What are your experiences with dissociation like and how has it affected your life?

11 comments

1. In a weird way, it makes it easier. Anything too scary or stressful happening? I’m out! I get to watch from a floaty distance while the goblins in my brain steer my body for me. Sometimes it’s annoying, because like… dude, I’m trying to do shit, I need to be in the room for this. But it always passes, and knowing what’s happening helps me be more comfy with it, rather than just “oh what the fuck, am I drowning? Is this real? This is a TV show.”

   I also have one where I feel much, much younger than I am. Like, my body feels way too big, too tall, and my thoughts and feelings feel much more simple, and I don’t have the vocabulary that I normally do. I’m still very much me, I’m still aware of everything, and I can push through it if I really need to. My psychiatrist thinks it’s a sort of regressive dissociation. That one comes on with any kind of really intense emotion, even happy ones like excitement. It took a really long time before I could talk about it in therapy, because I was terrified it meant there was something badly wrong with me. I tried googling it once, but I didn’t have the right language for it, so what cane back was a bunch of like, DDLG kink shit, which lead to even more shame on my part. But I’ve come to terms with it mostly now. The people in my life that matter know about it and don’t treat me any differently because of it.

2. Everything’s fine everything’s fine everything’s fine *dumps long term partner with literally no warning for several hundred reasons that I’ve never voiced or ever really properly thought about × 3

3. I had an abuse ex and it would happen during arguments. I’d literally be unable to follow the conversation or remember what was happening, and he’d get even angrier at me

   He called me stupid and deliberately being obtuse but I was just panicking 🙁

   Thankfully he’s an ex and these days it only ever happens very occasionally (like if I sit still too long, smoke too much, or if I toss and turn too much while trying to sleep)

4. The experience that most of you have described is a very common trauma response (usually childhood/Complex trauma) symptom. It is just how your body tried to keep you safe when you were a child, either because there was a lack of emotional safety or/and volatile environment.

   Even as an adult, that is how your body tries to protect you from extreme pain or danger. When you are emotionally overwhelmed your brain goes into the Fight/Flight/Freeze response. Dissociation is more of the Flight/Freeze response, and of course, Freeze would be the worst when the body deemed that it is the only option left.

   It is not “What’s wrong with me?” but “What happened to me?”. It is not your fault, your body is trying to keep you safe but it has gone “overdrive”/hypervigilant if you experience Complex trauma. There is usually a trigger and a flashback body response, and that is why some have described feeling the “younger self” or in auto-pilot mode (survival mode).

   There is help out there but make sure you seek out trauma-informed therapy such as EMDR, Emotion-Focused Therapy, Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy, and others. The key is “trauma-informed” care because some get misdiagnosed with all the different DSM labels which are not helpful, create shame, and worst still being medicated to reduce the symptoms without resolving the root cause.

   Take care of it the sooner the better. Most people are unaware until they are in their mid-40s thinking that it is just part of them.

5. I’ve dissociated randomly a few times. I hate it. It’s normally an indication that a depressive episode is coming. sometimes after i come back to reality i feel dizzy and nauseous

6. If you want to message me, I can give a more detailed answer.

   It kinda took over my life among other things for about 5 years and now I’m getting back to what you can consider a normal life and moving on the best I can. I’m at peace with most of it and am mentally stronger but it’s been rough. Good things and bad things have come out of it. Overall it’s compromised some things I wanted in life and a career, and those can still happen, but it’ll just be more difficult to do now.

7. Disassociation for me makes relationships with anyone difficult, almost impossible. I allow myself to disassociate during any sort of conflict due to it working in terms of protection and “not getting hurt”. In reality, I cause more pain by not ever solving conflicts and letting it build up till I break or they leave. It makes me later on resent people because of my lack of communication. I just want to be heard, yet I don’t hear them.
   It makes me emotionally unavailable to everyone, no matter how much I want to feel closeness. I’m trying to break away from this fight or flight mode in my brain. Because this may have worked in the past when I needed it to feel safe, but now it’s sticking around for the worst. It feels like I have no control over my actions and words whenever there’s “too much” happening.

8. Makes life very tricky to navigate. Dissociating in traffic/middle of the street/in public transport etc. I experience the catatonic type.

   Lots of therapy and psychiatric meds have helped a long way, but these will always stay to a degree.

   I now have a fully trained assistance dog. She detects oncoming dissociations and can alert me. Shecan remove me from dangerous locations if I cannot stop one from happening.

   I have a life now. A job, a future. Even with dissociations.

9. The only time I have ever dissociated was the night before I testified against my mother’s husband in their divorce. The entire day just fucking shut down. I was on autopilot, didn’t eat, just scraped through a very dull day. I was grounded by waking up at 2 in the morning to vomit stomach acid from anxiety. It was awful.

10. I normally don’t care. It separates me from pain. But sometimes not being fully present can hurt you too.

    I noticed it for the first time being a “bad” thing last February. My grandma died, I was there and so was our close family. It was COVID peak time and so I hadn’t seen her in over a month bc hospital rules. She looked completely different. Her mouth was black, she was rigid and shaking. She looked like she was literally struggling to be alive. My dad was crying and so was my papaw, things I’d never seen before. My cousins looked traumatized. Everyone just sobbing and hugging.

    I just wanted another cup of coffee. I didn’t feel a thing. It didn’t phase me to see her, to see them breaking down. These people I love so much, and their pain had no effect on me. I felt like an alien. Or like I was in the wrong house.

    I still have barely cried over it. And when I do, it’s more over my disappointment in myself than her actual death.

11. I’m in the process of being diagnosed with a dissociative disorder at the moment, after 12 years of being told I was just suffering with depression.

    I don’t relate to most of the other comments though. I feel permanently disconnected, like I haven’t been really here for years. Everything looks flat and both too close and too far away at the same time. Often the sight of the world around me is terrifying. I live with a constant fear of what I am, where I am and what’s real. I feel as though I’m somewhere else, somewhere unimaginably horrible. A significant part of me is convinced nothing is real.

    My life is good, but I can’t feel how good it is. I’m desperate to really be here. I imagine it like when you’re underwater and everything sounds distant and muffled and then you break through the surface and suddenly everything is loud and real again. I hope that one day I’ll have a moment like that and I’ll come back to where I’m supposed to be.