hI BB,

My T has never told me I do it but I get really distracted all the time. And since my crisis 4 weeks ago, I've noticed I tend to do it when i get angry. I'm thinking that anger is threatening for me to experience, so my mind diverts itself. I don't know if this helps but it's what I experience and I wasn't even really aware of it ... I just thought I was losing my mind ... I couldn't concentrate on anything for any length of time, etc.

Hi Beebs... well this is kinda hard to explain because I think people experience it in different ways and, of course, there are degrees of intensity along a spectrum. I can try to describe to you how it is for me.

When I was little I used to "make" myself "go away" when I was experiencing abuse or frightening situations. I could force myself to go numb and not feel anything and the way I would do that is to just stop being present in the moment. Of course I really didn't understand what I was doing but it was my own way of coping with a bad situation. Eventually, it became automatic as a response to anything that felt scary or dangerous. This does become a problem when you really do need to protect yourself but are unable to because you are not fully present to be aware of what is going on.

How it feels to me now is when I'm feeling threatened or that something dangerous or unpleasant is going on is that my head gets this weird buzzy feeling, like my ears don't work correctly.. I stop being able to hear what the other person is saying and my mind just goes someplace else. Not sure where. I become unaware of my surroundings, can't focus, can't really respond in any deep or intelligent way. I don't remember what is said when I get like this and I have a lot of blank spots when trying to recall sessions afterwards. Some have more blank spots than others, depending on the topic of conversation. I lost a LOT of what happened with oldT during the last month of our sessions as I was always so scared and dissociating and he was too angery or just plain didn't care to bring me back to the present. When I'm buzzy I start saying some things that are automatic and don't require real use of my pre-frontal cortex (which is off-line). I nod a lot and I imagine my eyes sort of get a vacant look. There is also some kind of change in my body language because oldT got REALLY good at spotting when I was going to dissociate and he would stop me by grounding me back to my surroundings. He could see a change in my body or maybe the look on my face. Not sure.

After the termination with oldT I started dissociating a lot while driving and during the week after the termination I hit the car in front of me and don't even remember anything until the bump which sort of startled me out of whatever far away place I was. Sometimes I drive and just keep going and forget to turn or pay attention. Is this just being distracted or dissociating... this I'm not sure of.

Once in a while, not very often, while in session I would feel like I was sort of watching the session while hovering above us. Like I was an observer of some kind. That was weird for me.

I hope some of this helps you a little.

Hugs
TN

quote:

I also have another type of dissociation where I won't feel like I'm inside my body. Like I'll be doing things, saying things, eating, shopping, out in public... whatever... and it's like I don't feel like I'm me. I can't feel or connect to things and it really IS like watching somebody else. It's not like I'm actually 5ft away from myself seeing myself, but it feels like my "spirit" (my being, my presence, my thoughts) are not in the same place as my body. Almost like I have control over myself but in a video game - in a video game you make mario jump and ... pick up coins or whatever but you don't actually jump but you're making it happen to something else.

Oh DF is this familiar Reading a book - watching tv - having a conversation and having no memory of it Driving and arriving home somehow
Beebs/DF - something I recently learned almost as an aside, from my T who thought I already knew, was that the reason I have so very little memory of most of my life is that I've lived in a dissociated state for most of it or hard to say which applies It was a bit of a shock but obviously perfected a survival technique very early and it's been modus operandi every since - good, bad or indifferent - can't remember cause I wasn't there!!

The real memory is in the emotions - something will happen and the guts go into a twist - reactions are off the scale and out of proportion and, you have know you've been in this gut wrenching situation before but have no cognitive memory and then 'poof' inner anxiety everything is racing but it feels like you're wading through water so slowly

Oh gosh I'm sorry, this is a bit unusual for me to go on, but Beebs/DF, apart from describing the above to my T have never spoken to another living soul about it before You poor things!!

