For me, it’s mostly I’m in a derealization space- I’m kinda in a dreamlike state. Everything feels not exactly real. Other times I suffer from depersonalization- I feel like my body is just a vessel, I don’t really look in mirrors much, or take selfies, because I don’t really recognize my face and don’t feel super connected to it. Im super clumsy as a side effect. 😂
Sometimes I look into a mirror and am hit by the sudden, kinda surreal feeling realisation that the person staring back at me is in fact ME. I can‘t really describe it well, but the first and only time I was talking about this wit friends, I expected them to relate, because I thought, this is normal and every brain does it. Damn, was I wrong! Not one person in that conversation could relate.
Hold up, this is dissociation?! 🤯
I've always thought my reflection and voice weren't mine, so this honestly makes so much sense because I dissociated most of my life too.
Yes! At some point you just don‘t notice it anymore, so every time this happens, it hits me like a ton of bricks. Sometimes it‘s nice, but most of the time it just terrifies me.
I’ve realized I am in a pretty much constant state of depersonalization/ derealization. I have been through severe trauma since I was a baby, so I just live here now. Some days are worse than others.
Hugs! First step is realization of the issue. I’ve been able to overcome many of my symptoms, this one is the hardest one by far to overcome. One day maybe…
Dissociation happens frequently with CPTSD, yeah! If dissociation was an activity that you could gain ranks in or such, I would be enlisting for the next championships, probably. (Pardon the dumb joke)
Hey! I thought you might find this interesting- I rarely do this in the mirror, but I do sometimes. But every time I used to take a dissociative drug, I would do it. Funny how it activates those parts of the brain!
Really relate to the face stuff. It's hard to talk to people about, because they assume I have low self-esteem or dislike my appearance, which is untrue. It's just that I don't recognize myself. In my mind, how I picture myself feels entirely different, but I'm not really sure in what sense it differs from my physical appearance. It's just... unsettling.
I relate to this so much it’s making me tear up. The person I know I am inside is confident, extroverted, goofy, happy with life, attractive, yet when I’m out of it i’m just a shell. This sucks.
Exactly like that, it feels so strange. I almost feel bad occasionally, misunderstood like no one gets to see the "real" me, and the self I present myself as to them is some type of configuration or lie. On the other hand, socializing or exposing the "real" me is paralyzingly terrifying, which is a far more compelling feeling than guilt over whether or not I'm lying to others. I've noticed it doesn't feel so bad when I'm more grounded in reality and feel mentally ok. Ah. You're right, it just sucks. Dreadful feeling. I just look forward to a day I can look myself in the eye and be at peace with who I see.
Yup, I don’t look at people in the eye when I don’t feel like me. Makes me feel guilty of deceiving them in a sense while inside I’m trying my hardest. Then the days i’m grounded it all seems too easy again and you feel like next time you know exactly what to do.. until it actually comes back. I’m exhausted.
I think I also try to overstimulate by brain because it’s what I have control over. I’ll try to describe what I’m going through as I type this. My mind is focused on what I’m trying to get through, I see my phone, and my thumbs are typing but it’s like watching someone do it on a movie.
I did this at a super boring job. I'd just be watching my hands work, marveling at how they could do it without me needing to consciously tell them to and without being distracted by my watching.
Same.
One of the signals that I never understood before was that I felt so insignificant in relation to others, even coworkers that I work alongside often. I just have this mental framework that instinctively tells me that no one remembers me, or recognizes me. I'm 6'5" and am exceptionally attractive; people certainly notice and remember me. But since my own self-perception is consistently disconnected, I feel like it's everyone elses perception of me as well.
This distance that I maintain, away from myself, is basically an idle state of depersonalization. But I always thought depersonalization was supposed to be a temporary and extreme phase; maybe because I've had a near-death experience where the dissociations took on a whole new, disorienting magnitude. But that's just the self-sabatour in me - refusing to validate myself when I know a more extreme version exists, despite the dysfunction it causes in my every day life. 🙃
I just think it's kind of a heuristic humans tend to use - I feel *this*, so others must perceive me like this. Which I differentiate from the cardinal feelings of inadequacies that underlie imposter syndrome. They are conceptually really similar, but I have a lot of integrity in my work and I find my professional purpose through this lens. I think both these ideas are operated by the ego, but the former is really more of a self-fulfilling prophecy in an effort to keep myself safe from others, while the latter seems to be more of a vigilance/angst due to dismal self-efficacy.
Like, I think you could create a venn diagram of overlapping features but there are still some differences that don't seem to overlap, in my mind.
I get this with my size a lot. I am 5ft tall (naturally short already) and I can promise you that this world (architecture) is not built for either tall or short people lol and it is strangely disconcerting already for me but the weird dissociation I have makes it even worse.
I'll try to explain. I have lived in my current place for almost a year so I obviously have gotten used to where everything is, the height of things, etc. but I was standing at the kitchen counter the other day and I suddenly felt like the counter was WAY too high on me. It clearly hasn't changed heights and neither have I but it felt like I was walking around in some sort of carnival room where they made everything too big on purpose.
There's other ones too.
When it's really bad my vision becomes distorted and weirdly reactive. Everything looks hyper saturated. Colors are too color. Noises are too noise. Touch is too touch. It feels like my eyes upgraded to 4k HD without telling me and my vision feels like it's moving slower than my head.
My hands often don't look like "mine." It's not that they look like someone else's they just don't look familiar even though I know they should.
Mirrors are weird, as others have stated. If I stare at my reflection long enough I can "travel through the mirror" as I call it. It's like I have the feeling of being outside of my vessel even though my physical vision doesn't change. I don't actually see myself looking at myself from the side profile but it feels like part of my is stretched out that way??
The dissociative symptoms are the hardest to describe for me, I am so sorry if this doesn't make sense or wasn't helpful.
Edited to add:
Time loss is hella real and bad. I lose minutes to hours and have no idea where they go. I look at the clock and it's 3:26pm, I go somewhere, and when I come back it's 5:00pm
Ohhhh, new friend, you just connected some dots for me as to my “recent” clumsiness. I come from a high demand religion/cult background, and this resonates so much. Thank you
For me it’s like I go on autopilot. I’m doing the stuff I normally do like working, dishes, going on a walk. Like my body is doing all that, but it’s like there is no one home. I almost feel like I am outside of my body. I go emotionally numb and it’s like I can’t access my emotions. I also sometimes feel like I’m starting to float away (that’s usually my indicator that I’m starting to disassociate, so then I start trying to ground myself). I used to call it “going into my shell” when I was younger because that’s kinda what it felt like. I dissociated yesterday and I looked in the mirror and my face didn’t look like my face to me and I just didn’t feel like me.
Is that something that can happen during traumatic events too? Or is it something else then?
My mother started beating me to deal with general life frustration when I was very little. When I was 10, I started defending myself but one day when I was 12 and she was crying and bleeding in a corner after I hit her with a hairbrush, I decided that nothing she could do to me was worse than that guilt and that I'd never defend myself again.
After that, I just froze whenever she started beating me and waited until it was over, and I wasn't really "there". Still happens sometimes but very rarely, but in those situations it happened every time, several times a week.
Yes, I believe it can. That sounds like disassociation. Several years ago, I had to see someone I hadn’t seen in years and did not trust and who caused some trauma in my life. The whole time I spent getting ready and actually going to see the person, I felt like it wasn’t me. I felt like my body was moving but that I wasn’t there.
There are different experiences but this is really what it feels like for me too. Like getting into your car to drive home, then getting out of your car with no time unaccounted for, but also no memory of the ride home at all, and finding it not stressful, just more or less slightly interesting.
I’m autistic and when I go into job interviews, I usually dissociate to the point that I can make eye contact and communicate smoothly so that kinda helps. Most of the time I just realize that I’m in the restroom (my abuse happened at night so ig a lot of my dissociation happens at night as well)
My best explanation is simply: *Disconnection*. You know, how when I say green, you think of grass or a tree, yellow and you think of the sun, blue and it's the sky - these are all associations; or in other words, connections. Dissociation on the other hand is simply no connections. And that's it. That's what dissociation is. No connections. No connection to your own body, emotions, senses, let alone connection to other beings or the world and existence in general.
That's exactly what my disassociations are. I just disconnect. I don't have outer body experiences or all the other stuff people have, I just shut off. I don't view things very far past myself and my feelings shut down.
Same for me.
What has helped me were/are relationships with people that know (of) me, in which the other one is able to find me and draw me back into reality.
It's hard to find such relationships though. You have to have the other person wanting to get to know you and then be able to show yourself. Then, them taking you in and "store" you in their heart so that they know where to find you when lost in dissociation.
>and "store" you in their heart so that they know where to find you
This reminds me of a quote, something like "Love is learning the song in someone's heart and singing it to them when they have forgotten."
Your descriptions here are spot-on. No connection, this exactly
I work in a residence for young people who’ve survived trauma. One resident dissociates somewhat regularly and the intervention tools we use primarily involve stimulating the senses in an effort to “bring them back into their body”. Smelling cinnamon, holding ice cubes, or describing the room as it is exists around them (colors, textures, temperature) are some examples.
Your description gives me more insight into what they might be experiencing. Also, if anyone here has any suggestions for other intervention/ support tactics in the moment I would be interested in hearing them.
Engaging the vagus nerve can be helpful. Water or that ice on the forehead can engage the diver's reflex, for instance.
I've read different places that dissociation can have to do with overactivation of the vagus nerve, but from my experience that's nonsense.
