trying to better understand dissociation

ive been reading some of your posts on dissociation lately and kept thinking "im not sure ive experienced that" - well an incident happened today and i think it may have been dissociation. maybe you can help?

one of my coworkers is having a really hard time w/ some personal things. we are just coming back to work from a 2.5 week winter break and now we're getting ready for children to return to school. anyway, she came in really upset and shes very open and very emotional...she's telling us about how things are really hard for her right now and starts to cry. the other 2 teachers console her, give her a hug, almost start to cry themselves...

but me, my face kinda blanked out. i stretched my arms up in the air and i just stared into space for a minute...then i walked away and into the closet because i didnt want them to see me and think i was an emotionless beeyatch. i didnt cry. i didnt ask her if she was okay. i dunno. it was too much for me to handle and now having an experience that i can recall...i start to remember other times where ive had similar responses to other people's sadness/emotional stuff. somehow, i couldnt ever recall having those experiences. i guess i put them out of my mind.

According to MedicineNet:

yeah, ive read many descriptions and definitions...i just couldnt ever connect any of my own experiences to them...perhaps because i have conveniently put them out of my mind.

Another member posted this great website in my 'psychotic symptoms' thread: Dissociation FAQ’s

It describes exactly what dissociation is.

yeah, i was reading your post the other night and clicked on and read through that website. like i said, its not descriptions and definitions for me. ive read various...its actually being able to connect my own experiences to what ive read.

i know there are different types of dissociation...i saw what happened to me as a detachment from emotion, but im not sure if it actually was.

i dunno...maybe im explaining it wrong. or maybe im just still not understanding it and what i experienced was just me being an emotionless beeyatch.

i dunno...nevermind. i guess it wasnt. i wish i could delete this.

Losing periods of time suggests dissociation.

You've had me thinking of dissociation every since you posted last night. I've read some books and blogs and it got me thinking.

When I was a kid my dad would flip out and the whole house would shut down, we would hide until it was over. Early years I would feel the emotions but as I got older I would just "dissociate" from them.

Emotionless I would become.

Flash 20 years later and I'm with an abusive raging type boyfriend. When he would freak out on me in beginning, I would cry etc. Eventually I learned how to not react to his anger at all. I swear my heart rate wouldn't increase one bit and I would feel nothing. But feeling nothing during the actual moment didn't help because I didn't have the same emotions or memories of the that same situation as I should have. I was proud of myself for learning that skill but now I wonder.

From Marsha Linehans book:

"The inhibition or truncating of negative emotions serves to increase
emotional avoidance. If the individual has learned a secondary emotional
reaction to negative emotions, the inhibition of the original emotion
removes any chance of relearning."

Without
experiencing the negative emotions, however, the individual fails to learn that
she can tolerate the emotions and that punishment will not follow their expression.

I think that for me dissociation is my way of dealing with overwhelming emotional situations because I have learnt that it's easier "just not to feel". Don't feel in the moment and probably will have little memories of the actual moment and as a plus = no pain.

I think it took four years until I was able to feel the emotions that I should have actually been feeling at the time. By dissociating I was coping.

She called it "Emotion Phobic"

Thanks for putting it out there, really got me thinking.

Have you read this blog about dissociation? He explains it well.

http://brettnewcomb.com/working-with...hat-do-you-do/

http://brettnewcomb.com/dissociative...uma-survivors/

those links were helpful. i think what i was doing was just some type of blocking...but not necessarily dissociation. i was quite aware...i just made myself not deal with all the feelings and emotions that were surrounding me at the time.

I do that a lot. Just going numb so you don't have to feel but can still function.