Please remind me why dissasociation is bad?

[lostforgottensoul]

I end up hurting myself many times when disocissated. I have gone to point A to point B and had no clue how I got there...twice. Once I walked out my front door (which was locked) and ended up "waking up" on the railroad tracks by my house which is super active! I disocissate in therapy or "try" very hard to (meaning, if I do, I am not healing but rather gone) and even in work meetings and while driving, which is super dangerous.

You have no idea what is going on while disocissated nor do you have control over it. It isn't good at all!

You really need to have a plan in place to come out of it and prevent it. But certianly not good!

 

[WishfulThinking123]

@lostforgottensoul Wow that sounds really scary! I have never lost time...luckily I do feel I have control over my behavior while disassociated. it is more of a numbness feeling, sometimes I can get really manic other times not, I can think about my trauma with no emotions attached, sometimes it feels like I am watching a movie screen instead of actually living and this part is what I don't like, sometimes I do freeze and go into myself-idk there are a lot of different stages of disassociation. I have never had that experience though of basically being here one moment and showing up somewhere different- that much be really scary

 

[zoie33]

wishfulthinking123... I am just like you when I dissociate. I always know where I'm at physically but I go really far into my head. It's very hard for me to talk or move and everything is kind of fuzzy and in slow motion. I can hear my therapist talking but my memory retention is very spotty at best. A lot of the things I really want to hear him say I usually hear only the first three or so words and then I can't remember the rest. I do get frustrated because it's like I'm wasting my time in therapy because I can't remember half of what happens. I'm trying to be super present when I go in but sometimes I think I actually switch to one of my parts instead when I try to do that and then again my memory is spotty it is so frustrating

 

[WishfulThinking123]

@zoie33 Just recently in T I have been trying really hard not to disassociate! It is so hard...especially when a part of me likes it. I am trying just to shift my vision to different things in the room and tell my mind to stay here...my T has no idea all of the stuff I am saying to myself during session in my head :/

 

[zoie33]

LOL...that is cracking me up. I'm sure mine doesn't either. Do you also have the eye contact issue. When I am down the rabbit hole as I like to call it or even when I only have my head down the hole, I CANNOT look him in the eye. When I am present I can usually look him in the eye every once in awhile or at least I can get close and look at his shirt or something. I try to use that use that technique to keep me in the room too. Never works but the more I can make myself look at him the longer I can last.

 

[WishfulThinking123]

I have a problem with my T making eye contact with me when she is saying nice things or self affirming that my trauma was a big deal and to stop minimizing...this makes my trauma seem so much more real to me when I am trying just to shrug it off as it was nothing. This does terrify me and will often cause me to disassociate. However, when I do disassociate in T I actually can really only see my T everything else in the room gets really fuzzy and almost distant and my T appears to be sitting really far away from me.

 

[intothelight]

Personally, I view disassociation at both good and bad. For myself, it is bad when it is a maladaptive coping mechanism that I had no control over. I would just check out in response to some stressors and just go wherever my brain would go and loose huge amounts of time. There is so much of my life that is "lost" because I got lost somewhere in my head.

I also use controlled disassociation to manage pain. I am able to disconnect from the pain and keep functioning as if it isn't there. I don't know if disassociation is the proper term, but it is an extremely useful tool especially during painful medical procedures. Kind of freaks people out, but hey its me on the table not them.

 

[whiteraven]

Well how does it cause me to be unsafe? I do not "lose" time. It helps protect me from unsaf...

Ultimately, by dissociating and avoiding feelings/emotions (which truly are neither good or bad), you are only postponing having to deal with them at some later time. Whatever created them doesn't go away, it's only repressed. And, the more you dissociate, the harder it is NOT to. It can become dangerous. If you are at the point where you are not in control of your dissociation, it could progress to losing time. Like you've observed, it's kind of like floating now. Doesn't seem so bad, right? Get to numb out and avoid all the bad stuff. Well, on the other side of that, when you can't do it anymore - for whatever reason - might be a lot of pain. Just better to deal with the feelings in small pockets now rather than in one giant mess later.