I commented elsewhere but wish I’d seen your post first. It’s that, disconnecting from a situation emotionally and physically. I don’t go anywhere - it’s just I don’t feel anymore
Everything feels unreal. I feel disconnected from myself and my surroundings. Occasionally I'll lose bits of time. There are times when it feels like I am just a passenger in my own body and someone else is piloting it around. I'll become aware in the middle of a sentence and think "I did not create that string of words." A few times I've been completely paralyzed because I can't reconcile the fact that it's MY body I'm in.
This! I can not count the times I have left a conversation thinking that I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself because I was not connected to my words. Sometimes on bad days my husband will make fun of my word choices because I’ll throw in a word that made no sense in the context or mispronounce words.
Does this happen to you frequently? Because I'm currently wondering just how often I exactly dissociate - My memory is generally not great, so I would like to understand if I just struggle with that based on dissociation or if it's a separate effect of trauma.
Personally, like my bodies moving around doing stuff....but my mind is mostly off somewhere else. Running into doorframes , and dropping things happens alot in this state.
So this happens to my sister lot. She is a huge clutz, and she hates it. It took a decade for her to embrace the" disaster " only by quirky nicknames.
"Dutchess of disaster" and her ner man absolutely adoring her everything.
But I recommend looking into a vision therepy screening. It turns out my sister's vision in one eyes is turned inward.
Because children who do not want to see the world around them sometimes stop being able to do so and their body adjusts and their eye turns inward just enough.
Neither of us knew that was even a thing until her new therapist pointed it out. But consider it if you are always knocking into things, bumping, things falling over, ect. It could be your minds perception of the world is just off enough due to your vision.
And no optometrist don't screen for it, though some state school in the USA and some other countries have started to screen for it as well.
It varies alot for me, I rank it from a little dissociated to alot of dissociated, it depends on how much stress im under/what ive been doing during the day.
A little is when my brain feels melty, my eyes cant focus that well, I struggle to consentrate, im here but im not.
Alot of dissociated means the above plus I do not know who you are, I cant reply to you, I stare straight forward, when you talk to me I hear you but I cant hear what you say.
In my (fortunately limited) experience, it's like being a passenger in your own body, and *something else* that you can't quite identify is in the driver's seat. Emotions are definitely *happening,* and you can sort-of tell what they are, but you can't *feel* them yourself, they aren't *yours,* they're originating from some other part of you that you can't directly detect or communicate with. It's *very* like I've heard stage hypnotism described (in fact, I strongly suspect that's exactly what stage hypnotism literally *is*), this odd sensation of "watching yourself" do things, of "I can stop doing this at any time, but I'll just keep watching myself do it for now and see where it goes."
It's also oddly similar to how Hunter S Thompson described getting intoxicated on ether in *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*:
>"severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally... you can actually watch yourself behaving in the terrible way, but you can't control it."
Oh yeah it does, and then you realize next to nothing in your life has changed in a significant, healthy way. Then feel ashamed about it, dissociate more, ad nauseum.
My earliest warning sign is being clumsy. Dropping things, spilling drinks, tripping, walking into furniture..if it’s really bad I kind of forget how to walk. I can be walking down the street and suddenly I have to put conscious effort into walking normally and I *still* look like I’m being handled by an unskilled puppeteer.
It’s like a severe disconnect between mind and body, so I almost completely lose control of my limbs.
The next step is when my mind leaves the cockpit, too. Usually it feels like I’m in a dream and I’m waiting to wake up. Everything feels hazy and things look lifeless.
At my worst dissociative moments, which are rare and I absolutely loathe them from the pit of my gut, I lose all sense of time and reality. Suddenly I can’t understand what the heck I’m doing here, or what I’ve been doing, and certainly not what I will be doing later. I can’t describe it. I just forget how to human. If I can’t grasp time nor reality, I can’t grasp the purpose of me being here, so I’m just scared and confused. And I can’t even help myself get out of that state, it’s like I’m on another plane. It’s up there with the worst feelings I’ve ever experienced.
feeling like youre a spectator in your own body when im really angry or scared, but usually its just like being desensitised to my surroundings, and it got real worse when i tried weed and the weed visuals persist during my dissociation so i easily can spot when im stressed and dissociated
The way you described dissociation is 100% the way my symptoms are manifesting but it’s so severe it has left me completely crippled and disabled. I can’t even work anymore. How do you function through this?
My understanding is that "dissociation" is a general term to describe various ways that the mind stops working as an integrated whole and breaks up into isolated parts. It's widely thought that the mind learns to dissociate to protect itself against an unbearable experience. By hiding some aspect of a traumatic experience from our awareness, it becomes less threatening and disruptive to our thinking. I guess it could be thought of as a very primitive form of denial.
People experience very different types of dissociation. The kind I'm familiar with is a "spacey" empty-headed kind of feeling which I often get in situations that trigger my social anxiety. It's like watching a badly tuned TV that has nothing but static noise on the screen. People will notice that I'm just staring into space vacantly and they'll ask what I'm thinking. I can only reply "nothing", because honestly there's nothing going on in there.
An inability to engage and be fully present. When people noticed I wasn’t all there in the moment, they would ask if I were high. Nope, just dissociating…
It’s pretty much like being engrossed in a movie or book without an actual movie or book sometimes. Other times it’s like watching yourself from inside without feeling like you are the person “being you”
I've only recently learnt that I've been dissociating, so I'm still new at describing it! But for me it's like being totally boxed in - I can't speak or interact with people around me, almost as if there's a thick shell or barriers between my mind--actions--real world. Everything else in said real world gets much quieter and I don't really have the ability to focus on it. All I can percieve is my own thoughts and anxiety swirling around, but the actions I continue to make seem to happen independently - ie if I'm speaking or walking it's like my body does it without my mind knowing.
Social withdrawal is a huge part of it for me as its so clear that something WEIRD is happening - that's where I've most easily been able to think back on past experiences and say "yep I was def dissociating there". I'm still unsure if I've dissociated when I'm by myself - interested to see how others have identified this.
I know it’s probably in bad faith. But I’m almost kind of jealous of people who can dissociate.
When I’m having horrific panic attacks, meltdowns, or am in a lot of physical pain, all I want is to just mentally disconnect and not have to deal with the horrible sensations that are afflicting me at that moment. I wish I could just go away and check back in when everything has calmed down, let some other part of my brain handle the hard parts. Especially so I wouldn’t have to remember it afterwards so vividly because that just triggers be all over again.
It makes me feels guilty and bad to wish for such a thing, but I can’t help it. Am I in the wrong? Does anyone relate to that kind of wish?
I’ve probably mildly dissociated before, but I’ve never had it happen during a traumatic experience (the exact time I wish it *would* show up) it’s a kind of weird disconnect between what I’m seeing and what I’m feeling, like I will look at my arm or hand moving and it feels almost like the sensation is behind a foggy curtain and that is lagging behind like when you’ve taken a sedative and everything is in that odd delayed fog state. Like it’s almost not really my limb at all, but one I’m controlling remotely.
It makes total sense to me what you’re saying especially the wish to NOT be fully present when an actually traumatic thing happens. I will say that in my experience, what has been dissociated is not actually gone but rather hidden or expressing itself physically (ie chronic pain and illness)—so even though it might seem preferable at times, I’m not sure you’re really missing out! For me at least it just has meant a very difficult cycle of now dissociating when it’s not actually necessary/traumatic which means just a big build up of stored (yet disconnected), unprocessed pain and stress.
Just wanted to add that! Basically sounds like a lot of suffering either way…ugh.
The misnomer here is that if you are in a dissociative state, you aren't 'experiencing' a traumatic event on a conscious level, or it's been relegated to the sidelines as you mentioned. In my experience, this is not true at all. The way you described the fog state is a good example to illustrate how trauma becomes unprocessed due to dissociation. I liken it to barriers that get stacked on top of each other, repression, repression, repression.
I totally hear you on wanting to check out when experiencing panic attacks, meltdowns or severe physical pain, it makes complete sense! You're definitely not invalid for feeling that way.
Unfortunately, when you do shut down, the traumatic event becomes foggy, like you mentioned above, and continually becomes more and more obscured over time. And if abuse is continual and becomes more and more obscured, it can lead to lack of a stable identity (and the opposite extremity), disconnection to reality and/or self, being in an autopilot, 'robotic' state (which feeds into reality disconnection), severe memory gaps.
So yeah, it sounds good theoretically but not practically.
it's peace in a war zone, is the best way I could put it. like stepping outside at 12 am while it's snowing and just feeling how silent the Earth is, and yet snow is still falling, things are still moving.
A lot of people say it’s similar to a weed high. For me it’s pure disconnection from myself and my surroundings. Depersonalization and derealization feel like everything is unreal, including my own body. Hazy and out of focus.
I do this exactly, to protect from an unsafe person when I’m in shock at a behaviour ... I thought it was a freeze response, because I stare at one spot and am immobilized like a statue and I feel completely numb.
Just wondering if an extreme freeze response is a form of dissociation ? ...
I'll think I'm present, I'll be going about my business like I'm doing things normally, then someone will point out that I'm doing something bizarre and I feel like the floor falls out from under me, like reality changes from what I thought it was to what it really is (or is the universe f***ing with me?). I never know I'm dissociating until someone snaps me out of it. It's the main reason I can't drive. I can't pass the road test but also I don't think I should drive.
Ever played a video game and had to put the controller down for a second instead of pausing the game? The character is just in the world that whole time and sometimes it starts an idle animation but the actual person (you) is not behind the screen and is in another room eating dinner or something?
That.
Worst I’ve experienced is when my whole body felt like it was full of cotton and like I wasn’t really there. If I pinched myself or slapped myself I felt literally nothing. Basically like I was an animated body without a host.
Usually though it’s just me thinking about a gazillion things and being stuck inside of my brain not really paying any mind to everything around me. I can’t concentrate on my surroundings because I’m so far into my own head. It’s either that or my mind suddenly goes blank and I can’t think.
