Keep Slipping Out of Present; Losing Feelings

[movementforthebetter]

Hi all, since last week I've been finding it difficult to stay present. I had a particularly flashbacky EMDR session last week and since then I have caught myself spacing out or "feeling unreal" a few times. Sometimes it's just that I forgot where I was and what I was doing for a second, other times I feel a bit dizzy and things look artificial. I noticed that I didn't mind these states. Hopefully somebody can identify with that, I'm not sure how else to describe it.

The other thing that concerns me is that I keep "losing" my feelings. I get sad, start to tear up, but then on the brink of crying the sadness vanishes. I am on an SNRI about 4 months in, so maybe that's playing a role, but I was able to feel all my feelings before.

I'm going through multiple huge life changes right now and this past weekend was my deceased F's b-day. I "felt" sad and yet didn't fully feel it. More like I was aware of grief but couldn't connect to it. In some ways these things are making it easier to keep going to do what I need to but I worry that it's not healthy.

I wasn't even aware of dissociation or that I did it just a few months ago. I don't have a session with my T for couple weeks. Are these issues something I should worry about before then? Anyone else go through temporary spells like this? Could it get worse or better on its own? Thanks!

[meursault]

I tried a new EMDR guy over the weekend and it has been terrible since.  I am dissociating badly.  When I left I walked in front of several cars in a stupour, and was bawling on my way home.  Felt like I was being completely overwhelmed and broken down.  I don't think this is a good thing.  I also have that feeling of it being unreal,  Your description is very apt.  It's sort of horribly agonizing and amusingly trippy at the same time.  I very much identify with that.  I also feel like my feet are on the ground but my eyes are sort of up in an airplane, and the ground seems a mile below me.

I was on Effexor for a couple of years, and I tried describing it as my feelings were "cauterized".  Maybe similar to what you're mentioning...  I described it as there being some cold, empty, passionless, unfeeling, sober minded me inside, just watching me go through the motions of having emotions.  I would just watch myself laughing at a joke or whatever, but just feeling dead inside.

Is that similar?  Kind of sounds like it to me, and sounds like serious dissociation going on with you from being overwhelmed as well.  (IMHO!)  Have you had that from the EMDR before, or is that feeling mainly unrelated?

Meursault

[movementforthebetter]

I tried a new EMDR guy over the weekend and it has been terrible since.  I am dissociating badly.  When I left I walked in front of several cars in a stupour, and was bawling on my way home.  Felt like I was being completely overwhelmed and broken down.  I don't think this is a good thing.  I also have that feeling of it being unreal,  Your description is very apt.  It's sort of horribly agonizing and amusingly trippy at the same time.  I very much identify with that.  I also feel like my feet are on the ground but my eyes are sort of up in an airplane, and the ground seems a mile below me.

I was on Effexor for a couple of years, and I tried describing it as my feelings were "cauterized".  Maybe similar to what you're mentioning...  I described it as there being some cold, empty, passionless, unfeeling, sober minded me inside, just watching me go through the motions of having emotions.  I would just watch myself laughing at a joke or whatever, but just feeling dead inside.

Is that similar?  Kind of sounds like it to me, and sounds like serious dissociation going on with you from being overwhelmed as well.  (IMHO!)  Have you had that from the EMDR before, or is that feeling mainly unrelated?

Meursault

Hi Mersault, thanks for replying.  I'm sorry to hear you're dealing with it too, and sounds like a lot worse than me! Are you new to EMDR? This is the first session I've had where I've felt like this. Normally I am an exhausted pile of feelings like dirty laundry on the floor, haha. This time I feel generally ok, I guess because I'm not feeling much.

If you're not already, try to focus on self care, whatever that is to you, and be compassionate to yourself. For me it often means sleeping a lot more the day of and day after a session, and completing the basics if I can. A couple days later I usually feel "normal" again and can get on with life.

But, yeah, that trippy feeling, right!? From my own experience it's very much like a flashback to an mdma trip,  but not as intense, thankfully. My meds have some similar side effects. I don't feel out of body, it's more like all the trees are made of plastic and the world is lit by lamps rather than the sun. Like sometimes I am walking around a scale model world Beetlejuice-style. It generally doesn't last long. It's not upsetting or horrifying to me but I find I have to really focus my eyes to make things look real again and sometimes I have a lot of trouble doing that.

I am also on effexor currently. It's worked better than any antidep I have tried previously.

