When You Dissociate, Where Do You Go?

[J.L. Pitts]

I started dissociating many years after I had been treated for PTSD I do not think in my case it was due to the PTSD I had a psychotic break due to untreated postpartum psychosis. After that break I had 15 people inside me every one of which had a different job or function. So when I dissociated I lost time and actually became that other person. Charlene was one of my personalities and she went to college for us and was an A student in Algebra she was aggressively learning and would make the teacher actually teach her. One night I drove to the college expecting Charlene to emerge she had an important exam whisch she would have aced but she didn't show up. I had already been seen so I went in the class in full blown panic attack and could not access the knowledge Charelene kept for us and failed the test. I was medically reintegrated for about 5 years and during that medicational integrration I was also going through therapy and learned how to live with these different people inn me actually being me.

 

[Weemie]

call it Nowhere. like a scary level on a video game surrounded by darkness.

i jump ship from my body, my mind expands out and the physical world falls away and i deal in lines. they're the words that pull me through, turning pain into ice or fire? it's just fire, not pain. what is it anyway but another sensation. how come i can't know what it's like to fully be another person? my teachers called that shit theory of mind. f*ck it.

held down with no exit, i watch police procedurals obsessively and put myself in the victim's place like; what's it like to be that scared, to have all these thoughts and hopes and dreams and the gun is on you and there's no more time and this is the most fear you've ever felt and........

i must know those answers, but they're in Nowhere.

 

[AngelPaws14]

Numb is what happens when I disassociate and it's like I just shut down my thoughts, feelings, any kind of intake stops till the situation is over. I do notice randomly I zone in and out in daily moments though. I won't notice either a trigger or my body just goes into auto response mode and then all of a sudden I'm eating something or pacing /walking in place. I don't always feel an emotion before or while it happens I'm just like frozen and blank usually.

When I disassociate, the energy of my emotions get trapped within, and I go numb. This is a particularly uncomfortable place for me. I get muscle spasms, lose my sensitivity toward others and get bombarded by a deluge of negative thoughts. My inner critic/persecutor starts to beat the crap out of me, as well!

 

[Changing4Best]

I go inside, but also I go into the future, imagining all the horrible things that can happen to me (worst case scenarios). It takes me awhile to realize I am doing this, then I pray and ask God to take away my thoughts of this nature. He does, but then when I don't think positive things, it happens again. So I read my Bible or a biography or something to take my mind off of all these things. Otherwise I dwell upon them indefinitely.

 

[PollyScotland]

I go outside of my body and am alongside, observing. I don't disassociate very often to be fair. I do sometimes get "looking through the wrong end of binoculars" vision - no idea if there is a better way to explain this, but it is literally as if I cannot control my focus, and everything is tiny.

 

[ms spock]

I go outside of myself and watch myself. Sometimes I go into my head. Sometimes I go into a fantasy world. Sometimes I go online.

 

[desiderata310]

Depends. If I'm in a situation that requires that I be 'present' but may cause me damage if I'm not "there" to act? I often stand just to the right, beside myself and find what's happening bizarrely fascinating. It's like watching a TV or a film with smell o vision and everything seems brighter and faster.

Shit goes sideways and the action is happening? I'm gone. I'm just not there. I can feel myself just go away and I go some place inside and I can remember thinking as I'm sliding away 'if I can just relax it won't hurt' and then nothing hurts because I don't ACTUALLY feel anything.

 

[Ellabella44]

it depends on the reason i think, could be eiether to the side, or wayyy inside, or behind myself watching from inside.

 

[Recovery4Me]

I loose time. Each sense shuts down until there is nothing. Then I hear about what I did or what I said. But I can not remember.

It feels totally different for me than meditation, zoning, transing, daydreaming, rumination or being distracted or tired phased. It is like being a zombie in a way I would guess...walking or moving but not there.

 

[Higgins]

Inside. Again the degree depends on the trigger or event or duration.

 

[latetotheparty]

I always tell my therapist, it is like I am watching a movie of myself. It doesn't feel like my life, I am just a bystander. I have once disassociated so much that my body stopped in mid-movement in public. It is truly a strange feeling to describe.

 

[BlackbirdSinging]

I go inside. I'm still here but I feel numb or detached from whatever is causing me to zone out. If I start zoning out when I'm triggered though I sometimes feel like I'm being pulled back into my past. And if that happens I sometimes end up having a flashback.