Posted by hyperfocus on May 15, 2011, at 15:15:36
In reply to Re: dissocive 'issues' » Christ_empowered, posted by floatingbridge on May 15, 2011, at 13:48:54
This describes it pretty well: http://www.therapist4me.com/Dissociation.htm
Dissociation is somewhat hard to explain and manifests differently for different people. It's basically a severe marring of a persons self-identity and emotional integrity and position in time and space.
For me, one of the first things I began to suffer with as my SP developed was a very uncomfortable feeling as I was walking that my legs didn't belong to me. By that time I was getting bullied like everyday, not physically, but psychologically as it seemed everybody in the world had ganged up to taunt and harrass me about my appearance, including the manner of how I walked which I was told looked like some manner of animal. Like I said it's hard to describe but it felt somehow that I was like floating, like I wasn't connected to my body, and the harder I tried to correct my walking the worse it got. Many times when I was being abused I'd just consciously sort of separate from the situation and those people and ignore it or pretend it wasn't bothering me. As the years went by and my paranoia ratcheted up I began fearing and believing that everybody was watching me and laughing at me, and the dissociation got worse as I tried everything I could to take myself away from the most horrifying painful thing I had ever experienced, to which I got dropped off to by car every morning for seven years.One thing most people with dissociation report is emotional numbing. It's almost a universal method of coping with trauma - very many victims of rape report going numb, despite the pain, and just sort of standing away and watching what's happening. But it's two-edged sword because after the trauma sometimes you apparently can't stop your mind from going back to it. Many days my skin feels like it's on fire. Reliving things from the past is more than memories - I'm actually transported back there and can relive the feelings, and that awful horrifying sense of everybody looking and laughing at me. Meanwhile I go through present life like a robot - cold and emotionless - with nothing hurting or making me feel good or bad. It's like my whole mind is filled up with the past and doesn't have any processing time left for the present, I guess sort of like when your computer gets bogged down with a web page with 100 Flash videos and stops responding.
As you get older dissociation can become extreme and debilitating. As an adult, when the traumatic times were past, I've always had this fragmentation of mind, where it seems that my thinking is split into at least three pieces or voices. There is this very skinny ugly deformed stupid kid who doesn't even look human, there's this hate-filled, criticizing, obscene person who constantly berates the kid for his worthlessness, and there's this calm objective rational analytical person, who is the part that is writing this, who stands at a distance and cooly surveys the other two fighting and trys to mediate and rationalize with them and and makes recommendations on possible diagnoses and medications. The third voice is what keeps me together and maitains a veneer of normality and is the reason I'm still alive or not locked up somewhere, but it can't do anything about the fear and shame and anger and it can't feel love or happiness. They all basically have their own spheres of inluence. The reason I take meds is to try to integrate these three parts.
Like I said it's hard to describe really and has a wide scope of symptoms but it al stems from severe trauma. Everybody dissociates when they daydream or fantasize or become immersed in something, but for some people it becomes a permanent part of who they are, as their mind struggles to deal with something that is as alien to living as death.
CPTSD: social phobia, major depression, dissociation.
Currently on 150mg amitriptyline + 12.5mg tianeptine + .25mg risperidone, single dose at night.
Improving.
poster:hyperfocus
thread:984747
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20110407/msgs/985395.html