For me, SSRIs were even more like mdma... With jittery vision and tracers and brain zaps and dizziness if I moved my eyes too fast. And still prefferable to the alternative emotional states which were out of control. But SSRIs did really deaden my feelings, except for the last one I was on, which gradually made anxiety a lot worse. It also gave me an audible hallucination - not cool!

As I go deeper in therapy I wonder if I have been living in a perpetual swing between trauma, emotional flashback and dissociation for many years, with just blips of normalcy. There was a day when I was 19 where I remember acknowledging that I was not happy & optimistic and was done pretending I was. Problem was, I had no idea that was actually a sign I needed a medical intervention, and I never went off the rails enough to be hospitalized, so I've been working through my issues bit by bit, digging a little deeper each time. It took 17 years for me to even understand that I dissociate! No Dr's noticed it. Spacing out has gotten a bit more frequent or noticible over the years, but the duration is also short.

As for life, I need to tough it out for another month or so, then I will have my own space where I will feel safer to let out my feelings. I think that will help a lot. Right now I don't want to feel too much around my ex. Maybe that emotional stuffing is spilling into my alone time, too.

I guess if I am recognizing this now it will get better so long as I keep chipping at it, like everything else.

[meursault]

Dissociation is a new realization for me as well.  I *thought* I dissociated, but wasn't sure.  My last therapist (whom I recently quit) asked me about it and said I dissociate constantly, and further told me she sees a lot of "Structural dissociation".  I read up on that, and, well, yep, that describes it all pretty well.  With me, I think I am constantly off balance and confused around people, becasue I almost always dissociate.  I think it's like waves.  I dissociate, then have a moment where I piece together what happened the last few seconds, then dissociate then skim back to awareness to evaluate what just happened.  It's like my brain is checking in with reality to monitor what is happening, and then I retreat back to safety.  I think it must have been a pretty effective way to deal with my Mom and sisters.  Then occasionally, when something triggers me, the confusion and piecing together of what just happened spirals into emotional flashbacks until I have a complete breakdown.  The monitoring becomes disconnected from the sanctuary inside, and everything becomes frightening and arbitrary and chaotic.  I *think* this happens quite a bit.

Just thought I'd describe my stuff as well as I can, maybe you see some commonality there, not sure.  I could also be freakishly messed up!

The last therapist and I would try EMDR, but I was still trying to build trust (before it was destroyed!), so we only did tiny amounts, generally only three cycles of movement before I'd dissociate too much (with good memories!!!).  She told me on my second session that she thinks it would take me months to process a good memory, and I was a long way away from having that trust when it all ended.  (I've cried a lot about her since it ended...)  I think she's just too inexperienced and botched things.

That guy I saw on the weekend messed me up.  I don't feel good about it at all.  I felt like I was constantly being hammered away at relentlessly as I crumbled under his pressure.  I would start to answer something, and he would stop me before I finished, and then insist that was what I meant, when quite often I was still prefacing, and actually meant the opposite.  I was completely cognitively overwhelmed.  I am very intelligent, but I found I was coping worse and worse and becoming dumber as the session progressed.  I was saying stupid things, almost making myself weaker so I was no threat and wouldn't be attacked.  He did quite a bit of the bilateral stimulation.  It was very fast and overwhelming.  It was dizzying, and chaotic, and my mind was incoherent.  Almost like the SSRI brain zaps!  I'm assuming that isn't how EMDR is supposed to work, right?  If it is, then it's basically overwhelming someone's defences and breaking them down psychologically.  I found myself agreeing to things I don't think or believe.  I can barely remember what's happened since Saturday.  I've called the suicide hotline a bunch, I know that much!  The woman I talked to an hour ago said I was flooded, and "released back into the wild".  I think she wasn't impressed.

Very much like low grade MDMA or bad acid!  I have an almost wry, perverse enjoyment of the unusualness of it all.

Paxil worked a bit, and Effexor worked better, but that dead inside, frozen, impotent, seizure-like state was not my answer.

Meursault

[woodsgnome]

Movement for the better:  "I had a particularly flashbacky EMDR session last week and since then I have caught myself spacing out or "feeling unreal" a few times."

I recall you saying you felt like that back when you were starting the emdr sessions back in June, especially the overwhelm aspect. You indicated that your t took that as a sign you were indeed making  progress.This time the overwhelm state has again produced worry, but perhaps the t's words the first time around can be applied here too, and it's normal to feel that way (weird sort of 'normal', but there aren't always adequate words that really describe these feelings, either).

