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Originally Posted by amandalouise
I have and sometimes still do dissociate when talking with my therapist and other treatment providers... to understand this you need to understand what dissociation is here where I live...
here where i live dissociation is the normal reaction (feeling numb, spaced out, disconnected...) to anything triggering (anything that causes me to feel uncomfortable or upset)
example when ever my treatment provider and I talk about hurricane sandy (a triggering time and event in my life) I start to feel numb, emotionless, spaced out, like I am sinking. I feel no connection to my body nor anything in the room. the technical term for this is depersonalization/ derealization symptoms (in other words dissociation symptoms and dissociative problems here where I am.)
my suggestion is check with your treatment provider on what dissociation means where you are (many locations have different definitions of what is dissociation) it may be that your treatment providers definition of dissociation is different than your's so she may not be considering how and what happens to you as dissociation.
another suggestion.... when you notice you are dissociating maybe you can let your treatment provider know its happening.
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I'm in the USA and having worked in the mental health profession, myself, I understand what you've been posting re: how dissociation is diagnosed and the DSM categories, etc. Thanks for providing the information. Re: letting my T know when I'm dissociating, I don't know when it's happening; I'm out of touch before I can tell T. I was professionally tested in 2015 by another PhD psychologist. Neither he nor my T could figure out why some of my testing came out as it did. Now, my T explains that I dissociate for brief periods - sometimes only seconds. Dissociation was not considered during testing - that psychologist didn't notice when I checked out...and neither did I.
What I'm doing is more disturbing to me than my T, I think. Your description: "I feel no connection to my body nor anything in the room. the technical term for this is depersonalization/ derealization symptoms (in other words dissociation symptoms and dissociative problems here where I am.)" sounds like what I experience. However, the question remains, what would it look like to my T if I dissociated while I was talking? It seems to me that if I dissociated when I was talking, I would just stop talking or speech would gradually fade out. I'm stumped on my T's question...
