Don't quite get it…

I'm going to give a little background about my experience with dissociating. Not sure if this would trigger someone or not. Sorry. I'm very new to this.

I have been in therapy for years, but this spring got more intensively into it because I stopped sleeping. All night long I startle awake. If I don't get up and move around, it turns into a full blown panic attack. Sometimes it does anyway. A few months ago I started taking Xanax at bedtime to sleep.

My therapist and psych nurse told me they thought I had PTSD. I have gone to a trauma therapist a few times. She brought out a lot of stuff I had been stuffing. It became overwhelming. I had to take a break.

My therapist says she thinks I have a trauma I don't remember from my childhood.

I have been having episodes of what I think are dissociation lately. They are overwhelming.

I also had one episode when I was triggered by something very strongly. During the triggering event, I just felt annoyed and angry that I was being treated so badly. On the way home, fortunately my son was driving, I had the most horrible feeling that something was trying to come up from inside of me. And I had disturbing sensations in my body and I felt like I was going to throw up. I don't know what it was. I don't know if I was dissociating or not. It was very odd.

I should probably add that I have autoimmune neuropathy and have flare ups of significant nerve pain. They much less now, but I am on edge every time I get a minor flare because of how horrible they used to be and because the doctors don't really know how to stop them.

Once I learned what dissociation was, I started reading about it and discovered DID. I don't quite understand it. Some things about it sound a bit like me, but others do not.

I remember when I was a child I spent most of my time daydreaming and pretending to be someone else. This someone else could withstand all kind of pain and persecution and would never be emotionally hurt. I knew I was just pretending. I did grow up in a home where I was shamed continuously for having strong emotions and where I was blamed for being the cause of my mother's significant but unacknowledged mental health problems.

I remember a time when I was a young adult away at college when I would feel the need to speak and behave in a childish way. I only did it around certain people. After many years of occasionally doing this, I became a mother myself and just decided to stop being a child myself. Now, looking back, I am mystified as to why I thought it was OK to act and talk that way. I was an adult. It was very strange.

I have a poor memory, but I have no episodes of blackouts. Until I experienced a newer, more recent trauma, I had no idea how much my traumatic childhood and then my traumatic marriage actually affected me. I thought I had successfully put my childhood behind me. I didn't even acknowledge that the marriage was traumatic until a few weeks ago in therapy.

So here I am, wondering what's happening and how to go forward. I am dependent on Xanax for sleep, which has put holes in my memory and destroyed my executive functioning. I'm barely a shadow of who I used to be. I perceive that I had generalized anxiety and depression before. Then I went through menopause. Then I started the nighttime panic and insomnia. Then my brain fell apart. But I also have this scary feeling I don't even want to look at that there is something I don't know. I didn't think so until my therapist mentioned it and then I remembered the childish episodes I had as a young adult. Can anyone understand this? Could this be DID? Or am I just dissociating because I have ptsd? I don't quite understand how to tell the difference. I also have no idea how to go forward from where I find myself.

Thank you.

Im sorry but we can not tell you whether this is DID. only your treatment providers can say that.

what I can tell you is ....

in general dissociation is things like feeling numb, feeling spaced out, feeling foggy minded, feeling like a watcher not a participant, some people describe it like watching a movie, or like being in a trance, daydreaming and high concentration ... these are all normal levels of dissociation.

these normal phases of dissociation become abnormal depending upon the cause, how often and how severe.

the abnormal dissociative levels recognized here in america can be read about here...

http://forums.psychcentral.com/disso...s-dsm-5-a.html

as you can see by the diagnostic criteria in the link the alternate personalities can not be things like fantasy play (pretending to be someone else) so you can relax, the fact that you were pretending knocks out the diagnosis of DID, but if you are still afraid you may have it contact your treatment providers, there are diagnostic testing processes for mental disorders and the good part is that they are all new because of the new standards america just changed to with the publication of the DSM 5. the testing process will also include things like whether or not your existing physical problems and other physical problems are causing your symptoms. your treatment providers can tell you what the testing process is in your location. I would give you some links about the tests but none that you find online are valid nor are they accurate because of the new standards and new testing processes.

Hey sweety, I couldn't tell Ya. A hired professional would be the way to go. I don't have long blackouts either, but I live in a segmented world where it's and bits don't fit or are missing. My memory has always been crap, it doesn't seem that I have a childhood, let alone an adult lfe. My days are snapshots of what might of happened.

Pure DID has them big blackouts as some will tell Ya, and the rest of us resides in the gray area, like me. I'm co conscious but somewhat not in control, If you know what I mean. It's like whose in control, that's the way we go, until someone else has other plans. I'm just the conscious overseer, that gets a vote, every now and then.

Right now I'm doing my nails and some azzhole is going to wipe them out like always, or they get ruined doing manual labor, but as long I can do them, I'll deal with it.

Mental illness is a spectrum sweety. The DSM-5 is just a way for these "professionals" can classify patients for insurance purposes. But the fringes of so many illnesses over lap each other. It's like you can have a broken arm and there's one way to fix it. Not with mental illness. It's still a poke and hope industry. All they can do is treat the symptoms without a cure.

