How Do You Know When You Dissociate?

[Sterre]

To me dissociation feels like my head is filled with helium and I can't grasp my thoughts or emotions. Everything floats.
I don't feel my body, or what temperature it is. No hunger, no sleep, no physical pain.I feel distant as if nothing really connects or touches me. I don't feel my feet touching the floor when I walk.
It feels like I am floating and if I am made out of thin air. Distracted, chaotic, and whitdrawn to a deep place inside myself. I mix up words, and forget what I was supposed to do.When I am dissociating I feel like a walking head with no body attached to it. I can hear myself talking but it sounds very distant. When other people talk to me when I feel dissociated I have to concentrate really hard to grasp what they are saying.

I dont like it, it scares me.

I don't loose time, and on automatic pilot I can do everything nessesary to take care of my daughter.

Sometimes it helps me to fold and sort out clothes, or to do a household chore like cleaning the bathroom. Or to fix something thats been broken, just something small that I can concentrate on.

 

[Gamereign555]

Most commonly for me I sometimes have that spaced out feeling, colors kind of blend together even when trying to focus, things go in one ear and out the other and I start to notice physical patterns in everything. Questions also confuse me. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years doing this. It can last all day if it doesn't break in the morning. I would hang out with friends but have no idea why I was there, as if I didn't fit in at all or did not know what to say.

Occasionally when I have been really hurting I might suddenly feel like things around me are unfamiliar or foreign, my mind draws a blank but I might feel afraid for some reason. This usually doesn't last long for me.

Also when I'm hurting real bad I might suddenly feel as if I am not part of myself in the same way I should be, as if I am watching the world from inside my head or above my self. I don't see myself but rather I feel distant from myself. This also usually doesn't last long for me, as soon as I realize this isn't me or something isn't right I start to feel normal again.

I think these are all examples of disassociation. The last 2 tend to be kind of scary to some people.

Some people live large portions of their lives with the scarier side of disassociation. It can be a debilitating thing to live with on a regular basis.

 

[AngelaMarie]

Today when I was going through photos from my past I saw vacations I was on that I do not remember. I saw photos of things that I also didn't remember. I know sometimes my children will say something to me about the past and I don't remember it at all. I actually have years that are gone in my past. Is it because I dissociated?

 

[LawPhotos]

Auburngirl and MissAntiSunshine you both have really helped me out. My T has been pushing me to describe what I am feeling etc. during my dissociation episodes which have suddenly increased in frequency, intensity and duration. I just couldn't find any words to express my experiences. Several parts of each of your descriptions are spot on for what I experience. It is a relief not only to be able to have the ability to convey what I am going through but also to see that other people have very similar experiences. Lately I have been having a lot of the more extreme dissociations for me where I never feel it coming -- just "snap" and I'm completely gone (to nowhere) and lose large amounts of time. She has observed this but says that I am completely non-responsive and so she isn't able to get any information except for when I can describe it to her later. Now I will be better able to do that! Thanks!

 

[Angi]

My heart and breathing slow down so much it's like I'm asleep. My extremities go numb and tingly. My thought are blurred like I've got cotton in my head. I can hardly move or talk. I end up literally falling asleep after an hour or longer. Hope this can help someone!

 

[Footie freak]

I have been in therapy, suffering with PTSD for sometime now following a work related trauma. I suffer terribly with countless flashbacks throughout the day. My therapist often asks about the flashbacks and what led to them, such as a trigger of some kind, or what was I doing? I also have flashbacks during therapy. My therapist has told me that I disassociate, it took a while to understand what she was talking about.

I don't seem to have any sort of "warning" the flashbacks such as no feelings either emotional or physical, no smell, taste etc. is this normal???

She has also asked me how long I am in the flashback- but I can't answer as I simply do not know I'm "in a flashback" until I have come out of it.

Also, during our sessions, she has had to physically touch me to bring me out of the disassociated flashback - again is this normal??

 

[katiekat]

Footie, I had one major dissociation a few weeks ago for the first time. My T didn't recognize it until I emailed him later about what I experienced. He now checks in with me thru the session to see if I'm shutting down and it usually stops it from happening.

 

[desiderata310]

There are a couple of different levels of this for me. I keep describing it as "brain squeeze" I swear it feels like there is pressure put on my brain. Not, painful but like someone is... lightly squeezing my head. When that happens my vision gets distorted, it's hard to hear, hard to concentrate, hard to think. It's frustrating. Usually for me, this happens when we are pushing my stress levels.

If that continues I can get lost. Lose time, space out.

