Dissociation lite -- and fears of dissociation

[Asche]

I've been noticing a lot of times when I feel like a part of my "self" just goes to sleep for some period of time, which I mostly notice later, when I realize I've spent an evening or a day utterly out of touch with whatever I was supposed to be doing or had intended to do.  It's not like I can't remember that time, but it's like I was drugged or something suppressed who I am and was just running on automatic pilot, following my impulses.  For instance, reading, usually mindless stuff, books I've reread so often I can practically recite them from memory.  Sometimes I'm not aware of it until it's over, but more often it feels like a compulsion to not think about anything and to immerse myself in whatever it is I'm distracting myself with.

I've also noticed myself getting distracted while driving.  I find myself looking at something other than the road and the traffic while at the same time realizing at some level that I'm not paying attention to the road and that that is dangerous, but it takes a real effort of will to pull myself back, and a few minutes or a few seconds later, I'm back to staring at, say, a tree or the sign on a building.

I think it's always been an issue with me, but back when I was working, the fear that I wouldn't get my work done and would get in trouble (fired, yelled at by my boss, etc.) would yank me back onto task.  However, I retired a few months ago and there's so much less that I have to do that nothing terrible happens if I'm out of it for a whole day or so.  It's like some unconscious self in me wants me to stay spaced out as much as possible.

I remember this happened a lot when I was a kid.  Basically, any time I didn't have to be aware of what was going on, my mind was off somewhere where I wasn't conscious of even existing.  They called it "daydreaming," and it was usually some fantasy about insects or trains or something.  I now think it was a way of escaping from the hellish reality in which I was always in trouble and could never seem to be this utterly different person that everyone around me told me I had to be, and where I had no control over my life.  And where I didn't feel safe.  Van der Kolk mentions something about how trauma patients who never had anyone they felt safe with growing up have a particularly hard time recovering, and I definitely did not have anyone I felt safe with.  I only felt safe when I was alone and could hope I'd be left alone.

(That was my greatest wish until I was like 16 or so -- to be just left alone.   I even deliberately gave wrong answers on one of those standardized tests in the hope that they would stop calling me "so smart" and insisting that I could do better if I would only just try.  Even today, being called "smart" is kind of triggering for me.)

I also have these episodes when it's like a wave flows over my mind, taking with it all awareness of what I was doing or saying.  It's particularly distressing when it happens in the middle of a sentence, or when I'm playing the piano (and have to figure out where I am on the page of the music and even where my hands are on the keyboard.)

Sometimes I wonder if this is some sort of partial DID, like there are alters which kind of take over my executive functioning (or disable it) and lead me to do stuff I would never do.  But I don't have spans of time which I can't account for.  And it doesn't feel like whatever it is is a full-blown personality.

Lately I've been kind of worried that, with all this dissociation and increasing inability to actually make plans and carry them out, my personality is falling apart.  Or, worse, that some other part of my mind is going to take over and erase my current personality, so that it will be as if it had never existed.

And then I sometimes wonder if I have some progressive neurological deterioration -- I'm getting clumsier and stumbling and dropping stuff even more than before.  I have one friend who says he can't bike because he has no balance due to Parkinson's disease  (I notice my balance is gone, too), and another who got brain cancer last spring (she had a tumor which was removed in an emergency surgery -- just as COVID-19 was overwhelming the health care system), and I think that's what has me thinking of neurological disorders.

[Bella]

I can relate to a lot of what you've written. Especially the part of being out of touch with whatever I'm supposed to do, feeling drugged, and feeling compelled to read something over and over again. I cannot concentrate on reading anything else but stuff about CPTSD. I can read the same articles over and over again. I think it is classical avoidance behaviour. When I read I don't need to feel anything or think about anything stressful, even though I read about CPTSD. To me, it's also a form of intellectualization, which is a coping mechanism. As long as I can read factual information, l'm ok.

"It's like some unconscious self in me wants me to stay spaced out as much as possible." This also feels very familiar to me. In this spaced out state, it's very difficult to get anything done. In a sense it is comfortable, cause one don't have to face difficult feelings, the demands and expectations of family, and everyday life in general. But in the longer run it is debilitating, and very destructive.
Thank you for writing this post. You put words to something that was hard for me to explain.
I hope you find something or someone to help you with this, and that you won't have to worry about it being a neurological degenerative issue. Maybe see a doctor about it would be good, just to rule out those worries and thoughts?

[Bermuda]

I wish I had answers for you. It sounds like you're going through a difficult time. I can relate do your feelings of increased "day dreaming" when not under direct time/external pressure. Sometimes I wonder if there has been so much pressure in our lives put on us, that in these moments it's like our brains need to completely go on holiday to compensate. That's at least what it feels like for me. Likewise, if nothing is there to pull me back, I don't know what I would do.

