Hi YAmIHere,

I have only found out slowly over the past few years that I have dissociation problems, mostly through working with my therapist. When I first came to therapy, I was very separated from my body in terms of being aware of it. For example, I would not notice if I was hungry, I would find bruises and not remember how I got them, would go all day without drinking water and would not feel thirsty, etc.

I also had a great deal of my emotions cut off, as well as painful past experiences. I wasn't aware of having unpleasant emotions such as anger, sadness, longing, or grief. I honestly thought that I was capable of not feeling angry or keeping grudges or letting my feelings be hurt. I thought I was happy but I had actually cut off everything in my life that was negative or painful into unawareness (it wasn't really gone, as I thought it had been at the time - just pushed away).

Over time, as I became more aware of my body and being in my body, I also began to notice emotions staring to show up too - extremely strong emotions that seemed to come out of nowhere and that related to my early childhood days. It began to feel like parts of me (how I was as a child) were suddenly showing up in my adult life, carrying with them a ton of unexpressed anguish and memories.

Just knowing that there were other parts of me that were holding onto painful stuff was terrifying for me. I didn't want to notice them or listen to them, and especially, I did not want to feel their pain. Because of this, for the first few years, my t and I could not even explore those parts of me that were holding onto these memories and the pain. Whenever I would permit an awareness of even a little bit of it, I would immediately become emotionally distraught and overwhelmed. There literally was not a small enough piece of it that my t and I could take and work on without me ending up feeling like I was being retraumatized all over again. I had to learn coping skills over and over and over again - and I had to build up huge trust in my t -- before I could permit parts to begin showing up in sessions and expressing anything.

I still have trouble with it, as I feel a great deal of embarrassment and shame. But we are making headway. I don't know how many times I've emailed my t and then followed it up with another email profusely apologizing for the first one, after I realized how childish or weird it sounded. It is SO HARD to accept that all of this is really ME. It is scary and strange and feels like a dirty little secret I have to hide from everybody because people would not understand at all.