How does dissociation feel for you?

[Teasel]

Was talking about it today with OT and it got me wondering what it feels like for everyone else?
She's been talking about a ladder and how dissociation is at the top, worse than fight or flight, and I kind of get it is a stage beyond fight or flight because it's what kicks in when you cant fight or flight but it's still turning ideas on their head a bit for me.
Thanks muchly for any replies

 

[whiteraven]

It doesn't feel like anything. I thought it was normal until I was in my 30s or 40s. I'm completely blank. No thinking, nothing.

 

[Torch]

Best I can describe, it is moments of time where a person is an observer in their own life. Even though this person is present, and can move around, there's an 'unreal' quality to it. Not because it's magical or special, but because being perceived as a person seems too threatening in context to the situation. I've seen people say it's like watching their own life like it were a movie. I can't relate as closely to this description because it feels like there is a magical quality to it that doesn't feel true to my experience.

 

[parrotthepolly]

It's usually much better than fight or flight for me since I'm calmer.

Feels like I'm already dead and almost nothing matters, everything I think about or see is uncanny and I don't exactly feel comfortable existing. But at least I don't care in a way so at the same time there is a bit of comfort but I know I'm barely 'living'.

 

[gorgonzola]

Deepest I've been so far is sitting in the metaphorical back seat of my head, wondering why I could feel a pressure on the sole of my right foot. Then realizing it was because my body had been braking for a stop sign. Rather curious that it can do that all without me, but in any case I think it might be a better driver than I am.

Just felt a bit curious about how much detail my body can take care of without me, but in a thoroughly passive way. Other than that, nothing at all. Zero motivation to try to pop back in as it were.

At various times I've disconnected memories, motor control, emotions, and I'm certain pain too (but I didn't test that on account of also being also unplugged from emotions at the time and hence low on motivation to pursue some scientific investigation). Only one that makes me feel not human is unplugging emotions.

 

[DownwardSpiral]

It's like you're in a dark theater, watching yourself through yourself. Your hands are not your own but simultaneously are. Similar to when you play a first person game: You control someone, but disconnected from yourself. This is near daily for me, and I practically disconnect once I'm at work. I confuse what I did the day of with something from yesterday or a week before. I'm not driving a car anymore, I'm watching someone else drive a car, in the perspective of the driver. The sounds of the radio, the wind passing by, they're not my feelings.

There's also another kind that is slightly rarer for me, where instead it feels like I'm floating far away. Like my vision starts to zoom out, and the box of what I'm looking at is footsteps apart from me. Generally happens when I'm not at work, but it's so few that I don't know what triggers this.

 

[Midnightmoon]

Underwater, like everything is slowed down and somehow softer, and further away. I tend to feel cleaner, and that everything is lighter in colour. Somewhat random, but the musical Matilda there is a song called 'Quiet' and it really sums up for me how it feels. That overwhelming of fight/flight suddenly seeming far away and numbed

 

[Friday]

Depends on what type of disassociation I’m experiencing.

- Derealization = The world isn’t real
- Depersonalization = I’m not real

- Daydreaming = Somewhere in between reading a book & lucid dreaming
- Thousand Yard Stare = Is as close to clear-your-mind-meditation as I get, lights are on but nobody at home.
- Flashbacks = Moments (or longer) where I’m reliving, instead of remembering
- Zoned out = I’m often not really aware of what’s happening around me, lost in my mind

- Lost time = Minutes & hours gone between one blink & the next
- Fugue = Seeeeeeriously lost time (days, weeks, months) that I can sometimes trace backwards. I’ve “woken up” in other countries; no money, no passport (WTFO??? How did I GET here?) Or with buku bucks & stamps stamps stamps. It’s -touch wood- been a really long time since that was part of my living reality. (Although I zoned out on a bus, once, and “woke up” / snapped out of it, terrified to my bones, ice water for blood, that I was in SE Asia. Nope! Just a brand new bus, in Chinatown.

- Boneless + Binary (below) = I had a full med & psych work up for these 2. The end consensus was that it was a severe form of disassociation, in response to a terrible situation, and is probably what the only thing that kept me from losing my mind.

- Boneless = My legs go out from under me, and I pass the hell out. Feels like a wave of exhaustion & is paralytic within minutes. Much like being given anesthesia. For the next 2-3 days I’m DEAD-asleep (I cannot be woken up, although I surface enough sometimes to be aware someone is trying to) except for a few minutes once a day or so; I half wake up to drink/pee/try to get back to somewhere safe, to be flat out before the wave knocks me out, again. My eyes don’t focus right, my limbs don’t move right. Attempting to force myself to stay awake just means I collapse in random places, and can’t be woken. After 2-3 days of dead asleep, I would have 1-2 days (usually) where I was awake, but sleep paralyzed <<< This was one half of my reality for 6 years. Within a couple of hours of handing my child to be abused (shared custody), my legs would go out from under me. In the beginning it was 5-6 days in total. After a few years of fighting to reduce the times? I only ever managed 3 days, in total.

- Binary = The other half of my reality for 6 years >>> Was PERFECT recall of only half of my life, at a time. The weeks I had my son I had zero recall of the weeks I didn’t, and vice versa. I. Could. Not. Remember. The other half of my life. I couldn’t even think about it

I’m prooooooobably forgetting a type or three. But thinking too much about it is like trying not to yawn when someone else is yawning

 

[arfie]

my dissociation typically happens after i have exhausted myself in fight and/or flight. they feel like i am floating in a void. life is but a dream. nightmares qualify as dreams, don't they?

 

[Freida]

floaty. Ya, not really sure how else to describe it, but it's like everything calms down and suddenly I'm just floating along, la de da..nothing to see here. The funny thing is that state feels more normal than being in reality does.

 

[Quassus]

For me its a number of things. Body freeze, where everything stops and I can't move is the worst. Then there is willful times, where i purposely decise to check out because im in a situation that is highly triggering. And then other times its like when in a movie they are showing the world through someone else's eyes. Like you see what they see but its removed from you. Its like you are in someone else's body and the world is a movie.

I really think it happens differently depending on the situation

 

[DharmaGirl]

For me it is like I can't pay attention to what's happening now. I see it, but I'm in a different space. I spent a lot of my life dissociated, it's not at all unpleasant for me.