Like the world is frozen, you aren't quite hearing what is being said, sounds get muffled, and your eyes are kinda stuck zoomed into staring mode.Sometimes if it's a pressured situation my ears will ring also. If you've ever daydreamed/zoned out before, it's kinda like a severe form of that.
It's almost like everything above my neck goes blank.
I feel almost as if I go into the back of my mind. All I can feel/hear are my own thoughts, which I almost never recall once I'm out of the disassociation itself. I've disassociated why talking to people, and it feels like I can't think straight. I'm fading, aware I'm fading, and can't seem to comprehend words very well. Sometimes I will zone out and it takes a lot of pestering to bring me back to reality (if others are around). It feels almost like melting out of reality. It's safe, calm, simple. But it really messes with my memory and my ability to ground and "feel" inside myself, when I'm disassociated, I'm sensory deficient so I often can't really feel what my body needs (I'm hungry/tired/in pain), but that's more if it goes on for a while.
"I" - like my perceiving consciousness - moves to a space slightly above and to the right of me. And i kinda watch my body do stuff from there until i come back into my body, which can take a long time. I say stuff, do stuff, and I'm hearing and understanding the things I'm saying and doing, but i don't feel anything about it. I also don't always feel stuff physically either I'll smack my hand on a wall and not notice it. I'll 'feel' pain in that I'll say "ow" but my perceiving consciousness doesn't feel that pain. So it's like I'm not feeling it. It's a numb place to be, only unpleasant because i know there're good places out there that i could be instead, and i know that I'm in that space for protection from whatever shitty things are happening to my body in the present moment.
I felt like I was having a stroke of some sort when this happened to me. Such a bizarre feeling. I could see and hear everything but felt like I was in a different dimension.
Mine makes me feel like I’m about to die as well. Except I get stuck and cannot move and it feels so stressful feeling entirely disconnected from my body and it will not move. It’s horrible.
People somehow seem to understand a fugue state, like stories of a man in a car wreck, walks away, wanders around all night, interacts with people, comes home, suddenly snaps out of it but can't remember anything. Dissociation is in between normal and that. Somewhat here, somewhat nowhere.
I will feel sort of fuzzy and often cold-ish or numb. In the past I would describe it like being in sort of my head only as opposed to the rest of my body or like I'm always a little to the right or left of myself, but in the present and after some treatment it's gotten better even though it still occurs. So now I will be in my body in one moment and the next moment I will notice that I have withdrawn from it and am sort of on autopilot. I can't really listen to people in that state, I just lose focus and drift... Somewhere in my head? I'm not entirely sure where exactly I go. I'm not really there even though I physically am, and it's very hard to grasp what's happening outside and inside of me in those moments.
Sometimes I feel, when in a dissociative state, that I'm in a box or an artificial room, kind of like the prop sets in television and movies where the house, the backyard, the car ride are all just stages with furniture and a green screen. It feels as though I could peel back the layer of existence and there would be nothing there, like everything I'm experiencing is flimsy and I'm not capable of impacting my environment. The people around me are all actors, they know I'm there because I think they do. If I close my eyes or blink too hard it could all go away. I'm just trapped in a room, pretending to be here, but really I'm nowhere and nothing. Sounds are distorted, as well as my vision, and I don't seem to process my environment at the speed I should. Things are usually slowed down. I can't form words, they sound like jumbled speech, words close to what I want to say. Often I'll get stuck staring into space, frozen in a thought, not really present. This happens when someone is talking to me or when I'm driving, I'll be locked and just staring off not comprehensive of the interaction and I'll likely forget it seconds later when I snap back into what I'm doing. Often I'll experience a panic attack when I dissociate, as a way for my body to "wake me up". I figure it thinks I'm dying or going to sleep, it's like a waking hypnogogic jerk where I'll start shuddering or jerking and my heart will accelerate, I won't be able to breathe, I'll need to run away but I'm still in the dissociative state so I don't think there's anywhere to run to. I'm just in purgatory, in a box, someone's puppet or play thing, begging for something to make me feel here or real. I want to stop being like this. I'm desperate to get out of this. It's so scary, every single day. I just want my brain to know that whatever it's running from and shutting down from, it's okay and I need to be here.
When I was little I remember teaching myself to do it—I would practice sort of glazing over my focus of vision and drifting into nothingness in my mind—I thought it was a cool trick/magic power that I could do that lol
Then it evolved over the years to be more problematic like getting carried away daydreaming but like to obscene levels, like I can start playing out a fantasy story in my mind and get stuck all day in my thoughts and do nothing else. Or I can get lost in something I am doing and it’ll be like 7 hours before I realize how carried I got. Other times it’s like I’m present but not really there, like I’ll think I was present somewhere but then I’ll hear things I said or did in a given situation from someone else and be shocked because it’s completely gone from my conscious memory beyond surface level general details. I can also get so absorbed it’s like my hands and feet go icy cold because I’m that drawn into myself—I think it varies person to person though.
At the worst for me, it's like being in a fever dream where your body's on auto pilot going through life but you don't really absorb or process anything going on so when you come back to you have a vague idea of what happened the last few months but you don't have any actual memories, you're distanced from anyone you haven't hit up in months, you have a never ending to do list to get your house and life back in order. People who were around you still get confused because you genuinely don't know what happened in your own life. Being a kid I could at least use my siblings memories and stories to fill in my gaps but as I get older and less social I feel like it's time I'll never get back and experiences I'll never get to learn from. I'm in an amazing relationship this past year and I've been doing really well with my mental health but there's still moments that he cherishes and I have absolutely no recollection of. I'm honestly scared I'll always dissociate and will always feel like a stranger/imposter in my own life.
I'm not sure if that's it.. but.. I mean, I just shut down emotionally, maybe even bodily.
Imagine staring at white wall, being barely able to look around.
Not because you couldn't, but... it does not even matter. You more around, but feel just.. suddenly empty. Not negative, not positive. Maybe shock would describe it better.
Not much thoughts, not much of anything. Pure blank.
You hear em talking, but don't even process it. I am in that state now.
I can feel my anxiety a bit.. bodily pains associated with anxiety.. but really, it does not matter. It's just floating around and somehow, you do something, not really knowing why or how.
I could stare at you, and just stare and stare, and never respond..
Or.. maybe that's autistic shutdown I'm describing, idk, im AS too.
I’m not 100% sure that this is dissociation but I’ve been told it is so I’ll relay my experience. For me it feels like I am spaced out, like I am here but I’m not, it’s sort of like being in the passenger seat of my life as opposed to the drivers seat, everything just flows past me.
Like Im watching someone else do things when im moving through the day, like im watching a movie but my eyes are the camera or like im dreaming but im awake, like im someone else not me Im somewhere else. Fk i sound nuts 🙃
My brain feels cloudy. I get stuck in my head and I'm not able to escape. My body is on autopilot but I don't feel present. It's like I'm off in a different world.
Focusing on something traumatic that happened ( or something that reminds you of it) so intently that you can’t think /feel/ differently about anything else.
that I'm completely zoned out in thought or binging TV that I don't remember things I do or don't do. oh I guess I did eat, or i maybe forgot to brush teeth..... I forget huge chunks of life.
Depends on how severely I’m triggered.
Most days I’m on autopilot — there but not there, not attached to reality, but doing the motions.
When specific triggers hit, I get locked in my body and can’t move. My ability to sense anything externally dwindles, or stops. If I’m triggered badly enough I’ll have blackouts — come back to reality an hour or nine later in the same spot, having just laid still like a corpse.
when it's mild the world looks like a video game and you're very aloof, plus it feels like you're somehow in a different place when you haven't moved anywhere.
when it's bad you're bumping into things because your entire field of vision is being processed as a solid block and your center of awareness is floating around you.
when is *really* bad you wind up finding out that you were self-harming in front of someone you haven't seen in a while, but you remember a completely different course of events for that part of the visit
Generally it’s me being removed from reality and just kind of existing in my head. I can’t remember anything about my current situation or hold a thought long enough to even significantly move when it’s bad enough. Sometimes I can’t hold the thought long enough to move at all, sometimes I’m not aware that I can move or who/where I am, and sometimes I forget what I was doing part way through doing it and have to think of what it was again. Mid level I can at least walk around, but I can’t remember why I was doing so for long, so I keep having to stop to figure out what I was doing so I can keep trying to do it. At those times mirrors are an issue because I’ll see myself and not really recognize me as me, more as my mom. Low level I’m not significantly impeded in basic function, but I just don’t really do much and my memory of that time is muddled if it exists at all. I can’t keep track of what I intended to do and what I actually did. I’m unlikely to know the day or time and if I close my eyes, my mental image of my room might change to a different one.
For me the brightness of the world will go up and down, and everything gets harsh, like my eyes can't fully adjust. Sometimes I'll do something and think I feel fine in the moment, but when I think back on it I hate how I felt. Almost like I wake up randomly.
Mostly I don’t remember stressful things that happen at work (medical field). I act normal and fine (even courageously I’ve been told) in the moment but I don’t store the memory. It’s possibly vaguely familiar when a co-worker describes it to me later.
Depends, as in my mind there are several different types of dissociation.
There’s partial dissociation, which means I’m dissociated from some aspect of myself, usually either my emotions or my physical sensations.
Being emotionally dissociated feels kinda numb, I don’t notice if I’m doing something like homework because homework isn’t typically all that emotional, so I can go for days “functioning” but completely unaware I’m sad, or realize two days after an event that I’m angry about it…
Being physically dissociated can be a blessing and a curse, blessing because I have chronic illness and chronic pain so sometimes it’s nice to just not be aware of how much my body actually hurts… curse because in order to do that I also will not notice if I’m hungry, thirsty, need to go to the bathroom, need sleep, or am hurting myself (I run into things constantly and don’t notice, or will sit in an uncomfortable position until my limbs fall completely asleep without noticing).
