Hi,

I am in college and am currently taking a class on anthropology of public health, and it's made me start to question whether I have PTSD. I was severely emotionally bullied from ages 9-18, and now that I'm 20 and have been able to distance myself from the people who were hurting me, I am realizing the major impact the experience had on my life. For example, I am still having regular nightmares about the events - I probably dream about it at least once every week. I also leave almost every social situation feeling like crap, focusing on little things that I feel I should have done differently in order to not seem like a freak. This could be as small as feeling like I left too big of a pause in between conversations, or that my hair was out of place. Not only will these haunt me for weeks, but random things even years later can remind me of what I did "wrong".

But my purpose here is to talk about dissociation. I can't seem to find anything online describing it any better than just an "out-of-body experience", and I was wondering if something I occasionally feel could be classified as such. Every once in a while, I'll have a period of several hours where I almost feel drugged - I might go an entire day feeling sort of trapped in my mind. I can't escape my thoughts and everything going on around me feels like a movie, and if people try to hold any conversation with me that's more than small talk, I get extremely anxious and snap at them until they leave me alone. However, I can sometimes "snap out" of the feeling by forcing myself to be around friends (which is hit-or-miss because it can also make me feel considerably worse) or by watching fun YouTube videos. I think YouTube helps because if I watch unscripted videos, it kind of feels like an intermediary between the "screen world" I'm feeling around me (where it feels as if everyone is an actor) and the "real world" that I'm normally a part of (where, like the videos, social interactions occur without planning). Could these be minor dissociations?

I know that PTSD can't be diagnosed without a psychiatrist. I'm just here to be able to anonymously receive some opinions on my suspicions before talking to someone in person.

Thank you so much for reading this long post!

Taylor