I'm inclined to delete but will take a chance at not being rejected for spilling a little!!
Morgs

quote:

The real memory is in the emotions - something will happen and the guts go into a twist - reactions are off the scale and out of proportion and, you have know you've been in this gut wrenching situation before but have no cognitive memory and then 'poof' inner anxiety everything is racing but it feels like you're wading through water so slowly Eeker

I have to get to bed as it's very late here, so I'll be back to write more about my experiences with disassociation, but Morgs I wanted to thank you for taking the risk of posting about your experience. The quote above is such a dead-on description of what I experience when I get triggered and how it felt when I was recovering my memories. It would feel like "WTF? Why am I feeling like this?" It's like your body runs off, leaving your brain running along miles behind.

AG

Hey Beebs,

To be honest, it's a little hard to post right now, but I thought I'd suck it up just to throw in how I've experienced dissociation. Now, my T has always been hesitant to assign names to anything, which can be frustrating at times. Although she has mentioned it a couple times, she has been very cautious and wanted to make sure that I knew that she really didn't know if that's what I was experiencing at all. Even though things that I describe seem to go hand in hand with others' dissociative experiences, I still doubt it completely because I don't think I have anything in my past that warrants dissociation. But whatever.

Anyway, I've experienced it several different ways. It's eased up a little bit lately. My first major episode of dissociation that I remember (and recognized at the time that I was dissociating) was in an early therapy session with my new T. Don't remember what we were talking about, but I suddenly told her that I couldn't think anymore. She backed off really quickly, but I checked out really quickly, too. I sat in silence for about 10 minutes, and it felt like I was sitting behind my body, like I was looking through my eyes, but I was seeing myself looking through my eyes. If that makes any sense (ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich?). I didn't feel like I was in my body - saying anything was a lot of work, because I didn't really know if it was actually me saying those things. It took several hours to break out of that.

Other times I've experienced dissociation have varied, but never quite as pronounced as what I just wrote about. Sometimes I'll look at my hands or hear my voice and wonder whose hands I'm looking at...are they really mine? Am I really here? Or I'll hear my voice and wonder if it's really me that just said something. DF's description of having a buzz without the alcohol is a good one (as far as how I experience it sometimes), because when I have a buzz, I will have the same feeling of looking at my hands and wondering if they're really real. One other thing I've experienced is looking at things around me and not feeling like my surroundings themselves are real. Not that I'm questioning myself, but I'm questioning everything around me that I'm seeing. Things seem to have a little more contrast and are a little fuzzy, like a dream or a movie where the color has been altered a bit.

I have had a few instances where I will have had a conversation, but parts of the conversation are like blanks in my head. it's disconcerting, because these times aren't like I just spaced out - I don't even recall having this part of the conversation at all, or even know that I was talking at all. I have asked the same question over again, because I never recalled asking it the first time, even if that was only 2 minutes earlier. That's more pronounced as far as that thing goes - I'm quite bad at spacing out during a conversation and not 'hearing' what another person said.

And last but not least, a lot of times during a therapy session, my brain just empties and I'll sit there, thinking about absolutely nothing, even if we're in the middle of some sort of engaged conversation. I can't answer a question, because I can't think. My memory gets really fleeting, and the only productive thing for me to do is to just sit there and do nothing (which is not productive at all! ). It gets hard to answer questions, because I can't formulate answers.

As Morgs (I'm glad you 'spilled'! Please don't feel badly at all for doing it. See how much I've managed to write? ) and AG have mentioned, a part of dissociation is having dissociated emotions. This is one of the contexts in which my T has used dissociation, because she thinks (she didn't shy away from this definition so much as she did from what I was experiencing in the moment as being dissociation as well, if that makes sense) that I have dissociated my emotions so that I feel no emotions connected to anything. That I can talk about things that would normally bring up emotions for some people, but I will feel nothing. Then, suddenly, a dissociated emotion could be triggered out of nowhere - but since it is dissociated, it's not immediately connected with a memory, so it seems like it comes out of the blue. A lot of times, dissociated emotions can be an explanation for why we may totally overreact to a situation that we cognitively know we should only cause a minor reaction in us.