These pulls one way, then the other, and back again are dizzying effects, and I've been having them as well, big time--after a strenuous session today I feel like curling up for a loooong time, but I know sleep will probably still be hard to come by, per usual. And my t keeps reassuring me as well that not only is my overwhelm okay, but is a sign of progress and that my doubtful inner critic can stuff its objections down a sewer pipe. Basically this is not just re-parenting, it's more like birthing a new self, with all the emotional makeover that entails; and for sure it's incredibly hard to turn all that around in one fell swoop. In my therapy we aren't using drugs, so I can't speak to that aspect, but there's always potential for side effects with any drug, I would guess.

As to your thought of "Could it get worse or better on its own?" I'd say trying to define it that way as like right or wrong, black or white isn't how this goes; it's all process. A lot of the worry in this regard may just be due to our natural quest for perfectionism--having been wronged before, we want to be sure we're doing it right this time.

Based on what you've written on this, my vote would be that the process, perfect or not, is indicating recovery, which isn't a straight line to begin with. I know in my case I'm hoping to settle into accepting this, not as a false hope but as a new reality. And that these overwhelms are just bumps, not potholes. I hope we can all somehow get clear enough to realize this long-sought peace while sorting out all these changes.   



 

[movementforthebetter]

Hi woodsgnome and meusault, thanks for the replies.

If you can believe it, this is a bit of a different spaced out feeling from the one at the begining of therapy. But it's probably just another resting point on the continuum, as you indicated, woodsgnome.

You reminded me about what my T said about it being like preparing to summit Everest... It can't be done in a straight shot and you have to spend time at each camp to get used to the elevation. Thank you! I suppose I am at one of the camps now... One with a little less oxygen so I feel out of it. I appreciate the perspective check.

I think I should go back and reread to see how similar these episodes are. It would be worth me making some notes to go over with my T. And being more aware of it now might make it seem like it's happening more when in reality I am just noticing more.

As for the emotions, I hope that's not a side effect but it might be. Maybe it's worth it to feel "flatter" though, because the lows left me non-functional. A relatively stable state was my aim. I will give it another month or so to see if anything changes. I'm about to start splitting my dose into am and pm rather than once per day and am hoping it will help although my Dr doesn't think it will reduce side effects at all. I know I'm sensitive to medications though so want to see for myself.

Keep taking care of yourself, meursault. Some sessions do seem rougher than others and some cover more ground. It's worth it to talk to your therapist about your experience with him telling you what you feel. I've come home from some fine only to be in a full-day rage a couple days later, so I know it really shakes things up and can be almost traumatic in and of itself. My T sometimes guides me towards empowering realizations if I am getting stuck in a flashback. That may be what this T was trying to do but not communicating clearly. It would be worth it to get on the same page if you can.

[meursault]

Not sure if you're on the Effexor time-release, but splitting them in am/pm would even out the dosage as much as possible, I bet.

Sounds like you find EMDR to be pretty helpful.  I'm uncertain, and that was pretty hard to hack.  I had actually just made an appointment to consult about what options I had, and he just started doing EMDR.  I really want that to work, but I think I'm just too damaged.  Did you visualize a container and calming place and all that right away, or did that take a while?  I just can't seem to connect with either.

Meursault

[movementforthebetter]

Hi meursault,

Yeah, I'm on the effexor xr so I think I have been getting too much at once. By the next morning I start getting blippy if I don't take it right away. Hoping twice daily evens it out. I had to convince my Dr it was worth trying.

Honestly I have trouble visualizing for grounding on my own. I really have to practice every day for a week or two before I notice it's making a difference. I try to do that container one before bed, I know the sequence I want it to go in, but I get hung up on the details of it and get distracted before I ever finish it.

To even be able to do grounding excercises I have to practice a lot because my mind's resting state is racing. I want to spend more time on this and am looking forward to being able to dedicate some time each day soon. I had a little luck with meditation but again I seem to need guidance because I get distracted.

For now, I prefer physical grounding. In particular the ones that engage all five senses. We did a 5,4,3,2,1 for sensations from sight to taste when I was dissociating last week. I had success doing something similar in a grocery store. And I hold a worry stone during the sessions. I also sleep with a body pillow and sometimes a plushie, haha. 🐻