What Is Dissociation?

Dr. K’s Guide to Mental Health explores Anxiety, Depression, ADHD, and Meditation

#shorts #drk #mentalhealth

[puddlejumper]

When I was young and being screamed at by my dad I could feel myself disconnecting. I can't anymore. It's just normal now.

[quetzalthegamer]

For those who might find a visual aide useful, you can see dissociation in the expression called the "thousand-yard stare".

[seanahern]

I heard my parents drunk screaming at each other from the age of 6-12. The fear and helplessness you experience, the only way to cope is to ignore - which leads to dissociation. I'm 35 now and find my mind wandering, thinking about the past, and I feel like I have to focus hard to snap myself back to the present.

[VampieOreo]

I already had an intensely traumatic childhood, but I'd managed to be resilient (or as resilient as I could be). But then as a teen I got life altering news that essentially ripped my only support system to shreds.

I fully stopped being a person. I felt like I was cosplaying myself for other people. But internally, I no longer responded to my name. I wasn't connected to my physical self, like my body was just a subpar place I was temporarily staying--like living in a shitty apartment where you can't wait for your lease to run out.

Nothing mattered, and I had no interest in overcoming the challenge that had just been thrown to me by life.

Like I'd been living my life story up to that point, finally realized it had a stupid plot, and abandoned it as an unfinished project. I had no desire to see what happened next for that person I had previously been.

I was just existing. And it stayed that way for about 10 years.

[DelNiceBeto]

Thank you Mom and Dad for teaching to dissociate

[miguelcarvalho]

This used to happen to me a lot, but since then I got a little bit more emotionally intelligent, I started to notice the dissociation, and all of it's signs, I'm glad that now I can face difficulty and stressful moments totally awake.

[РайанКупер-эо]

I feel unplugged for the most of my life.

[ashoftmrw]

I had an extremely abusive childhood (for anyone familiar with the adverse childhood experiences study or ACES, I had 9 out of 10 ACES - for reference, 4 out of 10 is considered severe). About a year into the pandemic, I suddenly returned to my body one afternoon. Literally had a moment where I was like “holy shit I’m a person with a body and a life”. I have absolutely no idea when I started dissociating but if I had to guess it was when I was a child. I have vague memories of being 10 or 11, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, feeling a sense of confusion - almost like that feeling that happens when you say a word too many times and it starts sounding strange and nonsensical - while looking at my own face.

I was likely “gone” aka lost in dissociation for 20 years. I still struggle with periods of dissociation because of the way I ended up setting up my life (at least for me, because I was dissociated, I had very little connection to my own wants/needs and I made a lot of choices to please others) and because I have complex PTSD flashbacks but, having been back in my body as an adult, I can actually find my way back a lot more easily. It’s almost like I was lost for all those years and I happened upon a path out of the darkness in 2021 and now that path is easier for me to find??

Dissociation sucks. It robs you of your own life. It robs you of your agency. It’s meant to be a place of solace but if you get stuck, it’s like being a prisoner, watching your life happen to you with very little control. I hear it so often described as like looking at the world through a pane of glass but that just doesn’t capture how awful it is to be stuck in it, especially for years on end. For me, it’s like being a passenger instead of the driver and the drivers only goal is to just keep driving. Maybe I can jerk the wheel sometimes to avoid a crash but i missed exit after exit after exit that I wanted to take. All the experiences I want to have and the roads I wanted to take just passed me by and all I could do is try to catch a glimpse, try to imagine what might have been if I actually got to decide where to go. And what’s really fucking hard, when you DO come back, you finally FEEL all those years of buried agony and you finally remember why you needed to escape and all your brain wants to do is just go back to when you didn’t have to feel the full force of that suffering.

But it’s worth it to make an effort to try to live in the real world. As far as we know, we only get this one chance at this whole living thing. As hard as living can be and has been for some of us, existence as a human being is incredible. We are more than the sum of our parts. Our bodies and our brains are made up of exactly the same stuff as the rest of the universe but, somehow, through billions of years of physics playing out and chance chemical reactions, we exist. We are the universe itself made conscious of itself and it is beautiful and horrible and funny and stupid but mostly it’s absolutely fucking sublime.

