Thanks everyone for your comments and thoughts..

I have a really good therapist, who I see 3 times a week.
My life is a work in progress...

Basically I have Complex PTSD which is indeed complex. Complicated depression, too.

s_e, my favourite book ever is that 'Inner World of Trauma' one, the whole book and ideas resonate deeply with my own experience.

Yes, it's of known origin. Yes to anxiety. Yes to acute awareness of a split reality -past and present.

I'm starting to understand more now, have more perspective... That being aware of the split in my mind, the 2 realities, past and present running concurrently/consecutively, is showing how I am becoming more aware of how I am not under threat now, but was, very much so, in the past. And that being overwhelmed by the fear that I was losing touch with reality - totally - shows how I am increasingly aware how devastating my past was, and how safe I am now, and that the whole thing is indicative of my healing journey.
I'm not wording that as well as I'd like, but I hope that conveys some of what I intend to say.

Today I've been reading information on dissociation, and realising more and more how this started when I was very young, and that I've been very ill for a long while, because of all that happened to me.
Its strange, because I find it hard, in some part of my mind, to equate myself with having severe dissociation, rather than other things. It means that what I went through really was awful. Which of course I know, but..