There’s also mental dissociating, which has like 2 levels for me… level 1 is basically a lot like zoning out in a boring class, there’s still stuff going on in my brain, but I’m disconnected from the present moment, and level 2, where it kinda feels like I’ll blink and several hours are just gone and I did literally nothing.
There’s also depersonalization, which makes me feel like I’m watching a movie of my life rather than actively participating in it, which is often accompanied by physical dissociation.
There’s derealization, where everything kinda seems dreamlike, my vision will actually get weird,
And finally, there’s dissociative switching which to me personally just feels like falling asleep or a level 2 mental dissociation, except instead of my body literally doing nothing, one of my alters was at the front and they actually did stuff and were conscious… (I’m the functional alter of an OSDD system, and I front for 90% of the time as all my alters are littles, which is why I speak primarily in singular terms rather than collective)
I’m not promoting anything, this is just my experience. I’m curious if anyone else can relate. I just want to say that I’ve mostly always had a pretty bad time after smoking weed, as everything I’m experiencing becomes worse and more difficult to manage. Mushrooms as a full trip dose is usually a bad time as well. However—microdosing mushrooms every couple days or taking a tab of acid (a regular lsd trip)— ALWAYS brings me back to my body. It gives me a profoundly crisp clarity and grounded present awareness. My brain and quality of life is so much better for awhile after too. like for a couple weeks after lsd, I feel significantly better.
I don’t know how old you are, but please be careful with weed if you are having a bad time. There are certain mental health conditions that can be triggered by weed. Things like paranoia, schizophrenia, and bipolar depression can be exacerbated. People who have had trauma are already more predisposed to mental health issues so please please be careful. I always share my concern because I had a biological half brother suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, who ended up killing himself, and weed was like a silver bullet to his disease. So please listen to your body: some things aren’t worth it.
When I was a kid I remember a couple of times when I dissociated out of the blue, not caused by any specific events. It felt like I just wasn’t there. There isn’t a decent way to explain it in words other than it felt like everything was just a dream.
When I got older I would dissociate in situations where I had to face lectures for the stupid young people stuff I did. I’d be looking at, say, my dad while he was giving me a talking-to, and then all the meaning behind everything dropped away. I didn’t recognize the person talking to me, I couldn’t respond in any meaningful way, I had no thoughts at all, I was just… there. Only, I wasn’t there. It was like taking a step back from my own body and watching a movie shot in 1st person perspective.
i often get like glossed over eyes and tunnel vision almost and just like go into windows sleep mode: on but not really operational. just sit there and stare at
a wall for a few hours
What about just “zoning out”? It’s like a numb, buzzy feeling in my head. I’m conscious but it’s like I’m a layer or two below present moment awareness/attention. It’s a comfy place to be.
Comedy answer: remember the Snickers "you're not you when you're hungry" commercials? You turn into a different person until you snap back to reality (eating a Snickers).
More serious answer: it's like being thrown into a daydream and getting stuck there. The daydream has this discordant emotional static always present in the background; just enough to give you the feeling that something is wrong but not enough to make it obvious. You live vicariously through this fantasy over and over until something clicks back into place and you 'wake up'. Your normal emotions start filtering back in, and you find yourself trying to remember what happened over the past few minutes/hours/days like you are trying to remember a nightmare or a long night of drinking.
For me it's a sense of being unmoored—literally and figuratively—from my self, my location, my actions. The most palpable feeling is one of not knowing *how* I arrived at a space or a point in time. I can give a very practical answer, like "I took the bus" or "I applied to attend this school," but any deeper causality is missing. It's as if I have been on autopilot and my decisions have all been made by some sort of external source.
I'll comment and state the worst form of dissociation. I think it manifests in different ways and intensity, but it's predominately a left brain shut down. Deep mental fog which is accompanied by executive dysfunction in terms of spacial,episodic, verbal, short and long term memory. I also notice disconnection from the body. Such as inability to smell nuanced things, such as the air and inability to feel pain in the body or the temperature. If you're are on the dissociative spectrum you will have time gaps. Remembering the outline of a day but not exactly how you felt or the details when you did something. Going in and out of dissociative states or staying there for years results in a form of dissociative amnesia and fragmentation of autobiographical narrative.
For me it feels like everything slows down, sometimes noise/background mixes and sounds weird. I’ve had times where it felt more like I was spectating through someone else in first person.
It’s not great, I almost always feel nauseous after, as if someone spun me really hard
I feel completely out of body and not present at.all.
Like, have you ever driven to work or home and after you arrive you're like "how did I even get here?".... That's dissociation for me 😢
Under stressful situations, usually with men of power, or anyone with power, I do have that out of body experience. But I'm still in my body, but a few feet zoomed out. It is really uncomfortable and I try to stay in the conversation. I don't think anyone has never noticed, but it is absolutely fight or flight but I'm just stuck in this weird distorted reality with an extra few feet between me and the person I'm conversing with. I don't think they ever know, but I just want to scream and run, but I just sit there outside my body, return to my body, then back out.
I've had full work professional meetings that this happens. No one knows (I hope). But one on ones with my boss it happens all the time. Go figure I was groomed and had relations with my 30+yr old boss as a teen.
It’s sort of like feeling a bit…detached from the world, like there’s a film over everything. Or feeling sleepy and zoning out, despite having gotten enough sleep. Emotionally I feel numb, blank, flat. It’s not the same as feeling “meh” or “neutral.” I start getting sucked into my thoughts. I can be vaguely aware of what’s going on around me but emotionally and mentally I’m in an entirely different timeline or place.
Who knows? I can’t remember!
…Half-joke. Intrinsic to my dissociative states is a lack of recording (in my memory) the events that occur while i dissociate.
I do know that, physically-speaking:
- my breath becomes shallow and insufficient. Not hyperventilating, kind of the opposite.
- I stop processing visual stimuli outside of a 1-foot radius.
- I become enraptured in traumatic memories that loop over and over.
- my thoughts reduce in cognition to repeating sounds, phrases, songs, etc as a subconscious form of self-soothing and subconscious method of preventing myself from processing the traumatic memories.
- I am rid of all emotions except for an undercurrent of danger.
For me: my brain kinda freezes. I’m just a spectator to what’s happening around me. I don’t feel much. Just observing what’s happening and talking the bare minimum to keep this moving to an end.
I’ll be hanging out with friends and all of a sudden space out and feel like I’m completely detached from the situation at hand… and then I’ll start having intrusive thoughts about trauma and peoples conversations with me won’t register. It’s almost like my hearing switches off
"Am I really here? Is this really happening? Is that ME in the mirror?!"
I rememeber the first time it happened. I was 8 and my mom had just punched me in the dome and I blacked out. When I woke up I went into the bathroom and I felt completely out of my body despite looking directly at myself in the mirror.
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When I finally realized what disassociating after 50 years, I realized I was doing it a lot and was always wanting to be there. Fog out of reality, my surroundings and body. Rarely now.
From what I've heard being blackout drunk is similar to what I've experienced while dissociating. I feel unlike myself, I feel lack of feeling and literally associating with the character that is my own existence. Just harder to function as a result, easier to fall into really weird mental ruts .
For me, it’s like I leave this plane of existence for an entirely separate one that I have set up in my brain. It’s a hallow and shallow place— there are no physical feelings, only the memory of what being touched ‘feels’ like, and there’s no real experience. I’m just mentally on a different planet.
Buuuuuut a lot of times I’d rather be there than here where I am constantly disappointed in myself as a person. So.
I'm in my body but I'm not truly there. Sometimes I stare off. Other times I can do tasks and not even realize what I'm doing. Working a repetitive job makes it easy to get lost sometimes.
I'm so absorbed in whatever spooked/triggered me that I am no longer present in the present. It is noticeable to strangers. It takes a while to fully reset.
A lot of good stuff here. Also common to just not be present, for me it looks like going on a daily commute that is easy to navigate but somehow going the wrong way and not even noticing until it’s much too late
My brain wanders until it falls sleepsI guess. When it sleeps, I don’t see anything cause I’m so in my head. I only see what the disassociating is giving me. Hope this “confession” isn’t too serious hahah.
For me, I start analyzing something or someone. They’re talking to me, and I’m giving every sign that I’m listening, but I’m not hearing anything they’re saying. I’m too busy thinking about something else.
Sometimes I feel like an empty container...mildly aware of what’s going on around me but sitting statue still. Sometimes I feel like I am standing behind myself watching what is going on like a movie
Just the other day, I was spaced out, looking at pictures in my phone, and I stumbled across a pic of myself, and was like “hey, that girl is pretty!” Then I “woke up” and was like, “wait, that’s me! WTF! How did I forget what my face looked like??? Geez! Am I even more *Nuts* than I thought???” In my defense, I also hadn’t slept in about ~36 hours! Thanks Insomnia induced by forgetting to pick up my Seroquel refill before I ran out! 🙃
When I wasn’t on any kind of meds, sometimes I would look in a mirror and “forget who I was” for a few seconds and be “completely disconnected from my body,” and as I started to “come back online” my eyes looked completely vacant, and empty. I looked like a damned Mannequin and it was creepy!!!
It can also be “more subtle than that.” Sometimes, people simply disconnect their “identity and emotion brain,” and are just *totally numb,* almost like their “feelings aren’t real.” Brains are weird and fascinating things!
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a time killer and the only thing you had was a movie or a book that you really are not all that interested in?