[Kamil-lmpi]

I've had a depersonalization and derealization disorder for over 2 years straight. It was active the whole time, not only when stress occured, it was 2 years straight of me dissociated. There were times I thought that I'll never get out of this. Heard stories of people having it for much longer and that made me feel hopeless. It isn't like that anymore. First the derealization went out and few month after that the depersonalization also disappeared. It was hard and took a lot of work to stabilize my emotions which was hard because I was detached from them, the more something hurt, the more dissociation occured and I was just so numb and absent from the moment. But finally I was able to snap back and I'm writing this wishing that someone can find some hope If they're in a difficult or even a similar situation to mine.

[gracechan]

This happened to me as a child being fostered. Felt unhappy most of my life and made mental health a priority at 33. 39 now and managed to heal all that foster family trauma. Feel like my personality and life goals changed a lot. It takes a lot of work and tears but it can be done and is worth it. Felt like I was walking around with invisible buckshot in my back, all these tiny triggers that would cause so much pain and one by one they had to be taken out to let the body heal.
Good luck to those who choose to walk that path.

[wy]

i grew up in an extremely abusive environment, where i also was neglected. i’ve recently been told that this isn’t normal. it’s odd because i can’t understand how people normally are…i don’t know how to explain it. i feel like i’m overdramatic.

[angieblake]

The severe pain caused by the 2 men who should have love and protected me the most, my father and husband, I can't describe the horrendous pain. They cared more about power and control than treating me well. 😢😢😢

[ry.hoshiko]

I suffered so much trauma from toxic parents and highschool bullying. Right now I dissociate and being on autopilot so much my brainis just 'in the clouds' most of the time. Only on rare occasions, I actually felt like I'm conciously aware or 'awake' and not detached. The part where Dr K says the brain just unplugs is absolutely true.

[haliec]

Through trauma therapy I worked out that 3 days after a stressful situation is when I feel overwhelmed. It takes that time for my brain & body to process it. So now after an overwhelming situation, I know I need to plan my unplugging time and I literally turn my phone off and have a "self care day'.

[chickenmonger]

I think the issue with the coping mechanism is two fold. It makes you not react to the situation and others in a fully integrated way. Emotions are not emotions if they aren’t inside the process. Whether yours, or other peoples. Which leads to the second part of the problem. Which is that afterwords, you still aren’t able to associate with the experience in an integrated way.

I had to go back in, and relive the thing in the manner I should’ve to understand the aspect of myself in a living and bleeding manner, rather than a scarred and hard piece of my cognition and identity. Throbbing endlessly, yet still a phantom pain, because it can’t be localized.

It’s like cutting shrapnel out of your psyche. Do not recommend. Feel it in it’s time, if you can. It’ll cost you more later.

[sue]

This is the best, most concise, explanation ive ever seen.

[TumblinWeeds]

As an adult I am extremely good at managing other people’s anger, and I can often change the minds of people who actively hate me. As a child, well, you can imagine how often I was hated by my parents before I learned :)

[maggie]

Id like to reccommend the book, Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists by Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, and Onno Van der Hart. It has been a major help understanding my friends and my own (far milder) dissociation.

[BikeLife]

Happened to me and my child because of narcissistic abuse. The first time it happened to my child was very scary and it was extremely difficult to snap them out of it. Happened in front of a family court appointed therapist who was trying to force my child to have a relationship with her abusive father, and she wouldn't respond. I had to TELL the therapist what was happening and TELL her to stop asking my child questions, and explain why it was happening. She completely dismissed everything and said we needed to push the child through it and teach her to respect her father. The level of ignorance was horrific.

[Fake-dqgb]

This even happens with physical pain. But your brain doesn't disconnect, your body does. You're screaming in agony and all the sudden your body just walks into another room away from your brain and slams the door. You still feel pain, but only like 25%. It feels distant, like it's knocking on the door to get in from the next room. Then you start having pain PTSD flashbacks