When You Dissociate, Where Do You Go?

[oasis2003]

Yes a spectrum I agree. Safe, freezing, floating or totally shut off from every one and everything. Dark but most of all safe and definitely a defence mechanism when every thing gets too overwhelming especially when reliving memories in EMDR therapy. A mixture between meditation and dissociation.

 

[The Albatross]

Sometimes next to myself, sometimes from a corner of the room, sometimes the ceiling... but when I lose time I have no idea or awareness at all til I am just "back" and then I am confused. Usually when I have no awareness that means lost time, but people who have been present say they don't notice anything particularly.

 

[Kintsugi]

When it is really bad, I experience total evaporation as @Chava illustrated.

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[BlueOrange]

I don't have any visual changes that happen when I dissociate (like seeing myself from outside my body). What usually happens is that I lose any awareness of my body, there is just 'the thing I am obsessing over'. A lot like the reasonably normal experience of 'getting lost in a book'.

On a couple of occasions, I've had an experience of being a passenger inside my body. My body is doing things (that I don't like), and I have no control over it. It's as if I was watching one of those scenes in a horror movie where the bad guy's hands are shown coming out from underneath the camera, and I don't get to choose what will happen next, I only get to watch, and be horrified. I'm glad it's a long time since I've had an experience like that.

 

[Friday]

Where do I go?

Behind my eyes.

I only go out / see myself from above when I'm hypothermic, half drowned, or grieving. Grieving, though, the rage yanks me back right quick.

& to be clear, I've been mostly dead a few times. The 'out', actually any disassociation during pain at all, is particular to the drowning. God knows why. Usually pain keeps me very firmly in the present / not disassociated, and drowning burns like a mother.

I don't disassociate from pain. But if I'm already disassociated, I can seriously screw myself up, because I won't feel it. Except when I do. Yeesh. Now my head's spinning. It's a weird thing. I understand the 'rules' but communicating them seems to be beyond me.

 

[The Albatross]

Hmmm Interesting Friday... I had to learn how to get/be/mostly stay behind my eyes... I was a mind basically dragging my body around for apparently a great many years. I am intrigued by the "inside" or "deep inside" answers because apparently I just leave/bail out of my body.

When my cranio sacral gal asked me something difficult... she stopped me mid tell and asked me, "Where are you right now?". In response I put my hand up to the bridge of my nose a couple inches away. When I saw the look on her face, and asked her about her reaction, she said something about how most all people put their hand over their heart and are "inside". She said basically something scared me so badly on a core level I decided my body was unsafe. (Uh yeah, most definitely)

It took quite a few sessions to teach me to "drop back in" when I was laying on her work table.... and quite a few more to stay there and how to do some body scanning to tell where I was and how to put myself back in. I mostly stay now, but pain can and does cause me to disassociate... some very specific triggers still do as well.

I can even be half out in some circumstances and have to pause and go through the scans (though much less often now) to put myself in so I am not as she described me in the beginning, "A mind out of body but dragging it around." When I learned how to do that, my eyes started tracking again. That was a big deal for me.

 

[StellaBlue]

I have different experiences depending on the situation I guess. My "go to" dissociation is total blankness - my brain just shuts down - I've had therapists ask "where did you go" and I just don't know....there are no words, no place, no nothing. Then there is the "two places at once" thing - this happens when there is an ongoing stress thing and I revert to my "maladaptive daydreaming" - so I have my imaginary story thing going on and I'm also functioning in the real world. And then, and this is rare, there's the slammed out of my body thing....this only happens when I get hit with an unexpected shocker and it's like I've been hit sideways on the head and my body stays in place, but I'm thrown a couple of feet away.

 

[Tinyflame]

I used to think maybe it was narcolepsy but I never fell asleep. Though times I feel overwhelmed & like I will. Like an anesthetic.

 

[Kintsugi]

@Junebug When I get the evaporate-y kind of dissociation, I feel this way as well. I feel like I will pass out any moment.

Edited to add: this once got so bad in my thesis class, I literally just put my head on the desk and wrapped my arms around my head. I felt like I would lose consciousness at any moment, and my head just went down like the subject of a hypnotist in the middle of class.

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes! Exactly @Simply Simon ! That's exactly how it feels, yet different than the light-headed warning when I almost faint, faster & stronger. And doesn't matter if I'm sitting. Almost like being engulfed by a wave. It feels emotional, the physical follows.

 

[shell]

If really badly triggered, I stand about a metre behind myself, and once behind the door across the room. Have been on the ceiling once.

 

[Chava]

Just started reading Bessel Van Der Kolk's "The Body Keeps Score." I don't have a good habit of reading well or finishing books, and I'm just in the beginning, but it felt really validating to hear about his description of the "blanked out" response. Describes it well for me. They brain-scanned a couple that were part of the same horrid accident and responses and scans were very different but both very indicative of trauma. The wife blanked out (felt nothing), which was a response she learned as a child (also blanking out more common in childhood trauma).

It's really hard to get around because I don't have thoughts, feelings, etc. when I'm in this space...like it's not even scary so why work to find a way out. It's total blank numbness. Brain scans show most of the brain shuts down. Creepy much? :dead:

At least I feel like I've found a better form of therapy for myself for dealing with this stuff. And doing stuff on my own to keep more parts of my brain online and engaged in my life.