Never Had Dissociation Feel Like This Before

[Leighlee87]

So, the holidays turned out to be somewhat difficult to emotionally navigate. However, I've been struggling ever since to articulate what happened during Christmas dinner. I've always dissociated, but this time it felt very different then how I normally experience it. And to be honest, it really bothered me for some reason. I'm not sure I can articulate the experience correctly, but I will try.

I've been battling anorexia for years, gained a bit of weight, managed to maintain it, but Christmas was a bit of a struggle. The Christmas Eve party with my family went great and I ate just like everyone else. The meal with my husband's family on Christmas day, was completely different. I watched myself act on eating behaviors that I haven't done since I was in high school over 10 years ago, and saw myself doing things I've never done before.

I've always felt dissociation one of 3 ways
#1) Walking through a thick fog. I go through the motions, but it's hard to concentrate or focus on what people are saying. And I struggle to formulate sentences. I know during this that I probably wont remember most details afterwards, so if I'm doing something important, it's kinda a problem.
#2) I feel like I go far away somewhere. It's dark and safe. I get kinda tunnel vision and my sight sorta cuts out. I can hear but it's a bit distant. While I'm there I know nobody can hurt me and physical pain doesn't register. This is where I went when bad things happened when I was a little girl. Now this is where I involuntarily feel myself slipping in therapy and have to try really hard to ground myself before I'm "gone"
#3) I'm standing outside of myself, usually to the right side or from up above, and I'm seeing what is happening to me. Out of body type experience.

This time I was emotionally cut off and distant and didn't want to come back at all, but all of my senses were present. Nobody felt far away, my sight/hearing everything was intact, I didn't feel like everything was fuzzy or that I was walking through a thick fog. I was able to sit with everyone and carry on full conversations. I was just really, really detached emotionally. When I went to serve myself food, I felt like I was in my body, but that I was watching myself do it. I didn't make any attempt to stop it or to think, other than to note that it felt as if it was happening for me instead of me doing it myself. I was too tired and stressed to care. Except, I watched myself do things I wouldn't normally.

My portions are usually very small, but I take more of what I like, less of what I kinda like, and none of what I don't., and no going back for seconds. My food can't touch, and everything is cut into small pieces. Those have been and always were the rules. Rules from when I was younger include a certain number of bites and sips of water between each bite. Those came back into play during this meal.

But then things happened that I've never done before, and I put no thought into how/why, there was no anxiety around anything, it just "was". This time I watched myself take a tiny portion of everything on the table, whether I liked it or not, and everything needed to be the exact same portion size --Carrots and green beans were 4 pieces each, rice, potatoes, etc. where each about the size of a quarter. Everything on my plate was carefully placed so that it was equal distance apart. As I watched myself do all of this, I remember thinking, "Huh, I've never done this before." I sat, ate it following all of "the rules" , but didn't eat nearly half of what is there. And that was that.

Afterwards everything went back to the same, and I haven't felt like I've been inside of my body watching my body (and still maintaining mental clarity as I did so). My eating rules went back to what I normally follow, but my weight has spiraled downwards--which, I'm assuming is still just stress.

But that situation still bothers me, mostly cause it's never happened.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

@Leighlee87 What you describe sounds like an emotional flashback, I had one in the hospital and like what you describe it was like I was watching myself, and yes I had my senses too. I was like this the entire weekend. And behaving as if the trauma was actually happening at times. To anyone else my behavior would have been seen as bazaar but this was a trauma disorders unit and they had seen it before. In my case safety was a problem so I eventually ended up in restraints for a couple hours. After I was back to normal they told me it was an emotional flashback, which unlike other parts of PTSD where we can manage the flashbacks and behaviors with things like DBT skills, an emotional flashback we can't control with things like DBT because it occurs at a subconscious level. But we can manage its triggers so they don't happen.

Mental conflicts can trigger emotional flashbacks, its sort of like how someone looses there temper when angry. a Similar process. So managing your PTSD well, often will minimize the occurrences of a emotional flashback.

