Feeling like I did something wrong?

Yesterday I woke up and I felt like I had done something really bad that I shouldnt have. But I didnt say anything to my mom. I checked my texts. They were fine. I checked my google history. That was fine. It was strange. I brought it up in my therapy session and I told her and she asked if I ever blacked out and I said no.

Is this a common sign of dissociation or one of the other kinds? I just didnt feel like myself yesterday.

Has this happened to anyone else where you thought you did something wrong even though you didnt?

@Mountaindewed - I've done this a lot. Sometimes I would even call or text or email someone and ask if I did something wrong - especially if I dissociated a lot and couldn't remember my actions. Of course, I'd only ask questions to those I trusted. More times than not, I did NOT do anything wrong.

What I would venture to bet is that our worries in this area pertain to us getting in trouble for the slightest things, which is a form of psychological abuse as well as emotional neglect. The abusive part is being punished for doing something that all kids do, such as crying, whining, spilling the milk, etc. Being punished for not watching my younger sister when my drunken father was too inebriated to care for us is another example of psychological abuse. The neglect part is that our parents neglected to show us emotional comfort, dealing with consequences of our actions, dealing with emotion regulation through parental warmth and lesson-learning, etc. When both neglect and abuse coexist, and when our childhood settings were so inconsistent to the point that we didn't know what the rules were to keep our parents happy and the punishments down, it became a hostile, traumatic, and sometimes even terrorizing environment for us. When this atmosphere is repeated over and over, as well as mixed in with physical or sexual abuse, harsh verbal abuse, harsh restrictions of needs such as food or medical care after a beating, then dissociation is much more likely.

As adults, we experience trauma triggers whenever we see things that are out of the ordinary, such as with this pandemic. There are so many changes of rules that it seems similar to the unpredictability of our abusive and neglectful parents. Additionally, when our coworkers or bosses or landlords or even family members act in unpredictable ways, even though subtle and not harmful, it can still trigger those bad memories from the past. So our natural response to unpredictability is to sense danger and possibly dissociate, and then wonder what we did wrong (even if we didn't do anything wrong). That's the painful reality of our past.

Now this might be a lot to take it, and maybe it doesn't apply to you. But we just thought we'd explain the real deal instead of touching on this lightly. Nothing about the times we live in is "light." There are warnings everywhere, and it's challenging to deal with on a daily or even annual basis. We're now going into the third year of this pandemic, which stirs up so many emotions and behavioral reactions from people. It's hard for us with past histories of trauma as well as dissociation to deal with all this stimuli. It's too much.

Our childhood minds were so used to blaming ourselves that we never learned that sometimes nothing is our fault, and that we do the best we can with the freedoms we have.

I hope this brings some comfort, even though some of this might be hard to take in.

((((safe hugs)))))

we cant tell you whether you dissociated or not, only your own therapist can tell you that.

what I can tell you is that if you google toy will find that lack outs disqualify having a dissociative problem, in other words it is not considered one of the signs for dissociation or dissociative disorders.

that said many things can cause "black outs" like medications, alcohol, and so on. talk with your treatment providers they can tell you whether your black outs are because of your medical problems, mental problems or other issues.

In me I dont have black outs associated with my dissociative problems. any time I have had memory problems associated with my dissociative problems the memory problems cleared up once the trigger for the dissociation was no longer an issue. example if something stressful happened that caused me to have my dissociation problems, then once things were calm again the memories were back again.

my suggestion contact your treatment providers, they can help you figure this out.

just noticed upon rereading in one of the paragraphs the word "toy" appears instead of the word "it", you got to love autocorrect lol anyway it is supposed to say if you google it not google toy. sorry for any confusion.