I hope that helps a little, BB. ((((BB))))

quote:

I've got some cornerstone moments but otherwise...

Hey ((DF)) ditto - from recent years some fun memories because those few friends of recent years took photos and that really helps with recall Other than that, occasionally I get all bugged out, then wonder why at this late stage does it even matter - memory or not kind of like alziheimers (?) but watching Please don't feel sad for my experiences - I'm 'sort of' okay
You take care DF and thank you
Morgs

Oh- Beebs, i am glad you started this thread, i have been wondering too about this. I *thought* i knew what it was, since i do dissassociate sometimes. As far as i know, only in sessions though.

hmm.. Well, after reading these experiences here, i dunno what i am actually doing, because for me its rather a kind of "good" numb, and pleasant spaced out feeling...but its always triggered..
It happens sometimes if T asks me to assossiate, or make me go into memories..So, i "dive into" the memory, starting to visualize things, and "see" lots of scenes and pictures and slowly, i feel like loosing contact with my body, i loose the ability to talk and i forget about my surroundings. I go complitly into these "buble". And then i kind of "wake up" from it.. If T continue aksing questions, i feel like i have to struggle SO much finding the right words, as i am becomming a child, that lacks word and ability to express anything but simple "yes" and "no" stuff..I always feel stupid afterwards and have to ask T to repeat questions and stuff.. But..i dont even know if this is dissassociate after all.

All great responses you've had here in this thread and they all show the similarities and differences in how dissociation can present. Thanks to everyone who shared themselves in this thread as I think it helps us all.

I experience dissociation of varying intensity depending on what is going on. When I am feeling fairly present then I feel pretty normal and engaged with everything. As I start to get stressed, I start to feel farther away from everything and like I can't quite engage with the world. It's like I'm behind a glass wall and sometimes the glass is pretty clear and I can still see and hear most things and sometimes it is almost completely fogged over. It's like I can see life going on around me, but it doesn't feel like I'm part of it. I'm just walking around on auto-pilot. Often I feel like I'm following myself or like I'm inside, but being dragged around life by my physical body. I feel about 30 seconds behind usually. When someone says something it's like there is a delay and it takes a while to get to me and processed.

When I dissociate badly then I switch to another alter. Sometimes I will still have memory of this and sometimes not. It depends on what the trigger was. Usually I will get very dizzy. My ears will get this buzzy/whooshing sound and I will get very sleepy and slow. Typically I can't talk during that time either. There were and still are sometimes almost entire sessions that I can't remember. I will often get severe headaches with the switching as well.

There are many periods of my life that I don't remember or I remember because someone has told me about them, but it doesn't feel like me. My husband is always telling me about things we did and I have no idea what he is talking about. But if I ask inside I can usually find someone who does.

It is all on a spectrum and some days I'm pretty present and other days I'm gone all together. It just depends on what is going on.

Holy Moly! I was not on computer for today, and thought just assumed oh well, this thread dies without replies...apparently I was wrong! I have alot of reading to do to catch up! (I like Psychcafe reading best of all!)

Will be back with questions, no doubt...

Bebe

Beebs

Gosh I don't know where to start...I dissociate a lot (and even more in session ). I realise that I've done it from a very early age, had an ability to take myself away from where I was, when I needed to eascape. As a child I would do it by concentrating really hard on something until I was only aware of that one tiny thing and nothing else, or by repeating things in my head over and over....nursey rhymes/songs etc. I also developed the ability to go to sleep almost at will, or when again I needed to escape. This is still the case now although I battle hard to not do it as it's not dreadfully socially acceptable

I wonder if anybody here has had out of body experiences ....come out of their body and seen what was happening to them from an outside perspective? I have a few memories of this, remember feelin slightly crazy telling T abouut this - who just accepted it and explained its function and in her usual helpful, normalising, no-you're-not-crazy way

Now I am better at not dissociating, except when certain triggers prevent me from staying grounded. In session a mild dissociation will usaully result in me feeling really spacey to start with, I can nearly always hear T and recognise her voice, but I lose notion of where I am and like others have said, tend to have really slow cognition - simple questions feel impossible to answer. I also lose my speech frequently, words in my head but none able to be spoken - like for that moment I am totally mute.

