Dissociation, What Are Examples?

[Megan]

I am not on drugs but the dissociation feels like I am. :(
However I am back on cymbalta as it helped once before. Only on 30 mg. I just don't know what life is supposed to be since I have been told what to do for 25 years by teachers/parents and peers (bullys). I just don't feel myself any more like i can't grasp onto reality, like a car engine stalling when you try to turn the ignition.

 

[EvenStrongerNow]

Sterre, that to me is the definition of trauma with dissociative effects. Well said; thank you!

 

[EvenStrongerNow]

Jellymint, your posts have helped me a lot. The way a lot of you describe dissociation helped me understand it. My therapist said I have it. I just didn't really get it at first. I thought it was some grave thing to be embarrassed by until I started doing research. I know that I do dissociate and depersonalize, but text book examples are all really hard to relate to. It wasn't until I started recognizing that when I'm talking to someone, I will experience a flashback due to a trigger (haven't really figured out a lot of them yet), and then all of a sudden, I will go somewhere else. It's like I'm there, but I'm not really present. Everything they are saying to me just bounces off of my brain and leaves. Sometimes, I will stay in that state for hours, not understanding why what I'm feeling is not matching with my expressions, or if what I'm feeling is really true. I can be doing anything really, it seems like, when it happens. Also, sometimes I can't get my expressed emotions to match with how I'm feeling inside, or I know I'm supposed to be expressing a certain emotion, but it just won't come out.

Also, sometimes when I look in the mirror, I feel like I don't recognize myself. The other day while I was using mouth wash, I was swishing it around and then I went into panic mode because I forgot that I could breathe through my nose even though my mouth was blocked from breathing. Is that depersonalization?

Sometimes when I'm talking, I don't recognize my own voice, or my personality seems like I'm not really being me at the time or something, hard to explain that one.

Dissociation happens a lot when I'm in the shower. Sometimes when I'm driving, it's really scary, it's like I'll go into deep thought. When I come out of it, I realize that I can't remember the last 5 to I think 10 minutes of driving, and I also can't remember what it was that I was thinking so intently about.

It used to happen a lot more than now. It has been a year since my most recent traumatic experience has passed, but sometimes, when I'm out in public or around people I don't know that well, I will be carrying on in conversation or doing whatever it is that I'm doing and all of a sudden, it feels like everything is not real when I'm face to face with someone, or the world around me is not real, like a story book. It's really frightening for me when it happens. I just want to crawl into a cubby space where nobody can see me, wrapped up in my favorite blanket until it passes.

Uhm, I know there are more occurrences, but that's all I can get out for now and that's an awful lot already if you ask me.

I'm glad to have found this board. I don't know any of you, but I really feel an immense amount of support just from reading here so far. Thank you for reading and for sharing your experiences . . .

Jami

 

[Lucille]

The week after my trauma, I had the most textbook out of body experience or dissociation. For a week, it was as if I was watching someone else live my life, and it helped me survive because other wise I wouldn't have gotten out of bed every day.

More recently, I have noticed that I am dissociating when I drive and when I'm being intimate as well. I often space out and let my auto-pilot drive me, and I often end up in a familiar place, but not the place I was headed. Intimacy is something that's always more difficult to talk about... but for me, it's like someone instantly flips a switch and my sexual interest is gone. Out the window. It only takes a split second. I don't forget what we were doing, but it's as if I was never aroused. Like I'd been doing anything else except for what we were really doing.

They're sort of mundane things, not amnesia or panic... but it's definitely real. And it's troubling when it keeps happening. It's also troubling how long it took me to realize that's what was going on, and I wonder if there are other instances when I dissociate.

 

[Powder]

Lately, I've wondered if the things I did growing up fall under the D. heading. Things like, on Saturdays feeling like I couldn't handle another weekend at home with my family, so trying to stay in bed and daydream as long as possible. Being grateful my mom heard somewhere that teens need extra sleep so just let them sleep in as long as they want on weekends. So I used that to escape reality, I guess, by keeping myself suspended between the waking and sleeping worlds as far into Saturday as possible. Then, I don't remember doing much except trying to escape in reading or spacing out in my thoughts the rest of the weekend.

During school, I couldn't handle social interactions, as it seemed to jarring to have to be present and in a conversation during that stressful time. I opted to stay alone and read, only sometimes I would read just enough to enter that world and then I'd float around in that world in my imagination maybe looking out the window until people jarred me back to reality. When the teacher caught me doing this, she forced me to socialize and do recess. I would avoid eating in both the above examples as a consequence of avoiding people. I didn't feel hunger or even like I had a body when I was D'd.

I don't know if the above are actually D. or Avoidance. Or both? There was a whole year in which I was forced to go on the road in close quarters with my abusive parents; I lost all of it but for fragments of the strangers we stayed with at times. During the car rides, I put on headphones and actively "checked out." I remember almost nothing of the year, and have to be told about it as if I wasn't there. My family treated me like a retard due to my "bad memory." Now I see that I was D'd mostly around them due to the fact that they were the source of the trauma I had D'd in the first place!

