Structural Dissociation - Psychotic 'part'

[sun seeker]

(I have comfort wood too. And rocks. 2 rocks live on my bedside table...they are from different beaches and revealed themselves to me at key times. The wood I have...well, I have lots because I compulsively collect driftwood...but this one piece I found around a month ago and it is really cool and reminds me of a good beach moment). I'll have to try tying them or taping them as I am forever losing them under the covers. I love that we are all into these weirdnesses!

You mean it's not just me? When scared I sometimes take a crystal out of my collection and take it to bed with me. Just hold it and look at it until I fall asleep. The heavier, smoother ones are comforting, while the more complex ones have little caves in them and I can get really small and go into those caves - well, almost - and lose myself in there.

 

[sun seeker]

I've done this but in extreme cold. I curled up behind a dumpster. Not for shelter or anything. Just because I wanted to lay on the ground by a dumpster in the cold. It was comforting.

I've done stuff like that too. Like the time I missed my ride home late one night in a big city after the buses had stopped for the night. The sensible thing would have been to call and ask for a ride, but I didn't think of that. I thought "hide and be as small and still as possible" so found a spot between an inner and outer door and crouched there on the cement floor for the night. When triggered with abandonment stuff I don't think "find a nice comfortable place to get through this" (though it's getting better) but "find somewhere insignificant where no one will find me" (or something like that, I'm not exactly thinking at the time). Cold, hard, dirty, crumbling cement floors work real well.

 

[Hope4Now]

This is the greatest of all defeats. My greatest vulnerability. This is why t-doc used to ask me every time he did an assessment of me 'Where do you live' and watch for my reaction. Always the first question. f*ck.

Here's a thought. I'm offering it as something to toy with. It is a terrifying thought to me...but I'm convinced it is one of the keys to healing. Vulnerability=strength, not weakness or defeat. We must work to recognize and embrace our vulnerabilities, accommodate for them. Love them. Love this, with compassion, in ourselves. And THAT will make us strong.

Or, everyone could come to my house?

Yay! Jumping up and down. Waving my arms. I feel a happy party coming on :):):):D. Maybe we could go somewhere that you'd get a little road trip?

Goddamm I used to LOVE road trips. What is WRONG with me??? :banghead::banghead::banghead:

You still love road trips. You're just scared and have lost your confidence, dear friend. You need to do more of them with support to regain your confidence :).

the more complex ones have little caves in them and I can get really small and go into those caves - well, almost - and lose myself in there.

I tend to like doing this too...the getting really small. My therapist is encouraging me to do the opposite though. Take up more space in the world...gradually. That is very, very scary for me, but as I do it (either in my mind, or in physical reality...standing big, spreading arms, etc.) I'm getting more comfortable. My first inclination though is always to get so small I will disappear.

I was completely overwhelmed and terrified. I saw the walls moving and changing colours. I was scared to put my feet to the floor because the floor looked like a shimmering jelly. It was absolutely petrifying, and T had to guide me through it emotionally, reassuring me that it was not real, that my mind was 'playing tricks' and it would get better. It happened on more than one occasion, but the first was the worst as I did not know what it was.

Oh.:wideeyed:. So that's what that is when the floor turns "liquid" and moving and the walls wave and colors wash over everything and things get really close and then really far away...and and and? Hmmm. I think it's kind of cool when that happens for me...but come to think of it, it usually only happens in times of unusually high stress... I don't think I've ever mentioned that this happens to me. Great. Now I have a word for that too. Sigh.

 

[Chava]

This to me is a description of paranoia rather then psychosis.

(can't quote both quotes somehow)...my thinking, at least how this feels for me, is it is more flashback sort of unreality. I'm not paranoid. I "know" nobody is there, but I'm freaked out in my skin and feel soothed by holding a knife and just watching.

I also get anxious at night in certain places. Partly I'm watching for people to come out from the bushes. When the power went out I stayed at a friend's house on another grid because I got too keyed up and couldn't help imagining lurking attackers. My heart rate was getting nuts and I couldn't settle down. Paranoid could be a way of explaining it, but being triggered and extreme hypervigilance fits better for me. I have been attacked by a lurker-creeper at night.

