[SkyWhite]

Can someone tell me if this is dissociation?

Last Thursday I was feeling angry about my therapy ending too soon and me not being ready to stop. Public health regulations won't allow me to continue Tx.

Now, since Friday, I feel like the whole past year of intermittent sessions, one hospital stay, c-ptsd symptoms and re-traumatizing memories, etc. never really happened. When I look back on the past year, it's like looking into a fog. I have an appt with my T today and have to keep reminding myself that I have this appt. Before, I'd count the days between visits. I feel I've reverted back to exactly the way I was when I started therapy last august. I didn't do this consciously either. It just happened. I guess this is how I survived a lifetime of sh-- and abuse, but I never realized how easily I could slip into this state of mind. And I can't pull myself out of it either. It's not denial. I know the whole year happened and when I think about it I get anxiety attacks and headaches, which causes the memories to automatically get stuffed back down.

It's a comfortable place to be but I sense it's a "false recovery" or learned helplessness resignation.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by SkyWhite

Can someone tell me if this is dissociation?

Last Thursday I was feeling angry about my therapy ending too soon and me not being ready to stop. Public health regulations won't allow me to continue Tx.

Now, since Friday, I feel like the whole past year of intermittent sessions, one hospital stay, c-ptsd symptoms and re-traumatizing memories, etc. never really happened. When I look back on the past year, it's like looking into a fog. I have an appt with my T today and have to keep reminding myself that I have this appt. Before, I'd count the days between visits. I feel I've reverted back to exactly the way I was when I started therapy last august. I didn't do this consciously either. It just happened. I guess this is how I survived a lifetime of sh-- and abuse, but I never realized how easily I could slip into this state of mind. And I can't pull myself out of it either. It's not denial. I know the whole year happened and when I think about it I get anxiety attacks and headaches, which causes the memories to automatically get stuffed back down.

It's a comfortable place to be but I sense it's a "false recovery" or learned helplessness resignation.

Im sorry but we can not tell you what this is with in you. what I can tell you is what this (having a foggy memory of recently past events like past therapy sessions, medical care...) is with in me... for me it was depression, shock, psychosis, anxiety....

with in me if the memory loss was /is a dissociative one a trigger can be tracked to it....ie I have trouble remembering hospitalizations due to how triggering it was for me to be in the hospital. I have trouble remembering what goes on in therapy sessions when that session is highly/emotionally charged to the point where during the session I dissociate.....

memory problems with dissociation are a special type of memory problems. Again we cant diagnose whether this is dissociation in you or not. only your treatment providers can tell you that...

my suggestion if this continues to bother you talk with your treatment provider. they can tell you whether this problem in you meets the criteria for being dissociation or not in your location, based on you, your treatment and whats what in your location.

[Open Eyes]

((SkyWhite)),

This is actually what many feel while they are working "through" the PTSD and trauma, as well as a history you are discribing.

What I noticed is that I was so self absorbed just getting through one day to the next that yes, I did tend to lose track of time. Yes, I also felt that my sessions were too short and I did not leave my therapist with a sense of closure, but instead often felt worse because I did not get all the "mass" of whatever I had been trying to say resolved in anyway.

When PTSD is present, at first there is such a "desperation" that takes place, and my therapist has discussed this with me too. He has said that he often wishes he could video his patients when they first start therapy verses at a point further on where they are more focused verses so distressed, which is definitely an improvement.

When I experienced the trauma where I got to the point where I simply could not function, I desperately needed to find a way to "step back" from everything and process it. At the time I was so bad I was begging for rest and grief counseling. I did not know what post traumatic stress was, all I knew is I could not function one more day.

When a person is experiencing a "stress breakdown", as you know the capacity to think and function is just not there. I have actually posted this in another thread here too where the body says, "hey, I can't take this" and the person basically falls in a heap which is the body demanding a slow down I need a break. Well, it would definitely make sense that "time and space" is not going to be there right?

This is how PTSD is SkyWhite, it is not anything you did wrong either. Depending on the person, it takes time to slowly make gains on functioning better again. What is the biggest challenge about it is how others around the individual don't understand it and tend to say all the wrong things to the person who really does need a time out. The last thing a person with "post traumatic "stress" needs is more "stress". The person has to definitely "slow" down and get the help needed to work through whatever it is that an individual experienced where they experienced enough stress to where they had no choice but to "stop" and be still.

You are experiencing the normal symptoms of an individual that is reacting in a way where that individual needs to "decompress" for however long that takes, which differs depending on whatever that individual has accumulated in "stressors".

Check out the thread in this forum where I posted a link as well as a discription of a "stress breakdown".