My Extensive Disassociation

[FoxxieMoxxie]

I go through extremely long periods of "recovery" before I'm able to continue friendships with people, but with those periods lasting from months to years, those friends don't typically wait for me that long(which is fair). I try to explain to people that I haven't forgotten them, I still care for them, but I need long periods to recover mentally before I can socialize again. People who claim to understand will eventually get impatient and probe, which pressures me to act when I don't feel recovered, which causes stress and anxiety and exhaustion that spills into my regular life at the expense of losing friendships. It's....exhausting. I've resigned myself to having very few friends and even fewer locally since I don't physically show up enough. I hate being this way so much, I've tried to force it even without pressure and results are the same. I NEED these periods of recovery but they are so beyond what's normal or typical or healthy that people claim at first to be fine with it, only to later complain and leave me behind. I feel im doomed to the fate of a sad and lonely hermit.

 

[Calmdown]

I also need recovery time but the long periods are usually for people that aren't that close to me. Do you need recovery because you need to be "fit" around these people and can't show if you are not feeling well or is it in general that way? Was it always like that?

 

[thursday]

Dissociation is the experience with detaching from reality. What Foxxiemoxxie describes looks like an autism trait.

 

[Roland]

I feel for you, because my recovery periods are only around 2 weeks sometimes a month, so it's usually unnoticeable to other people and excusable by having work/family demands and "busy life". Have you discussed this with a therapist? What do you think causes such extreme burnout for you?