 

[Leighlee87]

@recoveringfromptsd thank you for this. I'm not sure what to do about the trigger. It's simply because the date coincides with the time when I walked away from the trauma and what was occurring. I had to cut off my entire family in the process because I knew that my experience would not be believed. Being away from it is a blunt reminder of what was done, if it had never happened, I would have my parents and siblings with me. I'm completely unsure how to prevent this from happening in the future, if this is indeed an emotional flashback.

 

[recoveringfromptsd]

@Leighlee87 The answer is because it is emotion, the only way to prevent them is to manage your other symptoms well. I learned this in the hospital (I was at sheppard pratt traume disorders unit). Have you done any DBT therapy? It might help manage things. I certainly understand dates being a trigger, you will find my bday and xmas were triggers for me because of the date.

 

[Leighlee87]

No, I haven't tried DBT. However, I've only been in therapy for a year, so thus far we've used CBT and been working through EMDR. I will definitely have to look into it though.

 

[Friday]

When I'm not paying attention, and I'm stressed out or reeeeeally upset, I drop into old behaviors. Most of the time I'm not aware I'm doing it, until I 'catch' myself at some of them. That alone is usually enough to startle me out of it, but sometimes I just roll with it, and others -like I said- I'm just not aware I'm doing it. They aren't big behaviors, most of the time, but the subtle things. I pull my hair back in a certain way. I start walking in a certain way. Things that I deliberately stopped doing, a long time ago, in order to blend in. It's like shrugging into armor.

Once I realize I'm doing it, I tend to start catching myself doing it a lot more frequently, or I find I've actually been doing it for awhile.

It can be super difficult to stop. I'll unbraid my hair and let it down, and next time I look in a mirror? It's braided, again. Dammit. Or I catch myself pulling it up out of my way to start braiding it while I'm doing something else. f*ck. Stop that. But it just feels right, at the time, like the most natural thing in the world to do, so I rarely notice myself in the middle of it. Something I've done a thousand thousand times... 20 years ago. Dammit. Stop.

But if I go to intentionally do it? It feels wrong. It looks wrong. It drives me nuts. It's only when I'm not actually thinking about it, that they just start falling into place.

It's a weird thing. Part of my past and my present blurring. When I'm completely in the present it feels wrong. When my head is half in the past? It's the most natural thing in the world.

 

[Leighlee87]

I've done that before too, but this was different. I'm not sure how to explain it. I guess sort of the same, but if you amplified the experience by a thousand maybe. Like if you watched someone else do it, but inside your own body I guess. I have no freaking clue how to explain it. I'm 30, it's the first time it's ever happened, and it's enough to really jar me, soooo....

 

[Friday]

Like if you watched someone else do it, but inside your own body I guess.

Yep. That's pretty normal for me, though.

I think it falls on the depersonalization side of the spectrum (loosely defined in my head as derealization is when the world isn't real but I am, depersonalization is when I'm not real but the world is). Watching myself do things is something that often happens every day, usually doing things that I would normally do. When I was talking about doing things I wouldn't normally do now but very normally did once upon a million years ago, the link for me is stress, and the warning is that my past is becoming more real for me than my present.

 

[Muted]

Well said @Friday !!!

 

[OrganicRobot]

Do you recall if someone said something to you, or was there an action from someone around you that could have potentially triggered the flashback? From my experience being surrounded by my family pushes me back more easily into regressive behaviors. I think with family ingrained responses are much deeper because they are formed during childhood, and thus it is harder to break the cycle of habit since those habits are foundational. But since it is your husband's family, there may be some similar behaviors from your childhood in others that you are subconsciously picking up on.

 

[Deleted member 40217]

Had a difficult session yesterday. I think my injections of B 12 are making my CSA memories way more intense as well as my nightmares. I disassociated during therapy and I'm barely feeling back to normal 24 hrs later. Hugs to all that are going through disassociation and or ptsd