I hope you manage to find the answers you need.

[mojay]

Hello Asche, I really relate to what you've written. Thank you for writing this, I feel so much less alone in my DPDR experiences.

I've been noticing a lot of times when I feel like a part of my "self" just goes to sleep for some period of time, which I mostly notice later, when I realize I've spent an evening or a day utterly out of touch with whatever I was supposed to be doing or had intended to do.  It's not like I can't remember that time, but it's like I was drugged or something suppressed who I am and was just running on automatic pilot, following my impulses.

I really relate to this. Time seems to run differently when I am dissociated. Even though I know I was at home and can remember being at home, the details fuzz out. What exactly did I do? Did I enjoy it? I just don't know. I find myself repeating tasks or not doing tasks at all and only thinking I've done them. The bit about the part of yourself going to sleep is such an accurate metaphor!!! Thank you for giving me the words to explain how it feels.

I'm not paying attention to the road and that that is dangerous, but it takes a real effort of will to pull myself back, and a few minutes or a few seconds later, I'm back to staring at, say, a tree or the sign on a building.

I think it's always been an issue with me, but back when I was working, the fear that I wouldn't get my work done and would get in trouble (fired, yelled at by my boss, etc.) would yank me back onto task.

I experience this as well, I had to stop driving for a period of time because the DPDR was just so awful that I either couldn't drive safely or I became too terrified to drive. When I realize that I've been "out to pasture" I work really hard to pull myself back in. I am always afraid, particularly in work settings or social settings. Afraid of consequences of being "away" mostly. It becomes an exhausting cycle of trying to hyper-focus out of fear, and then the fear & exhaustion become so overwhelming that I dissociate away from the stress of this existence.

Or, worse, that some other part of my mind is going to take over and erase my current personality, so that it will be as if it had never existed.

This sounds like an intensely scary thought, I really feel for you  (I hope the hug is okay)
Anyways, I just really relate to what you are saying and I thank you for being so truthful and brave to share your fears with us.

Is there a possibility of seeing a neurologist? Perhaps even to rule out or ease fears of a deteriorating condition?

[Asche]

Is there a possibility of seeing a neurologist? Perhaps even to rule out or ease fears of a deteriorating condition?

Actually, I am seeing a neurologist (just had first consult), but about different issues (motor control issues, lack of balance, etc.)

I have discussed this with my therapist.

[Asche]

Semi-related:

I have the sense that the conscious part of me isn't the real me.  It's a construct that I created in childhood to deal with the way everyone around me demanded that I be someone who I wasn't and couldn't really be.  It's like it's a mask or a Potemkin village.  The problem is that it's the only "me" that I know.

At the same time, I have this image of my "true self" as a child, maybe 10 or 11 years old (the age of my "* years" which kind of broke me), who was put into a concrete vault which was buried under the basement floor (I think of Arsenic and Old Lace.)   Whenever I'm quiet enough and try to get in touch with myself, I think I can feel the suffering of that child, who has never grown.  Or maybe that child is dead, and I'm just remembering the suffering from five decades ago.

I also have what I call my "inner oracle,"  which occasionally guides me when I don't know where to go in life, sometimes by speaking to me (no, not auditory hallucinations), or sometimes by simply giving me a sense that a particular direction is right.  Most of the time, I feel lost, like I'm wandering in the woods on a dark moonless night with no trail (I've actually hiked in the dark, but there was always a trail I could find with my feet), but when I look back on my life, it looks like I've (mostly) gone the "right" way, or at least a way that seems right in retrospect.  I often feel that the Inner Oracle is a lot smarter than I am, so I should do what it says, when it says something.  I also think maybe it is really the totality of my self, of which the "mask" is only a part.  Like there's a whole me, but I constructed a sort of alter that is my conscious self to protect my "real self" or my "full self."

DID "lite," maybe?

The significance of age 10 or 11:  that was when I was moved to a private boys' school, where I was constantly berated and punished for forgetting things and for saying what I felt and reading in class (so I wouldn't have to be aware I was), and where they tried to make me into a properly masculine boy (which failed utterly.)   I spent most of those two years thinking constantly about suicide, when I wasn't escaping by "daydreaming" (= dissociating.)  So I was getting emotionally beaten up at home and at school, and there was no relief anywhere.

Another thing that happened which might be related was that my sister was born when I was 9.  The parents had been pretty obvious that they'd been hoping for a girl when each of us boys (other than the oldest) was born, and I think my mother started cathecting her instead of me once she got old enough to seem like a person.  But that's just a theory.