As I have worked on staying present and accepting my thoughts and perceptions, I see how I mentally tried to escape in a multitude of ways, full on D being just one of them. Derealization (this isn't real/I am the only thing that is real) and Depersonalization (my body is not real/numb/who am I anyway?/Huh?/What's going on!?!) seem to go hand in hand.

Another is during getting a massage, I tend to "go away." My massage therapist didn't like it, and took to forcing me to talk and stay present. I can't relax during massage without dissociating, so I stopped going.

 

[Queen Boudica]

I'm scared to write this. I don't know if it is dissociation. I find all this so confusing.

If I get triggered and then completely lose it, just explode, but it is as if I am inside myself watching myself, exploding, but that person exploding is not me, it is someone else? I am watching from the inside wanting the exploding me to stop, knowing I am out of control but not able to stop it?

Other times I just zone out and withdraw into myself, but I am still aware of stuff going on but just not all there. Sometimes I think I completely zone out, but I'm not sure. Is that it? Or is that just normal?

I don't know. It is all too confusing.

 

[Lucille]

Lizio, I definitely think the second one is dissociation. The other sounds to me like an episode or outburst of anger, likely when you are triggered. I'm no expert though!

 

[shell]

For me dissociation is more like not being able to emotionally connect with my past. It is like I am a grown up now, and the child I once was, and that endured all the abuse and violence, are two seperate people.On a rational level I know I was that child, but on a emotionallevel I just cannot connect with that child.

So the things I experience and feel now as a grown up dont feel connected to the little girl I once was.

Emotions come out of that little girl into me, ( intrusive thoughts, despair, fear, anxiety, and so on) but the other way around is not possible. I cannot connect with the child I once was and with those feelings on a emotional level.
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Sterre, does this affect you during therapy? I feel exactly how you describe, as soon as I start to talk, I numb myself, physically and emotionally or I don't remember how I felt back then.

I'm finding it very hard to stop dissociating, it's so automatic and ingrained, it's like I keep putting road blocks up to stop myself every time I do connect.

I'm panicking at connecting with the feelings, numbing my feelings and it feels like I'm wasting my therapist time and my money. My therapist points out that I'm dissociating but isn't suggesting anything to help me stop doing it?

 

[Philippa]

Have you asked your therapist for any strategies to combat dissociation Shell? Some therapists, sorry to say, I think are happy to drag out the sessions for the money's sake...so knowing what you want to get out of a session helps.

 

[onmyway76]

Shell and Sterre, I am sorry to hear that you are struggling with this. I am too. Sometimes it makes me feel hopeless. I hate when my own body/brain won't cooperate with me.

Somehow though, hearing that others are having the same struggle is a bit healing and helps me to accept myself more. Thank you so much for your transparency!

I just recently recognized that dissociation has been an issue and that it has been hindering therapy greatly. My therapist acknowledged it was occurring, but offered no advice for how to combat this. I finally bought a book on PTSD and hope there are some strategies.

I discovered that initially I made a choice to avoid talking about any of my trauma history. It seems like once I made a choice to push through the fear and shame and start actually consciously trying to confront it and talk about it, is when all the dissociations, numbing, detaching etc. really went crazy.

I think I've always felt very detached from the "little girl," (I call her that too) but now I'm actually loosing a lot more time disconnecting from the world. Its like I feel myself shutting down and folding up the pain and memories to bury them again, but I don't know how to stop it.

 

[Anna]

What are some common examples of unhealthy dissociation? How much is healthy and normal?

I find that I phase or gorm out under stress. My mind goes to another place. When I worked at a desk where noone could see me it doesn't matter. I don't even know what I think. It is like "Nothingness"

Recently in the past few years I have been sitting in the cafeteria with collegues when suddenly they say my name and looked worried as hell. You cannot see yourself, your face what it looks like when you do it. They ask "Where did you just go?" "Are you still sleeping?" but I see they are horrified by it. So I have isolated myself to sit somewhere alone lately. This has attracted the attention strangely enough of other PTSD sufferers who seem to notice as well... Guess birds of a feather flock together and all that.

Healthy, normal?? hmm... it is our way of coping with trauma. We cannot make it go away, but we can deal with it better I guess. I find talking makes it worse. I find keeping active and my brain in action stops me from thinking and then gorming out so to speak.

 

[Red Feather]

I do this. dissassociation derealization depersonalisation. It even says so in my doctor letters. sometimes i prefer to go there then to face the world. I thought I was meditating... I never knew it was a symptom of an illness until a couple weeks ago and I was in the psychiatry for having instable suicidal behavior. Sometimes i would prefer to live in that world than in this body. I dont see flashbacks though, I see balls of energy. Once this ball of energy just attacked me and then I let it and so it stopped, and then I stopped being sensitive to spontaneous movement and getting schocked my loud sounds... So there was an improvement.

I never told this part to the doctors or I probably would have stayed at the psychiatry.....!