My experience with dissociation has not been beneficial, as an adult. In fact, it puts me at risk. Where it served it's purpose in childhood, it no longer serves me well now.

It seems I spend more time dissociated, than I am comfortable with. The minute I leave my home, I dissociate. It's an automatic response to leaving safety (home). I change with varying degrees and when I get home I say to myself that if I had been in this conversation with this person, I would not have said that or would have handled it completely differently. As a result, I alienate people due to how I respond because I come across as someone "offbeat". Offbeat is my description of someone who does not respond "normally" or has huge emotional reactions during a conversation where none is really required - almost childlike responses. I get those sideways glances, second looks or long stares and then I see a judgment being cemented about me. When I get home I feel deeply ashamed and spend long times isolating myself as a result.

I have dissociative states that I have labeled. One is dread who follows me around wringing it's hands always worried and scared (carries anxiety and panic). I have the watcher who watches others and their responses to me and reports back to me when I get home (very critical parental or authority figure). I have shame that hangs around me when I get home after the watcher has reported (my childhood abuser). I have the joker, which comes out more often than I like in public and makes funny statements or acts funny but is not really funny at all (not unlike my father who also acted this way). I have my inner child that appears needy and has no social skills whatsoever. This inner child is 5 years old and holds my trauma memories and is that part that quickly moves me into dissociation when feeling unsafe. This is the part that I struggle with the most as I have never been able to communicate with any success. The 5 year old part of me has never been to school, does not know how to read or write and has had inconsistent parenting with long-term sadistic abuse and so there's a huge language barrier there to work with. I have tried over the years, but nothing has worked and I fear I will forever be stuck and not able to move through to integration, which is what I am hoping for.

I have never honored these parts as being fragmented as this has only added to difficulties in living day to day in my adult life and kept people alienated from me. I do practice grounding skills and DBT, but still it's a daily uphill arduous battle. Yesterday, while on my balcony working on my flower garden a neighbor walked by and started a conversation with me which startled me and sent me straight into dissociation..... shaking my head in despair. Then in a support group the joker came out and made inappropriate comments while other people were talking. I'll probably not go back. Maybe I should name a new part - the defeatist, who orchestrates all these parts to keep me in bondage.