• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Is this dissociation? Running into walls?

Status
Not open for further replies.

baisa

New Here
Hi, I have a question. I will often find myself running into door jams, coffee tables, etc and will find bruises on my body that I don’t remember getting. Could this be from dissociation and disconnection from my body? It’s almost like I have no awareness of my body when I misjudge distance and run into things?
 
Ha ha, thank you for replying. The furniture and walls attack me often, lol. Thanks for letting me know I am not alone.
For me, its not limited to furniture and walls. I have walked into about everything you can imagine. Hard to cover up the clang of a sign post or a street lamp when I walk into one. My poor mother when I was younger and she had to take me places.

There are other medical reasons you should not ignore. If you have PTSD there are chronic illnesses that can mimic and shadow the symptoms of PTSD. I would see my doctor and get checked out physically. The sooner you catch most chronic illnesses the less damage they do.

...and Welcome to the site @baisa!
 
I was wondering this exact same thing! I often have HUGE bruises and absolutely no clue how they got there, but they look like it would have hurt. I have always assumed I just run into things “absentmindedly”. I actually didn’t know I dissociated until recently so I’m trying to be more aware of it if I can.
 
There's a lot of things it could be. Hard to say, what the cause is.
This. @baisa

One of the better tests to see if it’s only happening when you’re zoned out, is to pay close attention to where you’re going, and see if it still happens. If so? It’s less likely to be disassociation than something else, or less likely to ONLY be disassociation.

Because there are a LOT of causes for clumsiness, the first best bet is GP/Neurology consult… as rough estimate maybe 80% of them are neurologically based (visual cortex, cerebellum -sarah balance, inner ear infections, ataxia, etc.). Funny thing about inner ear infections &/or damage? That’s the part of the body that tells your brain where “you” are in space… and when something is jacked up there? It not only creates clumsiness, but often nausea & anxiety so severe that agoraphobia has in recent years been found to be misdiagnosed inner ear infections more often than not.

For my own self I have
- ADHD loss of vertical stability (gravity storms are real)
- a f*ck ton of nerve damage that means I don’t have proprioception (awareness of where in space something is) in parts of my body
- More nerve damage that means unless I’m concentrating I JUDGE the distance just fine, but fail to execute the maneuver (like lifting my foot high enough off the ground), so I trip.
- Zoning out (disassociation) not paying attention to the here & now
- Flashbacks where my brain thinks my body is a lithe & incredibly fit 17/19yo, and so it thinks my ass is smaller & my reactions faster
- Walking by Braille (IE using the surfaces of things to guide me when my vision is compromised) can also be habitual, so I’m brushing up against and into things like I’m blind, although I can see perfectly well in that moment.

99% of ^^^this^^^ vanishes when I have a surge of adrenaline in my system (which nixes the ADHD stuff, and overrides pain signals blocking other signals from travelling up the CNS superhighway / IE most of my neuropathy and nerve damage is central to ongoing pain signals blocking everything else out), and to boot is super grounding / total awareness of NOW.

All of which means I can be incrediably graceful doing something complicated, or with split second timing needed, (sports, dance, emergencies); but fall on my ass attempting to walk across a room, or into a doorframe wide enough for an ox cart to drive through, never mind my ass. Shrug.
 
For me it’s definitely a thing. If I’m lost in a knot of my brain, I do bruise on my legs and shoulders, while normally I had a very good sense of balance and space since young.

It also worsens when I’m scared because I tend to creep against walls.

But would be good to be checked for eye issues, neurological issues and dyspraxia too.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top