Justmehere
Sponsor
Right now, much of life for many people around the world has been changed by the pandemic. I recently read an article about how a nurse getting through the Spanish flu wrote about her experience in a dissociative manner and described symptoms of dissociation.
For me, as the pandemic hit, I was getting through normal life crap, PTSD, and stressors in a survival state. Even as things changed, I was grounded, present, ready, adapting, fighting to hang on through each challenge. Life felt real. I could feel. I got through surgery on my leg, complications, a wide variety of life stressors, shut downs, work and life changes, pneumonia, possible covid 19 infection and battle, etc, etc...
Then last Friday, I had a good day.
For the first time in 6 months, I could stand without pain. For the the first time in two months I could take a deep breath without coughing fits. Pressures were off my schedule that day. I had a little more time to be and do something FUN. The sun was up at 5:30 am and I popped out of bed to do what I would normally do this time of year...go for an early swim... only to run smack into the reality that I couldn't. Because pandemic. All the pools and bodies of water around here are closed until no one knows when. Then I figured I would do this, then that, then this... but all were a no because of the pandemic. Quickly, the reality of the pandemic, outside of survival mode, hit me. Like a freight train. The rest of the day was an unwinding into a fog of depersonalization and derealization. Neither myself nor the world felt real anymore. I was foggy, floaty, and flat.
It's been a week of battling it. My doctor has tried to help me understand the pandemic has been a life threatening experience for me. Sure, maybe, but that part of this didn't flip me into dissociation. I can't swim and that's what sets of the week of battling the fog of dissociation?! UGH.
Thing is, so many people feel the world is surreal... and it is surreal! Things are at best, WEIRD, everywhere around me.
I went inside a market for the first time in months and it was arrows and masks and plexiglass barriers and... everywhere I go... everything is different. I expected it. We are setting it up at my own workplace. I have been through major changes before. I have live in other places where my ways of doing life changed.
But this... I can't find ground. I am struggling to find anything that feels normal. I want to feel again. I want to be present again. I want out of this fog.
Any suggestions?
For me, as the pandemic hit, I was getting through normal life crap, PTSD, and stressors in a survival state. Even as things changed, I was grounded, present, ready, adapting, fighting to hang on through each challenge. Life felt real. I could feel. I got through surgery on my leg, complications, a wide variety of life stressors, shut downs, work and life changes, pneumonia, possible covid 19 infection and battle, etc, etc...
Then last Friday, I had a good day.
For the first time in 6 months, I could stand without pain. For the the first time in two months I could take a deep breath without coughing fits. Pressures were off my schedule that day. I had a little more time to be and do something FUN. The sun was up at 5:30 am and I popped out of bed to do what I would normally do this time of year...go for an early swim... only to run smack into the reality that I couldn't. Because pandemic. All the pools and bodies of water around here are closed until no one knows when. Then I figured I would do this, then that, then this... but all were a no because of the pandemic. Quickly, the reality of the pandemic, outside of survival mode, hit me. Like a freight train. The rest of the day was an unwinding into a fog of depersonalization and derealization. Neither myself nor the world felt real anymore. I was foggy, floaty, and flat.
It's been a week of battling it. My doctor has tried to help me understand the pandemic has been a life threatening experience for me. Sure, maybe, but that part of this didn't flip me into dissociation. I can't swim and that's what sets of the week of battling the fog of dissociation?! UGH.
Thing is, so many people feel the world is surreal... and it is surreal! Things are at best, WEIRD, everywhere around me.
I went inside a market for the first time in months and it was arrows and masks and plexiglass barriers and... everywhere I go... everything is different. I expected it. We are setting it up at my own workplace. I have been through major changes before. I have live in other places where my ways of doing life changed.
But this... I can't find ground. I am struggling to find anything that feels normal. I want to feel again. I want to be present again. I want out of this fog.
Any suggestions?