I'm sure there are people who've been diagnosed as psychotic when they are really reliving some sort of trauma, especially if there trauma is not well remembered and the clinician doesn't understand all the various shades of reality/unreality. It seems like a good distinction would be hearing things that are not there, etc. Probably possible along with dissociation for some people. For me the unreal sensations are more body-memory oriented and also time gets very screwed up. On some level, I'm aware that I'm in my house and just in a time/state that doesn't totally fit with current reality. Sometimes it's close to full hijacking of large parts of me, especially the emotions. External reality doesn't change much even if my perception of it is tweaked a bit....my internal reality is just very off.

Not sure I can actually explain this or find the right words. But I do see where there could be a fuzzy line and can't describe the difference very well because dissociation and derealization are forms of detachment from present reality. I assume on a neuroscience level there is the nervous system shutdown coupled with simultaneous high activation (an impossible state, but basically the trauma freeze), whereas true psychosis probably involves very different brain mechanisms and certainly over-activity in some areas (but not the shutdown/freeze related to trauma and body memories).

?????????
:confused::bored::cautious:

 

[Chava]

Cold, hard, dirty, crumbling cement floors work real well.

When stressed I tend to spend a lot of time sitting on the dirty floor in my garage. No windows. Just grungy and cave-like. There is a sort of resonance for me that helps me just feel okay in the space. I've always been drawn to abandoned and crumbling buildings too, like I have kindred feelings for them.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

(I'm serious. My only disappointment would be that I LOVE road trips and wouldn't be making one.)

Road trips are a NEED and a LOVE. Virtual does not work. My first time engaging in social network. In person? with a road trip could bridge that. Want to meet many of you.

 

[Deleted member 28740]

Vulnerability=strength, not weakness or defeat. We must work to recognize and embrace our vulnerabilities, accommodate for them. Love them. Love this, with compassion, in ourselves. And THAT will make us strong.

Yes, vulnerability is open, flowing. Breaking down walls that entrap.

 

[scout86]

Yay! Jumping up and down. Waving my arms. I feel a happy party coming on

Really? You'd do this? That would be awesome! I don't have a big fancy house... I have dogs..... WE could make it work, if people aren't too fussy. I could do a road trip to go collect @shimmerz ! (Need to get a passport!)

Hey, you all will like this! My T told me today that he thinks the reason I don't dissociate is that I'm too hypervigilant to dissociate. See, there ARE advantages to hypervigilance!

 

[Eleanor]

(PANT PANT PANT) OMG I got on and I have NO ALERTS and WHO IN THE HECK KNOWS WHAT FORUM THESE THREADS ARE IN any more???? And the home page is... totally uninformative. But I found you guys! Hurray!!!! (forum navigation, you may have deduced, is not my forte).

I wonder if the kind of floor melting colors melding experience that you guys are describing is a kind of synesthesia? Where one kind of sensory input gets turned into another? Usually it is a "talent" people have all the time, but I wonder the same sort of mechanism accounts for it?

OH, and I also love love love road trips, and although I'm traveling this summer, no driving trips for me. Last summer drove from CA to Iowa with my daughter... I loved it! it was a bit long for her... but she seemed willing enough to go again when we mentioned it this year. But... we are flying.

Hope, there is no possible way you are a narcissist. No. Possible. Way.

 

[scout86]

@Eleanor I'm having the same "what forum was that in?" concern.

Are you flying to Iowa? I'm like 5 hours north of the border,,,,,,

 

[shimmerz]

Hope, there is no possible way you are a narcissist. No. Possible. Way.

This sentence can be read two ways. I am going to read it as 'Hope4Now, there is no....'

This is a true story. I have met her, and although I really love her, I didn't want to marry her. The true test for being a narcissist is if I want to marry them. Eleanor that would be WAY cool!

I looked up synesthesia and trauma. There is a link! Good get! You are a star!

Have a great trip this summer with your daughter!

 

[scout86]

The true test for being a narcissist is if I want to marry them.

ROTFL! This is something I've discussed with my T a few times. This was NOT a "test" that he mentioned. Can I pass this along? He might like to know that there's an easier way to tell!