Excuse the long reply--this is my first time on here.

I know what you mean to have it. My psychiatrist refers to what I suffer from as trauma, PTSD, and panic disorder. The big shock was when someone finally named what was for me the most disturbing symptom and that is dissociation. I've tried to explain it to more than one therapist or doctor and only after seeing my current doctor for a couple years did he say "that is dissociation." I gather many of them haven't experienced this so they don't really know what the patient is describing, especially if the experience is brief.

It only happens to me when I get extremely depressed, or terrified, and I describe it as my mind shutting down. It hasn't happened in a few years. I think I'm on the mend. Studying what makes one happy reading the book FLOW helped me get past recent difficulties. I began doing more of the things that bring me joy.

If you had a bad childhood with a history of abuse and you've suffered symptoms of PTSD on and off over many years and are triggered by new traumas that means C-PTSD, according to the books. I try not to dwell on the thought of having C-PTSD, just trauma like the doctor says. As you probably know it's not something you want to tell folks unless they are very close friends. I mean I don't talk about PTSD with anyone besides my doctor and the odd support group--it scares people. I believe I might have been ok if I hadn't been re-traumatized as an adult. Living in a city with a high crime rate didn't help.

I told my doctor about a neighbor who survived the holocaust, her story is remarkable, she was reunited with her American husband after seven years of war. I told him that this neighbor was assaulted by a thief who entered her home, though she was just shaken, she had an emergency button device that alerted a neighbor across the street, set off an alarm and scared the thief away. He was rough and shoved her in the bathroom but didn't physically harm her in any other way. That night I sat with her and the detectives at our neighbor's house and the next morning she didn't know who I was. This lasted for two weeks, it was a horrible feeling, I kept reminding her that I was her neighbor. I think I cried and wondered if she'd get her memory back. My psychiatrist said "she was back in Czechoslovakia, the trauma triggered past trauma from WWII and she dissociated." Wow--the power of the human mind! I should feel lucky that I haven't lost touch for two weeks (just brief moments) and that I haven't had to live through anything as bad as WWII. I get choked up thinking about her, but this is all due to trauma.