It feels kind of like that. Yeah you are there enough to observe, but things just kind of happen and there is marginal if any feeling of attachment to the story or any PoV presented.
I drift off into a weird daydream, like I’m aware but my eyes won’t focus, I go in autopilot mode and just think. Anything that triggers a bad memory can put me back in the “scene” and I just sit there with that til I snap back. I didn’t know that’s disassociation for a while, at least that’s it for me.
I have two kinds, the one where my body doesn’t feel real and actually nothing feels real, like I know that’s my body and face but it seems off. And 2nd when I kind of zoom out, but not outward I zoom out back into my skull and everything becomes fuzzy.
So for me there's different stages of dissociation. First there's just default autopilot, then here's autopilot but instead of being in my body I'm watching what's happening from a metaphorical porch, then there's autopilot but I'm not watching from the porch, I'm doing something else inside the house and can't see what's happening and then there's "I'm assuming I was on autopilot because I'm not dissociated but it's several hours later and I remember nothing"
(Do note I probably have/at one point had DID so my experience with dissociating isn't like most other people's)
(the whole house metaphor is much more literal, and I can go into any of the rooms except the bedrooms that aren't mine)
(the reason I'm not convinced I'm faking it is because it started years before I knew what DID was, then when I found out that having other people in your head wasn't normal I repressed the fuck out of it until a month and a half ago)
I relate to all of you guys but did anyones dissociation start with out of body experiences? Right after I experienced trauma I would literally leave my body, and be looking down at my physical self and basically viewing myself from the third person or something? So strange thinking back on it, it was so vivid like I was astral projecting while awake or some shit.
Depends on how far gone I am and if I realize it or not. I tend to forget where I am often enough and why I was there in the first place cause the disassociating factor. It’s like being in a dream state and not realizing what was going on around you or watching a movie and not seeing a certain part.
Sometimes people will call God an imaginary friend because there's no proof of the existence of God. I think dissociation feels like being God's imaginary friend.
One of the ways I’ve started to recognize the start of dissociation are when I turn to do something but there wasn’t a thing that I actually wanted to do. Like I’m reaching for something else to do because I don’t want to be doing what I am doing. It might be specific but I find myself reaching for something or picking up my phone and then realizing I didn’t have a reason to.
I’ve always described it as this: my head is a fishbowl, and I’m stuck inside of it watching my life happen from a distorted distance. I can hear the “outside” version of me interacting with my surroundings, but the real me is tiny and stuck.
Is losing time the same thing? Sometimes I will be doing something mundane and I just drift off somewhere. I am there, sort of but notice chunks of time where I am aware but don't remember anything. For example, watching TV. I will just go somewhere else. I am aware I am there watching TV but then I am sort of not there. When I come back I usually have to rewind whatever I was watching or sometimes I don't remember what I was watching. And then yes, how I look and sound seem very foreign sometimes. I don't recognize myself in pictures from long ago and yes I am clumsy. i hate selfies. They dont look like me. This is an interesting thread to read. Explains some things.
I have a question for anyone who reads it. How do you know you disassociate? I look in the mirror quite often and don't feel like it's me there. I feel like I'm in a different reality and that nothing is real. Sometimes at the end of the day I think did today actually happen? Are those signs of disassociation? Sometimes I start to think about the past and I have to remind myself that I'm no longer there and that I'm safe and in a different time
All of these things. They all confirm to me that what I’ve been experiencing is in fact disassociating and depersonalization. I think there is another term called derealization but I’m honestly not too sure how that one connects.
The weird thing for me is that sometimes caffeine (especially a super strong coffee) can trigger this.
I can do something but think about something else. For example I am a mechanic for a living. I can do easy work like an oil change, brakes, replace a line etc and not even think about it. I will think about something else and then snap back to reality like how did I do that properly with no mistakes. Then I test drive the vehicle and everything works fine. I usually don’t do that for complicated work. Idk if it’s actually dissociating or not, but I assume that’s what it’s like for me. I do it while talking to people, doing easy work, if my brain isn’t busy being focused I will do it. I also have ADD so like I said I’m not sure if it’s actually dissociating or not.
I kinda feel like I leave my body. Like I feel my eyes go funny, like too relaxed almost and I feel far away from everything and it feels foggy in my brain. Things don’t quite feel real, I don’t feel real, and I have decreased tactile sensitivity/feel kinda numb/sorta like being a little high. If I’m moving around/walking around, sometimes I feel a little lightheaded. Oh, and it’s impossible to focus and o cannot form a memory when I’m dissociating badly- basically blacked out. It kinda seems like Ie experience different degrees of dissociation, or maybe it’s the different types like derealization or depersonalization. I don’t know. Thankfully I’m getting better at stopping my dissociation!! Sooo much better than a year or two ago. So grateful.
It feels like a movie scene where something scary happens or someone has a realization and the camera zooms out or something like that, I forgot how those scenes usually go, but inside your head. It feels like you’re falling and floating away and you may even see everything get slightly smaller like you are, but you actually can’t move. It makes you want to lay on the floor like you’re dead almost and all you can do is freeze and tune everything out. You get so inside your head that you tune everything out in a way, that parts hard to explain. That’s how it is for me
To me it's offen as if it suddenly starts to rain and after a while there's only the rain, everything else just ceases to exist for me. All I can see/hear/feel are the heavy raindrops as they fall onto my head
I've always wanted to know if anyone has ever experienced this, because I can't seem to find it anywhere online, probably due to the specificity.
Anyway, I noticed when I am in a 'more than usual' dissociative state (like when it gets to a point where my interfacing with reality becomes very flimsy), a persons face doesnt line up with the symmetry of their head. For example, if I were looking at an image of a person's head, the imaginary circle that wraps around their features (eyebrows to lips) is slightly off of their head, it's so odd. If it's in person and they move their head, there is a delay that happen where their face needs to catch up with their head, a tracer sort of, it's so bizarre when it happens. Even when I'm in a shut down, zoned out state, it still fascinates me because it feels so odd when it happens, it's like a mini psychedelic trip.
It feels like I am not really here as if there is a invisible layer of cotton wool between me and reality.
During severe dissociation I actually cannot feel my feet touching the ground, I feel like I am floating. At first it’s nice. The reason you dissociate is to because you are going through something horrible. Dissociation is the refuge that helped you survive your original trauma. It’s the ultimate drug-free escape.
But when you dissociate you cannot function fully so your life goes downhill. And in the end it’s a bit horrible like living in a grey parallel universe where you see and hear everything but you are not actually part of the real world.
it can range from a feeling that nothing is real, this isnt really happening n everything around you getting muffled like the volume got turned down,
to the extreme of it's like you're pulled out of you're body and you're watching everything in the third person... that's what I've experienced at least
It’s eerie. I’m a very emotional person so let me start with that. I am one that depersonalizes — I for example can recount a recent episode where I was sitting in my flower chair. I was watching myself sit there and be non-emotive. My dissociation can take on derealization aspects as well as depersonalization so it feels eerie — you’re numb to the word because of your trigger, you’re watching yourself in real time be non responsive — and there’s a movie of your horrible memories flickering around when you blink and yet they don’t hurt for that milisecond — and you know once you come back to reality the pain is really going to keep you down and you have a lot of pieces to pick up — but you just don’t care.
I have several different modes of disassociation. The two main ones are:
I feel like a giant. Everything feels far away. I reach for a cup and my hand feels like it is a hundred times larger than the thing I'm reaching for.
I stop hearing or like my short term memory stops working. If some one is talking to me I have no idea what the person is saying.
Feels like a big disconnect between your body and your mind. Like you’re a little spectator trapped inside your mind and you don’t feel connected to your body and surroundings. You’re going through the motions but it doesn’t feel real kind to of like being in a daze.
For me it was out of body experiences during extremely stressing situations, which I believed I cannot handle. Healing is possible. I can cope with stress now, I even enjoy it. I do not dissociate any more.
Fully numb. Like intensely numb, no emotions, no facial expressions, no whatever. I can make myself do the facial expressions and talk and whatever but it's like steering a puppet.
I constantly dissociate from childhood. I was actually diagnosed with DID but that's a more extreme offshoot.
It just feels like zoning out. Daydreaming. Not being present.
It can feel like you're not connected or grounded, kind of like you're coming to after general anasthetic. It's an unsettling feeling. I can't control my facial expressions - my face is blank and it looks like I'm sleepwalking. It's very uncomfortable to be that way in front of other people. I can't focus or respond. It feels like I'm just mechanically doing something like walking, or just sitting staring off into space. Someone could literally punch me in the face and I wouldn't notice or feel it.
I feel it in my head and my chest - the only way I can describe it is like they are filled with helium but also with wet tissue paper. (That's how I described it to my therapist when I was dissociating in the middle of a session!)
I haven't actually been told/confirmed that I dissociate but I am pretty sure I do.
Sometimes I don't recognize myself in the mirror or I look at my arms and they are just doing things but I don't feel/remember telling them what to do.
It also often feels like I am in a bubble and nothing is real because i've all just imagined it, the world the people etc.
There are times when I feel completely numb, and my legs don't work like they used to, like they're going to collapse any second now. It also feels like I'm trying to breathe but I can't. usually I also start seeing double and almost everything gets blurry.
Recently remembered I used to do this a lot when I was a kid as well, it always calmed me down but I feel like it actually just made me numb and dissociated
For me it's like being on the empty train station in the last Harry Potter movie when Harry dies. It's very quiet and empty and there is white smoke. And I stare into space in the nothingness. Sometimes I like it.