I don't have any feeling for what I was like before I was 10, but I suspect I wasn't so uniformly miserable back then.   Anyway, it seems like most of what I am now dates back to when I was 10, and the * of that time broke most of whatever I was before then.  I feel like I'm a bundle of poorly knitted broken bones, and the bones were broken during those two years.  At some point, my brother talked to me and somehow got me to see that I had the option of asking to be transferred to the local public school (USAan term), so when I was 12, I was no longer in That Awful School.  The public school was too busy with worse kids than me, so they didn't devote anywhere near as much effort making me miserable as That Awful School, so things eased up.   At some point, I resolved to never expect help or support or mercy from anyone but myself, and as I learned to live that way, things got better.  I learned to stop seeing my parents as parents and started seeing them as just obstacles to be worked around, and put them (actually, most adults) on an "information diet," letting them only see the most innocuous things in my life, and that helped, too.

And then at age 18 I could finally get out of the house and out of the (USAan) South and start to learn to live my life, pretty much from scratch.

One good thing: I know I can survive most anything that happens to me, since nothing that can happen to me can be as bad as what I've already gone through.

[mojay]

Asche, thank you for sharing. Very glad you are seeing a neurologist! I hope that they can give you some meaningful answers. I have heard of OSDD, which has "less intense symptoms than DID" (Wikipedia's wording) so very much it could be that OSDD is DID-lite??? Just a thought.

I just want to say that I hear you, I think you're very brave for recounting your story. Those things should have never happened to you. I am so grateful that you survived and are here on OOTS sharing your story.

[IRedW77]

I cannot concentrate on reading anything else but stuff about CPTSD. I can read the same articles over and over again. I think it is classical avoidance behaviour. When I read I don't need to feel anything or think about anything stressful, even though I read about CPTSD. To me, it's also a form of intellectualization, which is a coping mechanism. As long as I can read factual information, l'm ok.

"It's like some unconscious self in me wants me to stay spaced out as much as possible." This also feels very familiar to me. In this spaced out state, it's very difficult to get anything done. In a sense it is comfortable, cause one don't have to face difficult feelings, the demands and expectations of family, and everyday life in general. But in the longer run it is debilitating, and very destructive.

I've definitely been obsessively reading about CPTSD. It is a distraction. It should perhaps be more upsetting or something, but I really resonate with your idea about intellectualizing as a defense.

It's hard for me to differentiate though. If I'm not reading about CPTSD I'm probably reading the news on my phone. I'm always doing something on my phone.

I also have to personally consider my ADHD. Part of that involves hyper-focus. I'm always turning the world around me in and out as I focus on anything. I can't multitask. It's not so much all or nothing, as all or everything.

Again, what you said about spacing out is relevant to me. But again, it's tuning out everything else and that's hyper-focus for me. Part of that state also involves not getting anything else done. That's a classic element of ADHD though. Without medication it's very difficult for me to get out of that state at all.

I have been thinking a lot about whether I dissociate. I'm beginning to think I might, but it could also be a lack of focus. Without medication I struggle to read because I (guess it would literally be defined as dissociation) get distracted and read half a page while thinking of something else and have to start over.

If it's a textbook and not interesting I find it impossible to get through a single page without doing that. If it's something fascinating I probably only do it once every 5 pages or so.

But with medication I barely do it at all. If I do do it I notice right away. I won't just wake up to discover I'm at the bottom of a page and didn't register anything. I can kind of watch myself doing it instead.

I have actually discovered an ability to turn it on and off since my medication. I was reading a book to my daughter aloud a few months ago when I realized that as long as she didn't interrupt (which she loves to do now) that I could read an entire book aloud without paying any attention to it.

Tonight I also did an experiment. I ate McDonald's which I used to love when I was a teenager. I don't like it very much now (my kids love it). I decided to focus on what it was like to eat the same food as a teenager and just stared off while I was eating. The food tasted much better, but once my kids talked or made too much noise I'd lose it and the food wouldn't taste very good again.

I just thought I could do that and I could. I figured if I can have bad experiences  materialize unbidden then I can bring good ones up at will.

[Bella]

Thank you, IRedW77 for validating those experiences  of compulsive reading and intellectualization. They line up with a lot of experiences, feelings and actions I feel I have very little control over. I know I'm not helpless, but the feeling of helplessness overshadows everything. I too spend way to much time on my phone, and I think it's a form of dissociation. I don't have ADHD, so medication would not do me any good.

