Even as a small child, my given name didn't sit well with me. Only over the past year and a half, since I finally sought treatment and began to unravel this mystery, have I been to able to respond to by being called by or identifying myself with it without irritation or feeling like I was lying and even still, it sometimes doesn't feel like my name.

I also strongly relate to the feeling of distance and spacing out during intimate moments. I didn't know I was dissociating until I became sexually active as a teenager. It happened from the first experience on and though I immediately recognized it and my behavioral patterns surrounding intimacy as reminiscent of a survivor of abuse, I had no conscious memory whatsoever until I was in a commited relationship in my early twenties and began experiencing flashbacks during intimacy.

Around the same time, I also began experiencing night terrors, which still affect my sleep and though the dreams themselves were not obviously connected to any trauma, they happened almost without fail when I was sleeping next to my partner, or even my best friend, as opposed to occasionally when sleeping alone.

I wondered about dissociation for years but until I was diagnosed with MDD and CPTSD and started sorting through my symptoms with T, no one I ever talked to took the idea seriously and even she was skeptical that it could be more than the typical amount of dissociation most people experience while doing every day activities.

It wasn't until T took an extended leave of absence and I decided to substitute twice weekly appointments with other (unfortunately less structured) outings, (I rarely leave the house otherwise,) that I began to realize I had a lot of other things going on that I failed to report to T because I wasn't even aware of them. It was as if whole pieces of my life were hidden in a different drawer in my brain.

You're definitely not alone in the confusion, PFM. It takes a lot of time and energy and patience to sort this stuff out and just when I think I have a handle on things, I turn a corner and there's a whole new mystery to unravel.