getting worse over time. After my last bout of depression with a near suicide attempt (I realized at the last moment, that what I was doing was not normal and that I needed help) I decided to find a therapist.

I've been there a couple of days ago and she diagnosed me with complex PTSD. I self-harm as well, trying to stop that. There's one thing that really freaked me out though. A couple of months ago, when the depression was at it's worst, I woke up to a horribe nightmare with flashbacks. I went to work anyway. When the day was over, I wanted to go home, and all of a sudden I found my car keys in my coat. I had and have NO memory WHATSOEVER of driving to work. I couldn't remember any of it, and had to search for the car on the parking lot (first I though I accidentally took the car key to work). This happened about 2 months ago.

This really, really scares me. I don't want to loose my mind. I've had dissociation since I was about 5-6 years old, after seeing my mother trying to commit suicide. It varied from a wuzzy/zombie like feeling, to the feeling I'm not in control of my body, not being able to recognize where I am, to total out of body sensations. Never have I experienced what I described above.

Can dissociation be progressive over time? Can therapy make my dissociation worse? I don't want to go to therapy if I'll start developing alters. This really, really, really scares me, I'm having anxiety attacks all day long.

Thanks for the replies in advance.
~ Crayon

 

[mytai]

Hi Crayon.

I can't take the time to comment on your whole post so I'm just going to comment on the alters portion. Alters (dissociative identity disorder) occurs during trauma, it is a coping mechanism, a way of protecting oneself. I have never heard of (doesn't mean it hasn't happened) it occurring in therapy. Therapy shouldn't be traumatic.

I have a form of dissociation. I frequently dissociate throughout the day, and for a while in therapy it was aggravated. My T took this as a sign that we were moving too fast, and she slowed things down. Since then, it is uncommon for me to dissociate in therapy with my T. I still do in my everyday life, especially when I'm overwhelmed or scared, but in therapy it is becoming less frequent.

 

[Echo]

Hi @Crayon - welcome to the forum. I hope you'll find lots of support and information here. People are generally very supportive of one another. As well as talking to us, check out the articles, too; they might put your mind at rest a little.

Everyone on the planet dissociates to some extent. When you have experienced trauma, you might well do it more than people who haven't. When your pain and the emerging memories are at their height, then it will most probably be at its worst. As mytai says, it is a coping mechanism, a way for your brain to protect you from the pain. No-one can deal with all their trauma in one go, because you just end up totally retraumatised, so the brain has to find ways of protecting you. It is a completely normal way for a healthy person to deal with abnormal things that have happened to them.

A good trauma therapist should be able to help you deal with anything that happens to you whilst you are receiving therapy. She should give you lots of tools and ways of coping and grounding yourself. She should also explain about any splitting that you might have already done - I don't believe it will start happening now. Again, this splitting is a coping mechanism.

At the moment you are traumatised (when the trauma happens to you), you will have numbed out (dissociated) to a greater or lesser extent - again a very natural part of the adrenaline response to fear and danger. Sometimes because the real pain of what happened was so awful, your brain does everything to protect you from feeling it all and you suppress it. Part of you seems to get suppressed with that pain.

When your brain gets triggered into opening you up to your trauma again, or it considers it is safe enough for you to start dealing with it, you might start to become aware of what has been suppressed. I am only new to this myself, but there has been quite a lot of discussion on the forum recently about this (see links below). It seems to come up to some degree attached to, or associated with, a suppressed part of you (in my case I am dealing with my 20-year old self who was raped). This part of you IS you. It is highly unlikely to be like those frightening cases where someone has so entirely split that they have developed different personalities with different names and voices. That is the absolute extreme and you would know if you were like that already. People would have told you.

Talk to your therapist about any worries as well as us. She should explain how she is going to work with you on this - there are various different approaches.

When I was just starting therapy, I dissociated very badly for a week or so to the point where I temporarily lost my memory. It happened whilst I was driving along very familiar roads. I didn't recognise where I was at all. I was very frightened. However, there was one rather vague part of me that, although 'she' wasn't aware of where 'we' were, WAS able to say, "Now come on, we do know this road. It is a straight road. Just read the road signs. We can do it. We will get home." I didn't recognise any part of the journey, but I did get home with no detours. I suspect your very practical, adult, coping side got you to work perfectly safely and you were never in any danger. I do understand though after my experiences how unearthly it is to have it happen.