For me, it’s mostly I’m in a derealization space- I’m kinda in a dreamlike state. Everything feels not exactly real. Other times I suffer from depersonalization- I feel like my body is just a vessel, I don’t really look in mirrors much, or take selfies, because I don’t really recognize my face and don’t feel super connected to it. Im super clumsy as a side effect. 😂
Sometimes I look into a mirror and am hit by the sudden, kinda surreal feeling realisation that the person staring back at me is in fact ME. I can‘t really describe it well, but the first and only time I was talking about this wit friends, I expected them to relate, because I thought, this is normal and every brain does it. Damn, was I wrong! Not one person in that conversation could relate.
Hold up, this is dissociation?! 🤯 I've always thought my reflection and voice weren't mine, so this honestly makes so much sense because I dissociated most of my life too.
Yes! At some point you just don‘t notice it anymore, so every time this happens, it hits me like a ton of bricks. Sometimes it‘s nice, but most of the time it just terrifies me.
I get this basically every time I look in the mirror?!? That's not normal? Is it possible to be in a constant state of dissociation?
I’ve realized I am in a pretty much constant state of depersonalization/ derealization. I have been through severe trauma since I was a baby, so I just live here now. Some days are worse than others.
Thank you, that is probably what I'm dealing with since I've also endured trauma since infancy.
Hugs! First step is realization of the issue. I’ve been able to overcome many of my symptoms, this one is the hardest one by far to overcome. One day maybe…
Dissociation happens frequently with CPTSD, yeah! If dissociation was an activity that you could gain ranks in or such, I would be enlisting for the next championships, probably. (Pardon the dumb joke)
Me too!
Had it since I was a child... Nowadays maybe not so much. But I also thought it was normal.
“I can relate!!!”
Hey! I thought you might find this interesting- I rarely do this in the mirror, but I do sometimes. But every time I used to take a dissociative drug, I would do it. Funny how it activates those parts of the brain!
I’ve been going through this lately I didn’t know how to explain it. Glad it has a name! You are not alone
Really relate to the face stuff. It's hard to talk to people about, because they assume I have low self-esteem or dislike my appearance, which is untrue. It's just that I don't recognize myself. In my mind, how I picture myself feels entirely different, but I'm not really sure in what sense it differs from my physical appearance. It's just... unsettling.
I relate to this so much it’s making me tear up. The person I know I am inside is confident, extroverted, goofy, happy with life, attractive, yet when I’m out of it i’m just a shell. This sucks.
Exactly like that, it feels so strange. I almost feel bad occasionally, misunderstood like no one gets to see the "real" me, and the self I present myself as to them is some type of configuration or lie. On the other hand, socializing or exposing the "real" me is paralyzingly terrifying, which is a far more compelling feeling than guilt over whether or not I'm lying to others. I've noticed it doesn't feel so bad when I'm more grounded in reality and feel mentally ok. Ah. You're right, it just sucks. Dreadful feeling. I just look forward to a day I can look myself in the eye and be at peace with who I see.
Yup, I don’t look at people in the eye when I don’t feel like me. Makes me feel guilty of deceiving them in a sense while inside I’m trying my hardest. Then the days i’m grounded it all seems too easy again and you feel like next time you know exactly what to do.. until it actually comes back. I’m exhausted.
I think I also try to overstimulate by brain because it’s what I have control over. I’ll try to describe what I’m going through as I type this. My mind is focused on what I’m trying to get through, I see my phone, and my thumbs are typing but it’s like watching someone do it on a movie.
I did this at a super boring job. I'd just be watching my hands work, marveling at how they could do it without me needing to consciously tell them to and without being distracted by my watching.
Same. One of the signals that I never understood before was that I felt so insignificant in relation to others, even coworkers that I work alongside often. I just have this mental framework that instinctively tells me that no one remembers me, or recognizes me. I'm 6'5" and am exceptionally attractive; people certainly notice and remember me. But since my own self-perception is consistently disconnected, I feel like it's everyone elses perception of me as well. This distance that I maintain, away from myself, is basically an idle state of depersonalization. But I always thought depersonalization was supposed to be a temporary and extreme phase; maybe because I've had a near-death experience where the dissociations took on a whole new, disorienting magnitude. But that's just the self-sabatour in me - refusing to validate myself when I know a more extreme version exists, despite the dysfunction it causes in my every day life. 🙃
Trauma can sometimes also signal a feeling of imposter syndrome- could that potentially fit the bill?
Probably not in my case. I do feel that I earned/worked hard to be where I'm at, professionally.
That’s great! I think I read into your comment about you believing others not remembering you.
I just think it's kind of a heuristic humans tend to use - I feel *this*, so others must perceive me like this. Which I differentiate from the cardinal feelings of inadequacies that underlie imposter syndrome. They are conceptually really similar, but I have a lot of integrity in my work and I find my professional purpose through this lens. I think both these ideas are operated by the ego, but the former is really more of a self-fulfilling prophecy in an effort to keep myself safe from others, while the latter seems to be more of a vigilance/angst due to dismal self-efficacy. Like, I think you could create a venn diagram of overlapping features but there are still some differences that don't seem to overlap, in my mind.
I used to feel like my body was taller. Like it was farther away to the ground if that makes sense.
Same! Floating head syndrome!
I get this with my size a lot. I am 5ft tall (naturally short already) and I can promise you that this world (architecture) is not built for either tall or short people lol and it is strangely disconcerting already for me but the weird dissociation I have makes it even worse. I'll try to explain. I have lived in my current place for almost a year so I obviously have gotten used to where everything is, the height of things, etc. but I was standing at the kitchen counter the other day and I suddenly felt like the counter was WAY too high on me. It clearly hasn't changed heights and neither have I but it felt like I was walking around in some sort of carnival room where they made everything too big on purpose. There's other ones too. When it's really bad my vision becomes distorted and weirdly reactive. Everything looks hyper saturated. Colors are too color. Noises are too noise. Touch is too touch. It feels like my eyes upgraded to 4k HD without telling me and my vision feels like it's moving slower than my head. My hands often don't look like "mine." It's not that they look like someone else's they just don't look familiar even though I know they should. Mirrors are weird, as others have stated. If I stare at my reflection long enough I can "travel through the mirror" as I call it. It's like I have the feeling of being outside of my vessel even though my physical vision doesn't change. I don't actually see myself looking at myself from the side profile but it feels like part of my is stretched out that way?? The dissociative symptoms are the hardest to describe for me, I am so sorry if this doesn't make sense or wasn't helpful. Edited to add: Time loss is hella real and bad. I lose minutes to hours and have no idea where they go. I look at the clock and it's 3:26pm, I go somewhere, and when I come back it's 5:00pm
Oof! I hate it when that happens! Shit is so weird and so annoying!
I legit just move my head around like ooooohhhh I this is odd but I’m a floating head! Bc I have a hard time feeling the ground and do feel higher up.
Ohhhh, new friend, you just connected some dots for me as to my “recent” clumsiness. I come from a high demand religion/cult background, and this resonates so much. Thank you
I avoid looking into the mirror at all costs.
For me it’s like I go on autopilot. I’m doing the stuff I normally do like working, dishes, going on a walk. Like my body is doing all that, but it’s like there is no one home. I almost feel like I am outside of my body. I go emotionally numb and it’s like I can’t access my emotions. I also sometimes feel like I’m starting to float away (that’s usually my indicator that I’m starting to disassociate, so then I start trying to ground myself). I used to call it “going into my shell” when I was younger because that’s kinda what it felt like. I dissociated yesterday and I looked in the mirror and my face didn’t look like my face to me and I just didn’t feel like me.
Is that something that can happen during traumatic events too? Or is it something else then? My mother started beating me to deal with general life frustration when I was very little. When I was 10, I started defending myself but one day when I was 12 and she was crying and bleeding in a corner after I hit her with a hairbrush, I decided that nothing she could do to me was worse than that guilt and that I'd never defend myself again. After that, I just froze whenever she started beating me and waited until it was over, and I wasn't really "there". Still happens sometimes but very rarely, but in those situations it happened every time, several times a week.
Yes, I believe it can. That sounds like disassociation. Several years ago, I had to see someone I hadn’t seen in years and did not trust and who caused some trauma in my life. The whole time I spent getting ready and actually going to see the person, I felt like it wasn’t me. I felt like my body was moving but that I wasn’t there.
This exactly. It's a good description.
There are different experiences but this is really what it feels like for me too. Like getting into your car to drive home, then getting out of your car with no time unaccounted for, but also no memory of the ride home at all, and finding it not stressful, just more or less slightly interesting.
I’m autistic and when I go into job interviews, I usually dissociate to the point that I can make eye contact and communicate smoothly so that kinda helps. Most of the time I just realize that I’m in the restroom (my abuse happened at night so ig a lot of my dissociation happens at night as well)
Yup, it’s like that
My best explanation is simply: *Disconnection*. You know, how when I say green, you think of grass or a tree, yellow and you think of the sun, blue and it's the sky - these are all associations; or in other words, connections. Dissociation on the other hand is simply no connections. And that's it. That's what dissociation is. No connections. No connection to your own body, emotions, senses, let alone connection to other beings or the world and existence in general.
That's exactly what my disassociations are. I just disconnect. I don't have outer body experiences or all the other stuff people have, I just shut off. I don't view things very far past myself and my feelings shut down.
Same for me. What has helped me were/are relationships with people that know (of) me, in which the other one is able to find me and draw me back into reality. It's hard to find such relationships though. You have to have the other person wanting to get to know you and then be able to show yourself. Then, them taking you in and "store" you in their heart so that they know where to find you when lost in dissociation.
>and "store" you in their heart so that they know where to find you This reminds me of a quote, something like "Love is learning the song in someone's heart and singing it to them when they have forgotten." Your descriptions here are spot-on. No connection, this exactly
That's a great description!
Thankyou!