Oooo dear realised I've said a lot and will stop before the urge to delete takes over! Don't know if that's answered your questions at all feathery one ....I guess we're all different and will behave and react in so many ways,

starfishy

Hi Starfish

quote:

I wonder if anybody here has had out of body experiences ....come out of their body and seen what was happening to them from an outside perspective?

If you read all our threads you'll see how 'normal' this is SO do not feel at all crazy and don't delete (unless you really want to!) - we've all learned to hide/absent ourselves, as and when necessary, to greater/lesser degrees, as needed!!

Poor Beebs, she's going to be overwhelmed with info now
G'night Starfish
Morgs

Hi Morgs,

Oh yes, thank you, re-reading I see I am not alone !! Think I was trying to answer BB's question without getting swayed by others' experiences ...confidence sometimes wobbles on me if I do.

Sleep tight,

starfish

Thank you so much, everyone...for sharing with me so generously, your expereinces...I want so much to respond to each one of your posts, but when I do that it ends being sooooo long and then I feel a bit guilty or embarrassed so I won't.

But- thank you Liese, TN, DF, Morgs, AG, Kashley, Frog, STRMS, and Starfish- so much for your replies. Does anyone mind, if I re-read and come back with some questions in a day or two? I still have some confusion...

Love,

Beebs

from reading this, I will be honest and say I'm still quite confused about my own situation. I either do and have done this *constanty* or, not at all.

I have got that buzzy ears, and dizzy thing in sessions before, though. sOmetimes my ears will start to ring very loudly..???

And alot of the time in my life I just feel like the world is kinda "fuzzy." Like it's just hard to be present, but that being said I am aware of everything that is going on around me...so ?

Once during a session with my SD, I literally almost passed out...that was kinda unmistakable. I don't know why that happened though. So I guess...idk..maybe I do this too. arrgh. Confusing! I always thought that this was kinda a response to long-term trauma, but I can't see myself as having that kind of long term trauma, and so maybe that is why my confusion..idk.

I'm really hoping that whatever I say here won't be taken wrong way...but I think that this might be what's happening with me, or has happened at lteast a lot. But It's just so hard to put my finger on it and say "aha, that's it.."

I get just kind of muddle-headed a lot. Like I can't think clrearly or abilty to reason things out or express what my questions are, espcially with authority figures..kinda stops. When I think about this problem really can see it clearly, once in awhile, it makes me cry a lot for some reason, like, I feel life is passing me by and I'm not in it. Um, it makes me feel really, really helpless and powerless, and kinda hopeless-alone, childish...something. I hate it.

The other question, is does anyone have problems with the passage of time? I read a bit about that, but I was wondering, if months can seem like years and vice-versa or, a couple of months can go by and it feels like that just happened yesterday...literally. I know some of that is normal, everyone goes through. Also, some dissassociation is normal for everyone, right? But for me it's like, no news is old news...or I forget most news..even things I did, can come back to me, or remain kinda "dormant" for lack of a better way to express this loss of memory. or I just have no sense of time, except in some kind of intellectual way, like I've learned to compensate for that by being aware that I have no sense of the passage of time. If that makes sense. Something. This tends to kinda of panic me, and make me scared, also the no memory thing tends to really panic me and make me scared and helpless feeling, no control over my life...something...awful. I will make appointments and have no memory of making them...stuff like that. Or, write stuff on the calendar and have no memory of doing that, or what I wrote down there means... I really hate this. If I could change just one thing in my life- it would be *this* problem, in all seriousness. I'd do just about *anything* to get rid of it. T told me it was diet related and put me on a diet that was real strict cause he thought I had some kind of intestinal thing that was causing it, he's really into diet/holistic type stuff..and though I got really skinny really fast, I think I still felt pretty much the same way. I gave up on the diet after some months. However, I think I should try that again, not for the brain fog but just cause I felt kinda little bit better eating right, T was right about that.

