What's your experience?

I'm feeling confused! I'm not sure what I feel. So I'm asking for experience. When you dissociate what does it feel like? What happens?

Please help deconfuse me.

i try finding this out to.. i dunno... i feel numb.. outside of the body... all the time...

How about trying to put what you're feeling into words and then maybe someone can help you.What makes you think it's dissociation?There has to be a reason,explain the reason,that would be helpful.

Im sorry puzzclar we can not in your words "deconfuse" you. only you and your own treatment providers can tell you what is going on with in you.

I know its hard being in the situation you are in....

https://forums.psychcentral.com/diss.../474858-a.html

Im sorry but i cant do your therapy homework about you, for you. your therapist wants to know why ......You..... said you dissociate. and what .......You .....mean when ......You......use the word dissociate. they dont want how Amandalouise dissociates and what Amandalouise means when Amandalouise uses the word dissociate.

my suggestion is to contact your treatment provider and tell them you need help figuring this out. they will go through what happened during your therapy session with you and walk you through what was going on during that therapy session and answer your questions of whether that was dissociation in you.

another suggestion.....like another poster stated how about you tell us what you are feeling. thats how things work, we dont do each others therapy work or diagnose each other. we post about ourselves then others post back as to whether they have the same problem and how they dealt with it... we dont just tell people our symptoms so that the other person cna use our problems as a way of figuring out their self.

how about you posting about you, then we can post back to you to tell you whether we have the same problems and what we and our treatment providers did to help us with that problem when we had that same problem.

it's hard to explain because i have experienced a lot of different dissociative experiences. they also differ depending on what the reason is and what it is related to. i have a mix of derealization, depersonalization and also DID and PTSD, so it all gets confusing and can overlap with each other.

As I'm sure you will discover, dissociation is different for everyone. For me, I basically just zone out. I got deep inside my head, I feel like I am almost in a trance and my head feels a million miles away. I become very quiet and am barely able to talk. Kind of feels like everything I do is in slow motion. I lose my feelings, feel dead inside. Sometimes I will feel almost childlike. I CANNOT look the T in the eye. Then again sometimes when I am in this state my T will say something that triggers me and the voice comes out of nowhere and my head snaps around, stares him right in the eye and forcefully responds to whatever he said. This is something that happens out of my control. I will usually gradually come out of it on my own but sometimes my T will work at bringing me back to the present. Sometimes I don't fully come back in session but once I came back like a light switch after he had been trying for some time. It was just like "click" and the lights came on inside my brain again. Anyway, that is what it is like for me. Good luck to you. I know it is difficult. I just learned within the past month that I dissociate. I have always done this but I never knew that is what it was

You might want to be very careful and cautious about trying to apply others experiences to yourself puzzclar.

I know someone that wondered what PTSD was like,wondered if his physical and mental problems were due to it and talked to someone diagnosed with it about their experiences.He then went to a physician and psychiatrist and repeated what he had heard,applying the symptoms and experiences to himself.It didn't go well for him,the experiences and symptoms were that of a veteran from the Vietnam war and it was obvious this person in their 20's wasn't experiencing the same things,especially claiming exposure to agent orange.

He wasn't diagnosed with PTSD of course but he did spend some time in the hospital.The vets description of his flasbacks,becoming violent,re-enacting the war,etc.made this person seem like he was experiencing psychosis and that he was a danger to others when he told them as his own experiences.

I know that sounds extreme,and even silly,but it really happened,and it's just proof that trying to use others experiences to describe or understand what's going on with yourself doesn't work.

I have PTSD and dissociation is part of it.I could tell you what I have experienced but what good would it do? It's not your experience,only mine.Only you know what you're experiencing and what you're feeling and you have to find words to describe it to your treatment provider in order to get proper help.

it would be best, as already mentioned, if you could try to explain your own symptoms.

there are different dissociative disorders as well as the degrees in which they cause disruption of functioning and overall symptoms in a person. there are also other disorders which can include dissociation too.

i used to think i had depression and anxiety with dissociation but wasn't sure which dissociative disorder it was. over several years, it kept changing and ended up to be more than what i thought. it has helped to ask my therapist to explain the differences between things (for example, psychosis and the OSDD and DID spectrum) so i know what is what for myself since things can get very confusing at times. i also have an overlap of different disorders, though the basis of them is pretty much the same.

it also might be helpful if you haven't already to learn some grounding/calming techniques for when symptoms come up.

I agree with all of the above. I'm very impressionable and try to avoid movies and shows about disorders...especially dissociation or DID so as to not adopt "their ways". I come on here and describe my experiences and what I go through and ask for some feedback about commonality.

We also can have an alter emerge that mimicks a person or character called what I don't remember.

I can hear the angst in your "voice"...so please describe your experience. My dissociation in switches are in various ways leading from to long and drawn out to instataneous switching between alters.

Do you have a therapist? Maybe describe to them what you experience for some feedback. I hope you read all of this and good luck.

I can't put what I feel into words! There in lies the frustration. No matter what I do.

heres some suggestions.... then dont try to do it in words. there are many different ways to deal with this here in my location...

did you know that some people draw when they cant verbalize their feelings. maybe you can sit down with a box of crayons or markers and draw what you are feeling, how you are feeling.

some people that I know write their feelings. maybe you can sit down and write out whats going on.. just like you are able to post here on psych central and in your blog, just pretend you are posting on psych central or in your blog about your addictions and other posts that you have been able to write and include how you were feeling and what was going on in you.

some people print off their posts. maybe you can print off your blog posts, your psych central posts and give them to your therapist.

another suggestion let your treatment provider know you are having trouble putting whats going on into words.. there are non verbal cue cards your treatment provider can use with you where all you need to do is look at the picture and if you feel the way the person in the picture is you just point to it. then your treatment provider can show you the word on the back that matches that picture.

another suggestion take in some music that shows your therapist what is going on with you and how you are feeling. I know many non verbal people and people who cant put their feelings into words will listen to music and when they come across one that sounds like how they feel they show it to their therapist.

another suggestion gather some magazines that you or your friends or therapist may have and cut pictures and words out of that showing what and how you are feeling.

ultimately only you can explain to your therapist what you are going through how you do that is up to you.

here is a general fits all humans whether mental disordered or not chart of feelings words... you can print the chart off or ask your treatment provider for one, most likely they have to explain feelings to other clients so they probably already have one identical to this or
like it ..

https://consciousdiscipline.com/reso...feel_chart.asp

you can find more feelings charts by typing in a search bar the words feelings chart.