Asche: I'm sorry to hear about everything you've been going through, and the suffering you have endured. It must be really hard for you to manage all this. I feel for you, and hope you can find peace and healing for your fractured sense of self. I experiences some of the same symptoms when it comes to not feeling like one whole person, but more like bits and pieces where some of the pieces are confusing and don't feel like "me".
I don't know if you would agree with this description though...
Sending you a hug of support,  if that is ok with you!

[IRedW77]

Bella:

It is some kind of coping mechanism. I woke up tense and anxious this morning because of stuff my kids were doing. I contemplated trying to have some quiet and trying to collect myself that way, but I reached for my phone instead.

I still feel the same underneath, but it takes some of the edge off, if that makes sense. Maybe this is what people with drinking or drug problems do. I don’t know.

I lived with an alcoholic roommate once and tried on heavy drinking for a year or so. I rarely drink anything alcoholic now, that was a phase. People always talk about getting stressed and wanting a drink. Even then I didn’t get it. I never feel upset or stressed and start craving a drink.

I do crave escape, but escape is a moving target for me. It’s the thing I’ve been obsessed with lately—whatever that is. If I’m playing video games it’s the game. It’s all I want to do in any free time, but eventually it just wears out. I just don’t want it anymore. I want whatever the new thing is.

Some of these interests rotate in and out. I might want to play video games again in 6 months or a year. It’s frustrating because I have no control over what my focal obsession is, or when it’s time is up.

When I’m not doing whatever it is I’m thinking about it. If I’m posting on message boards a lot I’m composing a reply to a thread I just read in my head while I’m doing something else. If I’ve been reading I’m contemplating what I read and I might grab my phone to google some idea that occurs to me.

I don’t know. Please let me know if any of that sounds familiar. I never know precisely what causes anything. If there are commonalities it’d be good to know.

I’ve been on the OOTF message boards for about a month. I’ve posted several threads about various issues I have and started long conversations.

I posted about that experience expecting the same thing and got crickets.

As far as ADHD if you’ve been tested for it then I wouldn’t worry about it. My T and I have been working on whether or not I’ll get an actual diagnosis of CPTSD. My T is not familiar with it, so I’ve been educating both of us.

Anyway... he told me the differential diagnostics are especially difficult. I have depression and ADHD and symptoms of both overlap with CPTSD. So CPTSD can cause ADHD like symptoms.

Medication has changed and helped with a LOT for me, but it hasn’t made a dent in that. I’m the same way with food. I want lots of one kind of food or the same meal every day for a week and then I’m just done and on to something else. With food it rotates more, but I don’t have any greater control over it.

[Bella]

IRedW77:
It does sound familiar many of the things you are mentioning. But I think we should continue elsewhere so we don't steal Asche's thread! 
If it's ok with you I could send you a pm...

[IRedW77]

Bella:
That would be fine. No one ever PMed me on the OOTF boards, but please send away and I'll figure it out. 

[Asche]

Asche: I'm sorry to hear about everything you've been going through, and the suffering you have endured. It must be really hard for you to manage all this. I feel for you, and hope you can find peace and healing for your fractured sense of self.

I can't say that I'm aware of suffering at the moment.  But one of my coping mechanisms seems to be to stop feeling.  I think if I were suffering it would be at least a sign of progress.

I assume that a lot of what I feel is stuff left over from the pain of my childhood, but I mostly can't remember what happened, except a vague narrative.    The times I have tried to remember how it felt, I start to feel bad, like I'm suffocating or something, and then within a second or two, it's like my mind kicks me out.

I've had the sense that something inside me knows what way I have to go; I call that my "inner oracle."  I often feel lost in a dark wood (cf: the beginning of Dante's Inferno), but when I look back on my life, I see a path that goes pretty consistently towards wherever I am at the moment.  There don't seem to have been much in the way of blind alleys.

So since I can't figure out any other way to deal with my life, I just go blindly in what seems like a random direction and try to have faith that wherever I end up going is where I need to go.  I like to think it's my inner oracle leading me.   I think it's my substitute for hope.

[mojay]

Asche, your response was very moving. I think that is a very profound description of how you define your hope.

I can't say that I'm aware of suffering at the moment....  I think if I were suffering it would be at least a sign of progress.
The times I have tried to remember how it felt, I start to feel bad, like I'm suffocating or something...

This stuck out to me in particular. While I do not want to tell you that you are suffering, I think that your strong negative emotions tied to remembering could indicate the progress you referenced in suffering. If you feel that emoting is key to progress, then perhaps your inner oracle can help lead you in that task.
Is your inner oracle someone you could specifically ask for help in guiding you through the memories? Or perhaps guiding you back to your emotions and true self when you begin to cope by not feeling?