[Mactastic]

I feel things deeply during the week but when I get in session it's gone. All I feel is fear and walls. Would this be disassociation? It's very difficult to talk about things when I can't feel it on the moment. BTW, the fear is from feeling like my therapist will get "too close" and it's why I started therapy, to build relationships that are always shallow. How can I fight my walls and get in tuned with my emotions? My T says the walls are the root of my transference but clearly he doesn't know how powerful my erotic transference is lol.

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[HazelGirl]

It's one form of dissociation. Let me see if I can find a good article explaining it...

NAMI - Dissociative Disorders

[eskielover]

Dissociation is something all minds do at some level & is one of the minds way of coping with stress when it gets too great.
In it's simple form it's like when you are driving down the highway & realize you dont remember the last few miles & dont know exactly where you are. It's when you mentally leave yourself & mentally are in a totally different place....(where depersonalization is similar except that is like watching yourself in a movie from above where you actually are) .

Dissociation can happen when we are put into a painful situation physical or mental & its the minds way of escaping to another place. While on returning there is no memory of having gone or what was done during that time.
This is generally what it's about & how it can feel.

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[ShaggyChic_1201]

I've read several articles on dissociation, but still dont really know if there's a difference between it and self-hypnosis, except maybe s-h is done intentionally and dissociation usually isn't.

[OneWorld]

Originally Posted by Mactastic

All I feel is fear and walls.

^^ this is exactly how I feel too.

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[Shiny Things]

When I dissociate voices sound like they are underwater.

Mactastic, just so you know, the clinical term for our "spacing out" is dissociation without the "a". I learned this when I googled the heck out of this word.

[amandalouise]

Mactastic......your title question ...

"What does disassociate mean?"

here in New York (the one in the USA as opposed to other locations) ...

disassociate means to detach from association

you make a conscious and willful choice to quit, leave, no longer be a part of something.....

examples.... I disassociated myself from a family dinner with my sibling, I disassociated myself from the company picnic....meaning I chose to not attend a family dinner at a siblings home and I chose to leave a company picnic early.

dissociation .....on the other hand means to feel numb, feel spacey, feel foggy minded, ...its a cover all word that covers many different symptoms.

some locations though do use the two terms ....disassociate and dissociate interchangably which can be a bit confusing for those of us like here where I live and work that do use the two terms as being two different definitions.

I usually as which term the person is posting about and give the definitions that are used here so the poster has something to go by in clarifying their post for me. that way I know which they are asking about.

[healingme4me]

I'm choosing, the OP,,,meant dissociation, coming from a background of dealing with adults and children who suffer a variety of learning disorders, and appreciate, that our brains process words with variables, to how they come out, written or verbally.

Dissociation, is a stress reaction. Lose touch a moment yet not a break, i like eskies descriptor.


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[Leah123]

Memory loss doesn't always cocur with dissociation though. I am aware when I dissociate, and don't lose that awareness later. It's definitely on a spectrum, I'd say. I have PTSD with dissociative subtype btw.

Dissociative Subtype of PTSD - PTSD: National Center for PTSD

[someone321]

I am not sure anymore what dissociation really means... Yesterday I eventually got the diagnosis: DDNOS (Dissociative disorder not otherwise specified) - when I looked it up, it actually can be everything I've asked my T what she thinks about c-PTSD, and she said that it is almost the same but as c-PTSD is not an official diagnosis, she would use DDNOS... Thus, it means that I do dissociate and my T says that I do that pretty often; however, I never lose the control, I always remember everything, I can stop it when I want to etc. It's more like a chronic day-dreaming or e.g. I stop listening when the topic is boring or stressful... So day-dreaming and not listening are my major symptoms which "show" that I dissociate...

[melania]

So if I can't remember something what just happened it's dissociation?
If I do something when I have very strong emotions I can't remember this because my thinking was stopped, I was completely out of control.

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by someone321

I am not sure anymore what dissociation really means... Yesterday I eventually got the diagnosis: DDNOS (Dissociative disorder not otherwise specified) - when I looked it up, it actually can be everything I've asked my T what she thinks about c-PTSD, and she said that it is almost the same but as c-PTSD is not an official diagnosis, she would use DDNOS... Thus, it means that I do dissociate and my T says that I do that pretty often; however, I never lose the control, I always remember everything, I can stop it when I want to etc. It's more like a chronic day-dreaming or e.g. I stop listening when the topic is boring or stressful... So day-dreaming and not listening are my major symptoms which "show" that I dissociate...

I do similar. Although for me, I can become mute and literally unable to think when things are too stressful. I mentally shut down, and although I am still "there", I'm not really there. I feel far away, spacey, in a dream, and can't really remember everything my T says. I remember phrases and pieces, but I can't remember all of it. It's very weird.

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by melania

So if I can't remember something what just happened it's dissociation?
If I do something when I have very strong emotions I can't remember this because my thinking was stopped, I was completely out of control.

Yes. This sounds like dissociation. Unless you're referring to simple forgetfulness, then when that happens, you are dissociating.

[AmysJourney]

I dissociate sometimes, not as frequently as I used to but it still happens whenever a certain topic comes up. What happens - and with me this doesn't happen consciously at all - is that I completely space out. I can feel it happening, I feel like I am moving into a fog. To others it looks as if I am daydreaming but I am completely unresponsive. I don't hear what people say, I don't remember the situation clearly.
Sometimes it even got me into dangerous situations. I almost got hit by a car once because I apparently crossed the street without paying any attention to the traffic. I couldn't remember how I even got to that road. When I dissociate I have no recollection of conversations, events etc.
A couple of times this happened in therapy. One severe time my therapist had to tell me in the next session what I did, what I said etc. because I couldn't even remember leaving her office or how I got home.

[Leah123]

Originally Posted by melania

So if I can't remember something what just happened it's dissociation?
If I do something when I have very strong emotions I can't remember this because my thinking was stopped, I was completely out of control.

Memory can also be impacted by anxiety without there being dissociation in my experience. The "heat of the moment" can sometimes be so intense that the feelings supersede recollection of specifics.

[someone321]

Originally Posted by HazelGirl

I do similar. Although for me, I can become mute and literally unable to think when things are too stressful. I mentally shut down, and although I am still "there", I'm not really there. I feel far away, spacey, in a dream, and can't really remember everything my T says. I remember phrases and pieces, but I can't remember all of it. It's very weird.

Oh yeah... I agree that it is weird... E.g. yesterday, when my T was talking at some point I said "sorry but I think I do not listen to you", she was glad that I told her that and asked me if I am aware when/why I stopped listening, so I said something like "yeah, you were talking about this and that, and then something about this and that..." and actually I told her what she was more or less talking about so it looks that I did listen but I thought that I didn't - that was really weird...

[monkeybrains21]

I dissociate a lot. With T, driving, working, all the time. Sometimes I feel it coming but can never stop it. Sometimes I worry with T that something she says will not only make me dissociate but also make me violent. I worry this since it's happened in a bar. It got bad but luckily I had ppl with me who prevented something very bad from happening.

[HazelGirl]

Originally Posted by someone321

Oh yeah... I agree that it is weird... E.g. yesterday, when my T was talking at some point I said "sorry but I think I do not listen to you", she was glad that I told her that and asked me if I am aware when/why I stopped listening, so I said something like "yeah, you were talking about this and that, and then something about this and that..." and actually I told her what she was more or less talking about so it looks that I did listen but I thought that I didn't - that was really weird...

Yeah, it's embarrassing when I have to ask my T to repeat what she has said because I didn't catch it the first time.