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Dissociation Gone To A New Extreme

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mytai

MyPTSD Pro
I tried to read up on this when I got home, but I can't seem to find anything pertaining to this particular thing. I've been diagnosed with dissociation in correlation to my PTSD. Not something separate. I've been having a rough last few weeks, and I've been dissociating more frequently. Today was a whole new extreme for me.

I "woke up" in the middle of having sex with an unknown man. I'm not claiming rape because of what happened following me "waking up". It was absolutely terrifying though. I don't know who he is, or how I ended up at his place. All I know for sure is that it wasn't rape based on emails I found from an old account on my phone. I was clearly emailing back and forth with him. Not his fault.

Has anyone experienced this? I feel like I've reached a whole new level of crazy. I'm hoping I'm not alone in this.

I know I need to tell T when I see her in a few days, I just don't know how. How do you bring something like that up in therapy? I'm so anti talking about sex that I think T has only once ever attempted a conversation with me on the subject. I don't know what I should do or how I should handle it. Do I email this guy back and apologize and explain so it doesn't happen again?
 
@mytai In my own experience, something like this does sound like a dissociative episode which might have or be an unknown part of you doing things unconciously. I say this like this because I don't want suggest what may or may not be going on with you.

Knowing myself as I do, I know that in my own experiences I have done things and have ended up in situations where I was suddenly aware of the situation without knowing why I was in the situation or how I even got into the situation until time passed.

As for discussing your situation with your T, that would depend on how comfortable you are with them, and how far along in the therapy process you are with your T. Talking about sex in therapy is definitely not easy. If it is an issue that you feel you need to address, I'd suggest maybe recalling the previous conversation and maybe bring this subject that way.

I do wish you the best with this, kind regard and a friendly :hug:

---SeanGeo
 
@SeanGeo I've been with T for almost 2 years now. I trust her more than anyone who has ever walked into my life. I don't believe in keeping secrets from her, does neither of us any good, she isn't a mind reader and she also can't help me if I hide it from her, no matter how much shame I feel right now. I want to crawl into a hole.
 
I have only a few times had complete episodes of dissociation where I felt almost like I broke and then I woke up again. I have not been in your particular situation, but I have been in situations that frightened me when I came to and realized I had not been acting under my own active knowledge and direction. Luckily there wasn't any permanent harm done to myself or anyone else, but it is a terrifying feeling and I definitely understand the feeling of having finally gone completely crazy. For me this only happens when I'm under extreme stress and triggered.

I'm glad that you have a good working relationship with your therapist and I really hope that you can find a way that feels safe to you to speak with her about this and see if you can work out what exactly happened and how to prevent it in the future. :hug:s if you accept them, for now just try to be gentle with yourself as best you can.
 
@mytai that must be incredibly disturbing. I can't imagine how I'd deal with it. It's something way outside my experience, but I don't think it's that rare from what I've read. I think possibly your resistance to talking about sex is because it is an action that is dissociated from your day to day life. I can imagine that would make it even harder to bring this up.

I am concerned about the risk of pregnancy and of STi's, just as I would be for any woman who had unplanned sex. Do you know if that is a risk for you?

Do take care, and try not to feel too bad about yourself. You already know thsi si apart of an illness. It's a symptom, not a choice, any more than spots are a choice in chicken pox.
 
@stenni I take birth control, but not for the prevention of pregnancy because I don't have sex. So I don't take it in the way that I would need to in order to reduce the risk of pregnancy. I know I don't have STI's, but because I don't know this person I can't guarantee they don't. As much of a nightmare as it is for me to have an exam done I will book one so I can get tested.
 
As much of a nightmare as it is for me to have an exam done I will book one so I can get tested.
I'm very glad you're taking care of yourself even though it's very difficult. I know you don't need my approval, but I'm really proud of how you're handling all of this- you seem to be looking for productive ways to work through it as healthily as you can. It would be really easy to let something like this send everything off the rails. I hope you're able to see how strong you're being.
 
I "woke up" the other day leaning over the side of a bridge like I was going to jump onto the highway below it. It's so so frightening. The more I get into the trauma in therapy, the more this dissociated part of me seems triggered - but where I get confused is that I can't spend therapy avoiding talking about the trauma, because that keeps me stuck. But in the same breath, I'm so scared of how I do things that I can't remember, and how these things are starting to get more and more reckless.

I have no advice, but so much empathy.
 
It would be really easy to let something like this send everything off the rails.
It kind of is off the rails already, trying to manage until I see T. Just not sure how I'm going to talk to her about this. I have a few days to try and work out a game plan for this, but I know it has to be done no matter how hard.

That's brave.
Fear is my driving factor, I'm scared I will have gotten one. So until I go and have the test done, it's an unknown. It's an unknown I can control by having the test done, so I can remove that from my list of things I worry about.

@theshadowoftheliving It is scary. And you're so right, it does no good to avoid the trauma in therapy because then we just get stuck in this black hole of misery, but the catch 22 is that we can feel worse, dissociate worse because of it. It's trying to find the medium between talking about it enough and talking about it too much. I think this is the most reckless thing I've done while dissociating (that I know of anyways).
 
Can you send an email to your therapist?
Could I? Yes. Do I want to ruin T's weekend, not really. I was considering emailing her Monday to give her a heads up that something happened this weekend that I need to bring up with her. That way I don't forget or chicken out telling her about it. I know if I email that, then she won't let me forget, she will ask what it is I wanted to tell her.
 
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