'episodes' Of Switching Off - What Is It?

[silver_turquoise]

I know that there's a lot of 'is this dissociation' threads around the place, however I can't find any evidence to describe what happens to me and I don't know if its' to do with me not reading the right things or whether there really is a problem.

When I get too panicky or overwhelmed (hysterical) or flashbacky in how I feel, sometimes it feels like I just 'turn off'. It feels like I can't move my body or make it respond when I want it to. If people talk, I don't hear it properly - the processing of words feels like it takes forever in my brain - and it takes a long time to be able to move enough to talk or respond. Sometimes I lie motionless and with my body like a dead weight for 20 minutes or longer because I can't move. It feels like my mind is very far away and I often have random unrelated 'small talk' like thoughts, about unrelated things like recipes or conversations or weather, which have nothing to do with what triggered me. Sometimes I shake in an odd violent way. It's like an attack or episode where the intensity of panic or flashbacks is just too much, and then I reach a certain point and my body just grinds to a halt and stops.

It feels like I don't have the strength or ability to make myself overcome this, that it's like a turning off when things become too much and I can't fight off the instinct to just 'turn off' like this.

What is that? I seem to confuse therapists when I describe it, and I have to work hard to explain to GPs it's not psychotic or a fit, which it isn't. I use the word dissociation to describe it, but I don't know that it's strictly correct. Does this ring true or make any sense?

 

[Deimos]

That almost sounds like depersonalization to me. When it happens does it feel like an out of body experience? Like your mind is no longer connected to your body? Depersonalization is a form of dissociation. I don't have that happen but I do deal with derealization which leaves you feeling disconnected to the outside world. It's like living a daydream.

 

[silver_turquoise]

Yeah, it literally feels like there's a stretchy elastic between my mind and my body, and my mind stretches off and goes somewhere away from my body while that happens, and I can watch it if I want to but generally my mind ignores what happens. It's weird and I don;t like that I havent heard of other people having the same thing... but it is kinda similar to depersonalisation, yeah, or at least I think so.

 

[maddog]

You know, I think there are many many similar, but slightly different, variations on the same themes here, and sometimes I almost couldn't be bothered trying to pin labels to them. For what it's worth, I actually relate to what you describe Unhalfbricking and have had what I think are probably similar episodes, only several of them, only in the past few weeks, and seemingly when I reach an undefined and not necessarily anticipated critical mass of stressors and a level at which my mind, and then somehow my body, become overwhelmed by trying to process and channel and manage and withstand all of the environmental and mental stimuli of the world etc.

That made little sense I know, but I have described this to my therapist as feeling like a form of numbed, frozen, internalised panic attack, as though all of the panic symptoms and their physiological manifestations somehow channel inwards rather than outwards and can leave me physically and emotionally frozen, vaguely aware of my surroundings yet unable to interact with them, for up to about half an hour at a really bad stretch. I spent half an hour sitting on the edge of a garden bed in the middle of a busy inner city block just a few weeks ago after experiencing such an episode, and I remember at one point feeling that I wanted/needed to phone someone, but literally couldn't seem to remember how or organise my mind to focus enough on the steps involved in doing that.

Somehow the intensity faded in the end and left me feeling significantly hung over and jittery, and extremely, extremeley emotionally fragile. Half an hour was the longest, but this has happened to me on at least 3 other occasions for probably 10-15 minutes.

Don't know if that helped at all, and as I said, I don't really know what to call it, except for horrible and distressing!

Do you have any plans to try to find another therapist? I can barely imagine the "trauma" of having had to deal with a bad one, I've been truly fortunate in that sense as mine is wonderful, but having had more than one dodgey psychiatrist to complement his interventions I can attest to the fact that there is a whole universe of idiotic and dangerous mental health so-called professionals out there. I hope you can maybe find one of the exceptions.

Maddog

 

[heather q]

I have been having different, abnormal stuff going on, I'm dealing with my body shutting down resulting in extreme pain, with flashbacks that are mixtures or combinations of child abuse, rapes and childbirths where I had previously been dissociated. I'm reliving those not forgotten episodes.

During these recent painful experiences I lose time, and I don't recollect what has been going on. Separate from that while talking to the therapist the top half of my body seemed to separate and lift off, it was very short time wise but scary and disruptive. And my hands didn't seem to belong. The therapist said something about depersonalization. There are a lot of things going on with me that I don't understand, the more i discover the more i realize that this has been going on for longer than i was aware. I thought back and these seriously odd things seem to be the worst for the last three weeks. I have lost sense of taste, my hearing is the opposite, everything seems to be unbearably loud and fast. Just the dog wagging his tail and bumping it on metal sets me off. TV is difficult to watch because the screen flashes by so quickly. And I still can't listen to music.

i had trouble recognizing my car, couldn't use the parking meter properly and got a ticket, i feel odd, i cannot relate to people who enjoy each other, i seem to feel as if i'm different. i watch the therapist talk to me but don't seem to understand what the words mean, I feel like I'm behind a piece of perspex and can't quite see what's going on.

it's causing me to hibernate, i don't know what to expect of myself, i don't feel safe and i don't trust myself. Because I quit working and don't have to pretend to function, things seem to be catching up with me and i don't like it very much, to say the least. I'm hoping that this settles down because it's about too much to deal with, writing it down makes me feel looney, but somewhere I read that depersonalization is the opposite to insanity. That is the only good thing right now, right this minute.
Heather

 

[Anna]

I also do this. Sometimes people are talking to me and I filter out what they are saying, especially if it is unpleasant. It is the brains way of protecting you. Some guy made some jokes the other day, I have no idea what he was saying until he mentioned I wasn't listening. Sometimes it is good not always to hear what people say. It is protection.