I hope you find your answers you are looking for darling because like you, I'm still searching for mine! Good luck Hun.

You have to work with a therapist. It is good that you take the anti-anxiety drug. That should help with the panic attacks. Before I was diagnosed I thought I was going insane. I wasn't. My parts were trying to tell me they were there. It took me awhile to believe I am DID. I have a part or two who still will deny it but we know it is so. Knowing that the thoughts/voices in my head were parts of me who were stuck in trauma time helped me to begin to work on my issues. Only a Dr can diagnosis you as DID. Let your therapist know what you think and go from there. You will feel better.

Sorry about the troubles you're having, Always. I get what you're saying about gray areas. Maybe that's me? It's something to think about.

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Thanks, Clarity. I did bring it up once with my therapist. She said that just because I dissociate, it doesn't mean I have an alter.

I'm having trouble with the med. Sometimes I think that it's making me dissociate. Not sure. I just know my brain isn't what it used to be before I started it.

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We need a theapist. I'm have a pdoc but he's just a medicinal machine because in the first 45 minutes he proved how close minded he is. I got to work to make some money, but I'm even falling apart there, but I will prevail! Good luck!

this jumped out at me in your post and thought I would comment about it...

it is true that the codes listed in the dsm 5 beside each mental disorder are sometimes used for insurance reasons but that is not the purpose/reason for the DSM 5. the purpose of the DSM 5 is so that america has uniform/nationwide standards of what mental disorders are, so that america has a uniform standard of diagnostics for diagnosing those mental disorders. and to enable those with mental disorders to get the correct treatment options for their mental disorders...

example before there was uniform diagnostics for DID those with DID were diagnosed as schizophrenic, faking their illnesses, some were given treatments that were not acceptable for treating DID for example medications can not cure DID neither can ECT or warehousing people with DID in mental wards for life like in the past before there was such a thing as the DSM 5. yes on rare situations people with DID do get misdiagnosed but because we now have the DSM 5 its easier to get the correct diagnosis and treatment that much quicker.

the DSM 5 was also created as a way to help gather statistical information example if there was no uniform way of diagnosing a person with mental disorders there was no real way to say how many americans have DID vs how many have schizophrenia...

heres a short history of the DSM and if you type in a search bar like google the words why was the dsm created you will find many results that go into greater detail about how and why the DSM was created. it was definitely worth my time to do a thesis paper on it in one of my psychology classes.

DSM: History of the Manual | psychiatry.org
Frequently Asked Questions | APA DSM-5

With respect, I don't think watching yourself as if in a movie is a "normal" level of dissociation. At the very least, that phenomenon usually arises from some sort of stress. Yes, the frequency and impact on function are some criteria for diagnosis. And yes, no one on a forum can render a diagnosis, even if they are a psych professional.

yes here in New York State the dissociative experience of watching yourself as if in a movie is a completely normal from of dissociation. other terms used here in NY for it is out of body experience, floating on the ceiling, standing to the right, back seat driver and many other normal dissociative terms for it, and it happens to many people in the form of when they are daydreaming, or under stress, some therapy techniques also include this normal form of dissociation of watching your self and your life events unfold as if watching a movie.

what brings this normal form of dissociation into the abnormal is how often it is used, severity, how it affects ones life.

example of normal dissociative watching one self as if in a movie... last night during my normal routine of meditation I felt like I was outside of my body watching, seeing myself performing my meditation posture, breathing. I was able to control how long I remained in this state of mind of watching myself and was able to control moving back into my body to once again focus on the meditation routine from inside my body. there was no adverse affects to my life or others around me. its just something that normally happens to some people when they achieve such a deep state of relaxation.

Example of abnormal dissociative watching one self as if in a movie....getting stressed out at work and out of my control during a conversation with a co worker about an upcoming court date I felt foggy minded and everything started moving in slow motion and I was watching things unfold as if watching myself in a movie. this affected my life because I could no longer be fully present participating in the preparations for the court hearing. the result was when I got to the court house and my co worker asked for a file I did not have the file. I did not remember my co worker and I agreeing that I would bring that file with me. I ended up having to make a phone call to have another co worker bring us the file we needed.

Watching yourself from outside your body during meditation is a form of altered consciousness and not "normal" waking consciousness. Meditation is about presence. In my experience, dissociative responses in DID are efforts at avoiding presence to something disturbing.

Perhaps by "normal" you mean any dissociative response not in service to avoiding trauma, etc.?

Still, I would say to anyone taken by surprise by an OBE and concerned, go talk to a psych professional. Normal waking consciousness is experienced through physical embodiment.

Said another way, OBE is not necessarily pathological, but it is not "normal" waking consciousness.

I go into a trance quite a lot, not seeing what I'm looking at. Even in great stress I feel like I'm watching a movie, especially in confrontations. I don't like confrontations, it freaks me out, so it's like watching myself deal with it without being there.

Thanks, I was just relaying a pessimistic sentiments of another forum writer. Thanks for the links, I'll defintely look at them.