One of my biggest hurdles in healing is dissociation. I numb out when it comes to feeling anything past mad, sad or glad. I believe that I cannot progress until I learn how to deal with this. Found an interesting website if anyone else is interested in learning a bit more about it.
http://www.isst-d.org/default.asp?contentID=1
You're quite welcome!
One fact that surprised me was the mention that a feeling can come on out of nowhere for no apparent reason, such as sadness, and then go away as randomly. This has happened to me for years and I had no idea it is dissociation. The sadness can be overwhelming and pops out of nowhere for as briefly as a few minutes. I guess it makes sense that if you shut down at one place it will resurface in another like squeezing a bag of jello..
An excellent share wingnut - I too found the FAQ's around dissociation interesting. There are days when I just find myself in my kitchen with no idea how long I have been standing there and no idea why. Better than it used to be, once I would have the same experience in town, no idea how I got there, or why, or how long I had been standing, staring at a shop window, blankly. That was proper scary. The fact that it has decreased in intensity so much has to be a sign of slow healing, although outside of close up hyper vigilance and my political activism the world, for me, barely exists. It's all so foggy.
It's good to hear that the intensity is decreasing, flookadelic.
One thing I have found to be frustrating is the comfort in the fog. In the morning silence when I'm drinking my coffee pre-work, it's almost a welcome escape to sit and zone out for a bit.
I don't lose time; for me, it's more of a numbing of emotions that I want to get past. Feeling nothing, shutting down, checking out whenever the heavy hitting questions come at me during therapy is a real hurdle for me.
...and on a lighter note I just realized I've been walking around all day with my sweatpants on backwards. Some days I crack myself up.
It's strange, but I find researching this condition of CPTSD tricky as I tend to dissociate as I read. It can be so hard at times to get through a paragraph. Sometimes the background knowledge that I have this condition through perpetrators seeps through and I get triggered. But mostly I tend to unwillingly zone out. Am doing my best though. I like to try and give back and one needs to be well informed to give of ones best.
OMG Wingnut, that is so funny! I burst out laughing and scared my dog :yes:
LOL Wingnut!
Thanks for the link. Finally felt ready to look at this. Read the FAQs.
I also numb out a lot, but I can't figure out where this fits in the listed types on dissociation.
I do have dissociative amnesia. I have time I can't remeber from childhood, some recovered. I also often lose small amounts of time, like the website said, I have to scramble to catch up on a conversation, or realize that I don't know what was said in the previous minute of a tv show.
Thanks for the website. My friend said she lives her life on autopilot a lot, and I think that she might be dissociating. I'm going to link her to this website.
I certainly have a problem with dissociating, but I've been aware of that since I was a teenager. It's a leftover from being physically abused. Being mindful about it is a much larger step.