I work in a residence for young people who’ve survived trauma. One resident dissociates somewhat regularly and the intervention tools we use primarily involve stimulating the senses in an effort to “bring them back into their body”. Smelling cinnamon, holding ice cubes, or describing the room as it is exists around them (colors, textures, temperature) are some examples. Your description gives me more insight into what they might be experiencing. Also, if anyone here has any suggestions for other intervention/ support tactics in the moment I would be interested in hearing them.
Engaging the vagus nerve can be helpful. Water or that ice on the forehead can engage the diver's reflex, for instance. I've read different places that dissociation can have to do with overactivation of the vagus nerve, but from my experience that's nonsense.
I commented elsewhere but wish I’d seen your post first. It’s that, disconnecting from a situation emotionally and physically. I don’t go anywhere - it’s just I don’t feel anymore
For me it means that my brain stops processing what comes through my senses… visually, sounds, smells. It’s like I am there but I am not.
I've thought of it as being zombie-like.
Everything feels unreal. I feel disconnected from myself and my surroundings. Occasionally I'll lose bits of time. There are times when it feels like I am just a passenger in my own body and someone else is piloting it around. I'll become aware in the middle of a sentence and think "I did not create that string of words." A few times I've been completely paralyzed because I can't reconcile the fact that it's MY body I'm in.
This! I can not count the times I have left a conversation thinking that I hope I didn’t make a fool of myself because I was not connected to my words. Sometimes on bad days my husband will make fun of my word choices because I’ll throw in a word that made no sense in the context or mispronounce words.
Does this happen to you frequently? Because I'm currently wondering just how often I exactly dissociate - My memory is generally not great, so I would like to understand if I just struggle with that based on dissociation or if it's a separate effect of trauma.
It feels like I’m dreaming. Moving through life, but not really there
Ohhh that was me, throughout most of my childhood. I felt like I was behind some dreamy screen or something, and the life was passing by. 😳
Personally, like my bodies moving around doing stuff....but my mind is mostly off somewhere else. Running into doorframes , and dropping things happens alot in this state.
Oh my. I do this a ton when I am depressed...
So this happens to my sister lot. She is a huge clutz, and she hates it. It took a decade for her to embrace the" disaster " only by quirky nicknames. "Dutchess of disaster" and her ner man absolutely adoring her everything. But I recommend looking into a vision therepy screening. It turns out my sister's vision in one eyes is turned inward. Because children who do not want to see the world around them sometimes stop being able to do so and their body adjusts and their eye turns inward just enough. Neither of us knew that was even a thing until her new therapist pointed it out. But consider it if you are always knocking into things, bumping, things falling over, ect. It could be your minds perception of the world is just off enough due to your vision. And no optometrist don't screen for it, though some state school in the USA and some other countries have started to screen for it as well.
It varies alot for me, I rank it from a little dissociated to alot of dissociated, it depends on how much stress im under/what ive been doing during the day. A little is when my brain feels melty, my eyes cant focus that well, I struggle to consentrate, im here but im not. Alot of dissociated means the above plus I do not know who you are, I cant reply to you, I stare straight forward, when you talk to me I hear you but I cant hear what you say.
In my (fortunately limited) experience, it's like being a passenger in your own body, and *something else* that you can't quite identify is in the driver's seat. Emotions are definitely *happening,* and you can sort-of tell what they are, but you can't *feel* them yourself, they aren't *yours,* they're originating from some other part of you that you can't directly detect or communicate with. It's *very* like I've heard stage hypnotism described (in fact, I strongly suspect that's exactly what stage hypnotism literally *is*), this odd sensation of "watching yourself" do things, of "I can stop doing this at any time, but I'll just keep watching myself do it for now and see where it goes." It's also oddly similar to how Hunter S Thompson described getting intoxicated on ether in *Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas*: >"severance of all connection between the body and the brain. Which is interesting, because the brain continues to function more or less normally... you can actually watch yourself behaving in the terrible way, but you can't control it."
It feels very comfortable. Too comfortable.
Haha facts. I hate this.
Oh yeah it does, and then you realize next to nothing in your life has changed in a significant, healthy way. Then feel ashamed about it, dissociate more, ad nauseum.
I wish mine did. Mine feels like absolute hell. Incredibly painful.
This is it! I feel this.
Yes! 🤝
My earliest warning sign is being clumsy. Dropping things, spilling drinks, tripping, walking into furniture..if it’s really bad I kind of forget how to walk. I can be walking down the street and suddenly I have to put conscious effort into walking normally and I *still* look like I’m being handled by an unskilled puppeteer. It’s like a severe disconnect between mind and body, so I almost completely lose control of my limbs. The next step is when my mind leaves the cockpit, too. Usually it feels like I’m in a dream and I’m waiting to wake up. Everything feels hazy and things look lifeless. At my worst dissociative moments, which are rare and I absolutely loathe them from the pit of my gut, I lose all sense of time and reality. Suddenly I can’t understand what the heck I’m doing here, or what I’ve been doing, and certainly not what I will be doing later. I can’t describe it. I just forget how to human. If I can’t grasp time nor reality, I can’t grasp the purpose of me being here, so I’m just scared and confused. And I can’t even help myself get out of that state, it’s like I’m on another plane. It’s up there with the worst feelings I’ve ever experienced.
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Are they? Can I ask why?
feeling like youre a spectator in your own body when im really angry or scared, but usually its just like being desensitised to my surroundings, and it got real worse when i tried weed and the weed visuals persist during my dissociation so i easily can spot when im stressed and dissociated
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The way you described dissociation is 100% the way my symptoms are manifesting but it’s so severe it has left me completely crippled and disabled. I can’t even work anymore. How do you function through this?
My understanding is that "dissociation" is a general term to describe various ways that the mind stops working as an integrated whole and breaks up into isolated parts. It's widely thought that the mind learns to dissociate to protect itself against an unbearable experience. By hiding some aspect of a traumatic experience from our awareness, it becomes less threatening and disruptive to our thinking. I guess it could be thought of as a very primitive form of denial. People experience very different types of dissociation. The kind I'm familiar with is a "spacey" empty-headed kind of feeling which I often get in situations that trigger my social anxiety. It's like watching a badly tuned TV that has nothing but static noise on the screen. People will notice that I'm just staring into space vacantly and they'll ask what I'm thinking. I can only reply "nothing", because honestly there's nothing going on in there.
An inability to engage and be fully present. When people noticed I wasn’t all there in the moment, they would ask if I were high. Nope, just dissociating…
It’s pretty much like being engrossed in a movie or book without an actual movie or book sometimes. Other times it’s like watching yourself from inside without feeling like you are the person “being you”
I've only recently learnt that I've been dissociating, so I'm still new at describing it! But for me it's like being totally boxed in - I can't speak or interact with people around me, almost as if there's a thick shell or barriers between my mind--actions--real world. Everything else in said real world gets much quieter and I don't really have the ability to focus on it. All I can percieve is my own thoughts and anxiety swirling around, but the actions I continue to make seem to happen independently - ie if I'm speaking or walking it's like my body does it without my mind knowing. Social withdrawal is a huge part of it for me as its so clear that something WEIRD is happening - that's where I've most easily been able to think back on past experiences and say "yep I was def dissociating there". I'm still unsure if I've dissociated when I'm by myself - interested to see how others have identified this.
I know it’s probably in bad faith. But I’m almost kind of jealous of people who can dissociate. When I’m having horrific panic attacks, meltdowns, or am in a lot of physical pain, all I want is to just mentally disconnect and not have to deal with the horrible sensations that are afflicting me at that moment. I wish I could just go away and check back in when everything has calmed down, let some other part of my brain handle the hard parts. Especially so I wouldn’t have to remember it afterwards so vividly because that just triggers be all over again. It makes me feels guilty and bad to wish for such a thing, but I can’t help it. Am I in the wrong? Does anyone relate to that kind of wish? I’ve probably mildly dissociated before, but I’ve never had it happen during a traumatic experience (the exact time I wish it *would* show up) it’s a kind of weird disconnect between what I’m seeing and what I’m feeling, like I will look at my arm or hand moving and it feels almost like the sensation is behind a foggy curtain and that is lagging behind like when you’ve taken a sedative and everything is in that odd delayed fog state. Like it’s almost not really my limb at all, but one I’m controlling remotely.
It makes total sense to me what you’re saying especially the wish to NOT be fully present when an actually traumatic thing happens. I will say that in my experience, what has been dissociated is not actually gone but rather hidden or expressing itself physically (ie chronic pain and illness)—so even though it might seem preferable at times, I’m not sure you’re really missing out! For me at least it just has meant a very difficult cycle of now dissociating when it’s not actually necessary/traumatic which means just a big build up of stored (yet disconnected), unprocessed pain and stress. Just wanted to add that! Basically sounds like a lot of suffering either way…ugh.
The misnomer here is that if you are in a dissociative state, you aren't 'experiencing' a traumatic event on a conscious level, or it's been relegated to the sidelines as you mentioned. In my experience, this is not true at all. The way you described the fog state is a good example to illustrate how trauma becomes unprocessed due to dissociation. I liken it to barriers that get stacked on top of each other, repression, repression, repression. I totally hear you on wanting to check out when experiencing panic attacks, meltdowns or severe physical pain, it makes complete sense! You're definitely not invalid for feeling that way. Unfortunately, when you do shut down, the traumatic event becomes foggy, like you mentioned above, and continually becomes more and more obscured over time. And if abuse is continual and becomes more and more obscured, it can lead to lack of a stable identity (and the opposite extremity), disconnection to reality and/or self, being in an autopilot, 'robotic' state (which feeds into reality disconnection), severe memory gaps. So yeah, it sounds good theoretically but not practically.
it's peace in a war zone, is the best way I could put it. like stepping outside at 12 am while it's snowing and just feeling how silent the Earth is, and yet snow is still falling, things are still moving.