Anyone have any success overcoming this tendency? hm, I think it used to be a lot worse for me, though. My SD once asked me "do you ever feel like you are kind of expereincing the world from behind a veil?" I said yeah...and he got this weird look... "I said, what? And he said "oh...it's ok, it's going to be ok, because God has it under control." He refused to explain further...??? this response mystified me. After that he started to ask me stuff about the past, but there just doesn't seem to be much there. T has never said anything about it...I don't think.

My T talks a lot about me becoming more "real." I always thought he menat, in the sense of love and being loved, though? T's answer to all of life's problems always boils down to love. I wish that HE loved me. He often asks me, "where did you go?" and I feel silly cause usually I'm just thinking about the way the curtain looks or something really random and stupid, and feel pretty dumb saying that...so I stay quiet, when he asks that , or "what are you thinking..." Wish I could say, "ah, deep and profound thoughts, my T" -but instead it would be more like "oh I'm very focused on that little glob of peanut butter my kidlet must have wiped right there, for some reason!"

I think I'm confused about it, because other people's experiences of it come across in the language as quite dramatic, and my expereince of it isn't dramatic *at all,* or interesting- so that makes me question whether it's happening to me, or if it's really just something-else-related or if it's just ADD or something like that. hmm confusing.


Thank you all so very much for sharing about this...and please, Morgs, Starfish, and all...your posts had *nothing* wrong in them. I appreciate your knowledge and experience on this issue. But I'm also really sorry that all of you are dealing with this, for some reason I find it the most painful thing of all.

xo,

BB

Hi dear Beebs,

Yes, this kind of stuff has been an issue for me too, often much more when I have been through a lot of stress. Just feeling really dazed and like everything *looks* a bit weird and I'm in a dream. And it's easy to lose track of time, or get lost if I'm going somewhere, miss big chunks of the conversation. I found in my work with my last T a lot of it just evaporated. I'm not sure how - maybe it was partly an effect of doing the EMDR. Not that it magicked this away, but just there was less yucky stuff running round my head activating me and freaking me out, because I really talked some of that stuff out.

It's not that I ever had PTSD or flashbacks or anything like that, but I think just the *process* of being in therapy and thinking about all the bad stuff was enough to really space me out like this. Mostly it was just a sense of being sort of vacant, really immersed in a train of thought that had nothing to do with the present moment. And yeah, as you say, not especially dramatic or interesting! But sometimes really, really inconvenient as I'd forget important stuff or get lost.

I just think that by grappling with the stuff that troubles you you are moving in the right direction, Beebs. I'm guessing you'll come right as you free up some of the brain space that is currently occupied by that huge struggle for the right to be, and by the shock of facing some of the things that have happened to you and their implications. You'll come right.

love,
Jones

Oh, also, being able to *say* 'I feel really spaced out right now', or 'I'm finding it hard to think right now' with my last T really helped a great, great deal. Have you told your T about this sensation?

BB,

Yes, my ears will ring as well. I also have the odd sensation of time that you talk about. It is really obvious sometimes and other times not so much. I can have an entire day go by and it feels like 5 minutes or it can be 5 years later and it feels like it was just last week or the opposite can be true. Five minutes can seem like 5 months. It really just depends on what is going on.

I think DF is right, it sounds more dramatic when you read about what happens with other people. It really is on a spectrum as well and some of us (like me) are pretty far to one side of that spectrum so it might sound more dramatic.

BB ~ I've been reading along and just wanted to say I love your honest navigating and questioning of this. I have struggled with dissociation on and off for several years, and I maybe have a perspective I can add that is a little different - but not sure how to word it. And you have such great responses here! (I have learned a bit myself! and been comforted that I'm not alone in this too.)

I'll respond myself later when I can - if I can - and you too, take all the time you need to process and respond that you need.

Keep hanging in there on this journey. Know that if it starts to seems scary, there is much hope out there, and you are *for sure* not alone in this, no matter what is going on for you.

~ jd