I have flashbacks. If we are on trauma stuff or something has triggered it in daily life, there are levels of this too. I've had full blown, not-in-this-moment-anymore flashbacks. Those scare the bejesus out of me. I am not a 41 yr old professional living her life, I am back somewhere else. I also have flashbacks that are... not quite that bad. I hear and feel and, at least in my mind's eye, see, things but I know that here and now is still here and now, it's just very far away an difficult to pull out of that. If it goes on for too long I will slip back in to a full flashback. If I "know" I start looking for a clock. What time is it? Something ANYTHING to ground. My therapist is pretty good at getting me up and moving around to help me ground.

When I come back from a 'partial' I shake violently. When I come back from a full sometimes I shake but I am always disoriented, can't talk, weepy, exhausted.

Sometimes I don't get that slippage as warning, sometimes I'm just gone. My therapist said that when I am in flashback I look like someone having a really bad nightmare with their eyes open.

If I have a full flashback, I am exhausted and wind up going home and pretty much don't remember anything from our session or the rest of the day. I haven't had one of those in a few months since we took a break from EMDR.

The way I understand it, EMDR kind of illicit that kind of flashback.. a partial, guided flashback. Problem for me is that I have trouble coming back out and then I'm gone.

*sigh*
I am scared of driving now. I've been riding my bike everywhere.

 

[Footie freak]

My therapist asks me now at every session about how many flashbacks/nightmares and if I have been disassociated at all - so I have to monitor it. She is now also aware of what she believes are tell tale signs of me going into a flashback - just wish I was aware of the signs and can pre-empt the flashbacks. It is so hard.

 

[watundah]

One time in therapy, I completely disappeared. Odd, because we were just doing a centering exercise, not even talking, but I became overwhelmed. It's the only time that ever happened to my adult self. Makes me wonder how often I did that as a child, however.

Usually, I dissociated in therapy about every time she asked me what I was feeling. It was odd like someone flipped a switch and I went numb. NO feelings. She was convinced that I felt something at least for a few seconds before I shut down, but no. It was a burden to my treatment. Getting me to talk usually brought me back as it gave me something to focus on.

I read that our brains generate opioids while dissociating, which may be one reason why it's so addictive. It's a tough habit to quit, for sure. I wish we could have made more progress while I was in my sessions.

 

[Deleted member 28403]

When I dissociate, it can go different ways and changed over time.

When I was being bullied in second and third school, I would experience memory loss, like, something happened to me, and my sight would just darken, and I wouls gradually lose most of the feel in my senses, everything would be really quiet and I couldn't hear, everything would be blurry, and I would just hide deep inside myself, often feeling completely empty, flushed...

Now it's more of a set of events...

Anxiety kicks in, I feel really bad and lose strength to do anything, feeling crushed. Blood pressure drops even more, if I stand up or anything similar I have a high chance of falling and can't stand. I sometimes hear voices in my head, from the memories, calling me names, saying stuff to me, yelling :cry: I lose some of sight, so everything is blurry, I can't read at all and my eyes are filled with tears, I can't close my eyes because of images on my eyelids... I see the face of that psychopath from the 3rd school :cry: Dissociation is ussualy combined with depression. I can't clearly think at all, and time just skips. I get some memory flashbacks, lose feel of pain and often end up scratching myself, letting blood run, still not feeling anything, I feel numb and even when my hands are covered in blood that I can't connect to where it's from... :cry: If I fall asleep like that nightmares occure and sleep is broken into at least two pieces... When I wake up I can't differ dream from reality and am in a state of panic for a while, waking up and falling asleep every 5 minutes, in a complete mess. When I finally bring myself to a stop I'm completely exhausted. During the day it ends up in a panic attack often.

 

[haltija]

I can't pay attention. It's very frustrating. I disconnect entirely and my boyfriend will be trying to communicate with me, but it's like he's talking and I can't hear a word or make sense of it. I try, but I will start to feel like being awake is a dream or reality isn't real. Almost like someone is speaking, but there's a loud distorted wave like sound playing over, or the air conditioner seems much louder than it it is.

I've been handling it for years, so very rarely, maybe once or twice a year now, usually during an argument, I'll break into tears and want to give up. I can't make sense of what the disagreement is and I'll end up spacing out and just staring, because nothing feels real. Eventually, I get angry because he can't understand.

Starting tonight, I'm learning to focus on sensory awareness techniques, so grabbing onto something cold like an ice cube and focusing on the feeling to "shock" me out of the disassociation state, or scents, going outside, or the taste of a lemon, to snap me out of it.