This happens to me frequently. When I feel vulnerable inside and hurt (flashback), I tend to stay home and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. The simplest tasks feel overwhelming and I can't basically do anything. I can relate a lot to what you have described as being oblivious to your day, and can't quite remember what you have done during that day.

Its basically you are in a flashback, you are hurt, vulnerable and feel very little inside. You can go to Pete Walkers website and print out the 13 steps of how manage flashbacks. I can't say I'm succeeding in managing my flashbacks, I rarely have control over them when I experience them. But I think practice makes "perfect", the more we recognize and catch ourselves in a flashback situation, the more we gain control in managing them. Perfectionism is also a destructive tool, because we sometimes can manage our situation for like 2 or 3 days, and then we relapse and we feel we are not doing any progress. Progress not perfection is a good mantra that is working for me.

I can relate to reb569 too. I have memory problems too. I think when we operate below the level of awareness, which is for me like everyday, its hard to focus. Sometimes when I prepare giving a lecture to students in a material I'm not familiar with, The level of stress just peaks, and I have to repeat the lecture to myself several time, until I feel I can grasp it. After maybe two or three weeks, I even have trouble memorizing what I learned, its just overwhelming.

There is very important issue I want to mention. Traumatized people exert a lot of mental energy to do their daily activities. And we can tell, because everyday we spend an unusual amount of energy trying to control things, keep defenses on, hide our depression, dissociate, etc. Learning new information for example, is by nature causes stress. Any normal human being struggles to a certain degree when he wants to learn new things, But they don't avoid this "stress" because they don't experience chronic stress in the first place, Optimal Stress is beneficial. We must work so hard to lower this chronic stress, or otherwise we will keep avoiding any stress inducing situation.