Sufferer In A Nutshell

[One step at a time]

When I turned fifteen, I found myself an informal foster situation and left my parents. For two years, I lived a low-stress life and felt safe, so my symptoms were manageable. When I turned seventeen, I graduated high school and went to college. Over the first two months of college, I fell apart, so that by Halloween I was experiencing intense symptoms and was no longer functioning (hiding in room, unable to do schoolwork, skipping meals and classes).

A professor saw what was happening and insisted I needed to get help and an accommodations letter. In the process of applying for the accommodations letter, I received a diagnosis of PTSD. It has been almost a year since that diagnosis. I’m starting to learn what it means and how that corresponds to what I experience.

I used to dissociate constantly – at some times more intensely than others, but always a little bit. As I heal, I’ve been dissociating less and less – first, I experienced decreased dissociation in moments of extreme joy, then in everyday interactions, then in mildly stressful, temporary situations, then even in painful ones.

Right now, I am starting to feel/recognize the fear. I am starting to realize that a lot of the dissociation hides fear. I am not dissociating in reaction to everything; I am feeling intense fear in response to everything. It is debilitating and exhausting.

I was so terrified, in the past week, that I was “getting worse.” Right now, the part of me that is not freaking out with fear and pain recognizes this as a good sign, as part of healing, and is grateful.

 

[Angela Corgan]

I disassociate sometimes it seems to be linked to very, very deep shock. I have found that being prepared in certain situations helps but when the unexpected happens it can really get me. Does anyone lose time? After a recent unexpected police witness statement (I was abused) I lost 30 minutes and wandered out into a busy main road, a car with a lady driver emergency stopped and yelled at me! I find allowing myself to feel the emotions and knowing I have a right to them and they will pass helps, but not if something unexpected happens. D

 

[One step at a time]

Sometimes I really need to sit down, make myself safe, and feel something, but I don't want to face the thing or I can't take the time to do it or I don't feel safe. Depending on the intensity of that need that I am neglecting, sometimes I can keep functioning with some moderate degree of dissociation, but sometimes I dissociate so much that, like you, I lose time.