Anyway, take a look at these threads to see a bit more about splitting: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/splitting.40585/ ; https://www.myptsd.com/threads/a-stage-on-my-journey-unsplitting.40601/#post-662287

 

[Justmehere]

I can relate to feeling terrified of being dissociated and losing time. I'm sorry you are going through this.

You are not losing your mind. As others have said, your mind is overwhelmed and trying to protect you from the amount of anxiety and fear you are feeling.

Can dissociation be progressive over time? Can therapy make my dissociation worse? I don't want to go to therapy if I'll start developing alters. This really, really, really scares me, I'm having anxiety attacks all day long.

It's not progressive in the sense like Alzheimer's or MS is progressive. It may get worse when facing triggers or difficult things, but it can always get better again. Therapy is not going to cause alters, trauma is what causes them. Therapy is the best way to heal dissociation.

Learning and practicing (and practicing and practicing) to do grounding skills is something you can begin now, inside and outside of therapy. Grounding will eventually help calm the anxiety and help you pull out of dissociative states faster. It can also help with self injury too.

You are not losing your mind - and in fact, you have already taken great steps towards healing!

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I'd like to agree with the alter thing - fully fledged alters usually happen before the age of 7-10 before the foundations of the personality are set. Though maybe partial personalities and/or ego states may form after that as a coping mechanism. But it sounds like your jumping the gun a little - there's a huge difference from not remembering how you got to work and where you parked to dissociative identities and fragmentation - not that that makes it any less terrifying. Dissociation is worsened (an a lot even exclusively created) by anxiety, so if you're triggered or having a real tough time of it all then your dissociation will get worse - almost certainly. Therapy is the answer though - to lowering anxiety; preventing flashbacks, hyper-vigilance and panic; to resolving dissociation and maintaining a healthy mental equilibrium.

 

[sarafina]

Crayon, I also have DID. This was diagnosed years ago and I had a psychiatrist then who was very Freudian and wanted me to lie on a couch and was totally silent - the classic old style psychiatrist. He had some helpful things to say when I asked specific questions. He was the only one in my city who was treating "multiples" at the time. It is not better now. I did have some therapy in the past back in the days when I had money. This was decades ago.

I have had mild experiences of feeling disoriented and having to think where I am. A lot of my alters were formed in another city when I was a child and when they were dominant I would feel like a tourist in my own city until I switched back to my dominant personality. It was kind of funny when real tourists came to me to ask directions!! :) A lot of alters have merged since then but I have trouble with the youngest ones as it is harder to reason with any part that feels like she is only 3 or 4 or younger. It takes creative strategies to solve this one.

Recently I expereinced a real trauma (last fall) you can read more details about it elsewhere if you wish. At that time I did not switch into a personality but I felt strangely calm and was helping others younger than me who were more freaked out by being surrounded by riot police at a peaceful demo for environmental issue. Because of this calmness later followed by mild symptoms in the few days after the event I thought I was fine until rewriting what happened and visiting the "kettle-zone" brought back memories and a lot of dreams and a feeling of hypervigilance and an obsession about police that was never there before.

This is new territory for me but I can relate to a lot of what you said here. I hope you are getting good therapy and I wish all of your parts well. Therapy does not "create" alters, it only helps to find dissociated parts that were created through abuse or trauma suffered before the age of 5 according to my sources. I was abused in various horrific ways as a young child - I do not want to trigger you by going into details. I have experienced a lot of healing. A good therapist will go slowly and not dig too hard too fast. From what I have heard from others and from my own experience the therapy is long but with time it gets better and you will start to feel like the various parts are getting glued together and you will have a more complete sense of yourself even if there is not total integration. A functional unity is the ideal. Do not give up and keep a diary with you is the best advice I could offer and I hope this is helpful.

 

[Crayon]

Wow, Thanks you all so much for your replies! I'm very new at this, my apologies.

I've experienced different types? of dissociation. The type that shows up most is the feeling my body isn't real, and the world around me isn't real either. I also have that sometimes I'm in familiar territory (my house, neighborhood) and I don't recognize it.

Worse is when I leave my body. That always freaks me out. I'm a medical intern, and recently had to work with children who were neglected and abused (some sexually). This caused me to detach from my body. It was like sitting in the back of an empty bus that was on cruise control. My body was walking, talking, interacting, and I was looking at myself, commenting (oh hey, I'm going left now). I saw what I was doing, I heard myself talk, but it wasn't me, it was my body on cruise control. It didn't feel like someone took over, it felt like a auto pilot as you see in airplanes. It was scary. Then the car thing happened.

Thank you all for the kind replies and info. I feel a little silly for jumping the gun like that.