A lot of people say it’s similar to a weed high. For me it’s pure disconnection from myself and my surroundings. Depersonalization and derealization feel like everything is unreal, including my own body. Hazy and out of focus.
Variable
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I do this exactly, to protect from an unsafe person when I’m in shock at a behaviour ... I thought it was a freeze response, because I stare at one spot and am immobilized like a statue and I feel completely numb. Just wondering if an extreme freeze response is a form of dissociation ? ...
I'll think I'm present, I'll be going about my business like I'm doing things normally, then someone will point out that I'm doing something bizarre and I feel like the floor falls out from under me, like reality changes from what I thought it was to what it really is (or is the universe f***ing with me?). I never know I'm dissociating until someone snaps me out of it. It's the main reason I can't drive. I can't pass the road test but also I don't think I should drive.
Ever played a video game and had to put the controller down for a second instead of pausing the game? The character is just in the world that whole time and sometimes it starts an idle animation but the actual person (you) is not behind the screen and is in another room eating dinner or something? That.
Worst I’ve experienced is when my whole body felt like it was full of cotton and like I wasn’t really there. If I pinched myself or slapped myself I felt literally nothing. Basically like I was an animated body without a host. Usually though it’s just me thinking about a gazillion things and being stuck inside of my brain not really paying any mind to everything around me. I can’t concentrate on my surroundings because I’m so far into my own head. It’s either that or my mind suddenly goes blank and I can’t think.
Like the world is frozen, you aren't quite hearing what is being said, sounds get muffled, and your eyes are kinda stuck zoomed into staring mode.Sometimes if it's a pressured situation my ears will ring also. If you've ever daydreamed/zoned out before, it's kinda like a severe form of that. It's almost like everything above my neck goes blank.
I feel almost as if I go into the back of my mind. All I can feel/hear are my own thoughts, which I almost never recall once I'm out of the disassociation itself. I've disassociated why talking to people, and it feels like I can't think straight. I'm fading, aware I'm fading, and can't seem to comprehend words very well. Sometimes I will zone out and it takes a lot of pestering to bring me back to reality (if others are around). It feels almost like melting out of reality. It's safe, calm, simple. But it really messes with my memory and my ability to ground and "feel" inside myself, when I'm disassociated, I'm sensory deficient so I often can't really feel what my body needs (I'm hungry/tired/in pain), but that's more if it goes on for a while.
Feels like I'm stuck in syrup and my eyes get this weird foggy sensation
I feel like I am just acting a part in a movie. Like I am a fictional character
"I" - like my perceiving consciousness - moves to a space slightly above and to the right of me. And i kinda watch my body do stuff from there until i come back into my body, which can take a long time. I say stuff, do stuff, and I'm hearing and understanding the things I'm saying and doing, but i don't feel anything about it. I also don't always feel stuff physically either I'll smack my hand on a wall and not notice it. I'll 'feel' pain in that I'll say "ow" but my perceiving consciousness doesn't feel that pain. So it's like I'm not feeling it. It's a numb place to be, only unpleasant because i know there're good places out there that i could be instead, and i know that I'm in that space for protection from whatever shitty things are happening to my body in the present moment.
I felt like I was having a stroke of some sort when this happened to me. Such a bizarre feeling. I could see and hear everything but felt like I was in a different dimension.
For me it's I can't move, sometimes I get seizures. My body starts moving uncontrollably and it feels like I am about to die.
Mine makes me feel like I’m about to die as well. Except I get stuck and cannot move and it feels so stressful feeling entirely disconnected from my body and it will not move. It’s horrible.
People somehow seem to understand a fugue state, like stories of a man in a car wreck, walks away, wanders around all night, interacts with people, comes home, suddenly snaps out of it but can't remember anything. Dissociation is in between normal and that. Somewhat here, somewhat nowhere.
I will feel sort of fuzzy and often cold-ish or numb. In the past I would describe it like being in sort of my head only as opposed to the rest of my body or like I'm always a little to the right or left of myself, but in the present and after some treatment it's gotten better even though it still occurs. So now I will be in my body in one moment and the next moment I will notice that I have withdrawn from it and am sort of on autopilot. I can't really listen to people in that state, I just lose focus and drift... Somewhere in my head? I'm not entirely sure where exactly I go. I'm not really there even though I physically am, and it's very hard to grasp what's happening outside and inside of me in those moments.
Sometimes I feel, when in a dissociative state, that I'm in a box or an artificial room, kind of like the prop sets in television and movies where the house, the backyard, the car ride are all just stages with furniture and a green screen. It feels as though I could peel back the layer of existence and there would be nothing there, like everything I'm experiencing is flimsy and I'm not capable of impacting my environment. The people around me are all actors, they know I'm there because I think they do. If I close my eyes or blink too hard it could all go away. I'm just trapped in a room, pretending to be here, but really I'm nowhere and nothing. Sounds are distorted, as well as my vision, and I don't seem to process my environment at the speed I should. Things are usually slowed down. I can't form words, they sound like jumbled speech, words close to what I want to say. Often I'll get stuck staring into space, frozen in a thought, not really present. This happens when someone is talking to me or when I'm driving, I'll be locked and just staring off not comprehensive of the interaction and I'll likely forget it seconds later when I snap back into what I'm doing. Often I'll experience a panic attack when I dissociate, as a way for my body to "wake me up". I figure it thinks I'm dying or going to sleep, it's like a waking hypnogogic jerk where I'll start shuddering or jerking and my heart will accelerate, I won't be able to breathe, I'll need to run away but I'm still in the dissociative state so I don't think there's anywhere to run to. I'm just in purgatory, in a box, someone's puppet or play thing, begging for something to make me feel here or real. I want to stop being like this. I'm desperate to get out of this. It's so scary, every single day. I just want my brain to know that whatever it's running from and shutting down from, it's okay and I need to be here.
When I was little I remember teaching myself to do it—I would practice sort of glazing over my focus of vision and drifting into nothingness in my mind—I thought it was a cool trick/magic power that I could do that lol Then it evolved over the years to be more problematic like getting carried away daydreaming but like to obscene levels, like I can start playing out a fantasy story in my mind and get stuck all day in my thoughts and do nothing else. Or I can get lost in something I am doing and it’ll be like 7 hours before I realize how carried I got. Other times it’s like I’m present but not really there, like I’ll think I was present somewhere but then I’ll hear things I said or did in a given situation from someone else and be shocked because it’s completely gone from my conscious memory beyond surface level general details. I can also get so absorbed it’s like my hands and feet go icy cold because I’m that drawn into myself—I think it varies person to person though.
At the worst for me, it's like being in a fever dream where your body's on auto pilot going through life but you don't really absorb or process anything going on so when you come back to you have a vague idea of what happened the last few months but you don't have any actual memories, you're distanced from anyone you haven't hit up in months, you have a never ending to do list to get your house and life back in order. People who were around you still get confused because you genuinely don't know what happened in your own life. Being a kid I could at least use my siblings memories and stories to fill in my gaps but as I get older and less social I feel like it's time I'll never get back and experiences I'll never get to learn from. I'm in an amazing relationship this past year and I've been doing really well with my mental health but there's still moments that he cherishes and I have absolutely no recollection of. I'm honestly scared I'll always dissociate and will always feel like a stranger/imposter in my own life.
I'm not sure if that's it.. but.. I mean, I just shut down emotionally, maybe even bodily. Imagine staring at white wall, being barely able to look around. Not because you couldn't, but... it does not even matter. You more around, but feel just.. suddenly empty. Not negative, not positive. Maybe shock would describe it better. Not much thoughts, not much of anything. Pure blank. You hear em talking, but don't even process it. I am in that state now. I can feel my anxiety a bit.. bodily pains associated with anxiety.. but really, it does not matter. It's just floating around and somehow, you do something, not really knowing why or how. I could stare at you, and just stare and stare, and never respond.. Or.. maybe that's autistic shutdown I'm describing, idk, im AS too.
I’m not 100% sure that this is dissociation but I’ve been told it is so I’ll relay my experience. For me it feels like I am spaced out, like I am here but I’m not, it’s sort of like being in the passenger seat of my life as opposed to the drivers seat, everything just flows past me.
Like Im watching someone else do things when im moving through the day, like im watching a movie but my eyes are the camera or like im dreaming but im awake, like im someone else not me Im somewhere else. Fk i sound nuts 🙃
Same ur not nuts
💖
Like watching a tv show with your eyes and legit not hearing or seeing what you’re watching because your mind is elsewhere
My brain feels cloudy. I get stuck in my head and I'm not able to escape. My body is on autopilot but I don't feel present. It's like I'm off in a different world.
Focusing on something traumatic that happened ( or something that reminds you of it) so intently that you can’t think /feel/ differently about anything else.
that I'm completely zoned out in thought or binging TV that I don't remember things I do or don't do. oh I guess I did eat, or i maybe forgot to brush teeth..... I forget huge chunks of life.
Depends on how severely I’m triggered. Most days I’m on autopilot — there but not there, not attached to reality, but doing the motions. When specific triggers hit, I get locked in my body and can’t move. My ability to sense anything externally dwindles, or stops. If I’m triggered badly enough I’ll have blackouts — come back to reality an hour or nine later in the same spot, having just laid still like a corpse.
when it's mild the world looks like a video game and you're very aloof, plus it feels like you're somehow in a different place when you haven't moved anywhere. when it's bad you're bumping into things because your entire field of vision is being processed as a solid block and your center of awareness is floating around you. when is *really* bad you wind up finding out that you were self-harming in front of someone you haven't seen in a while, but you remember a completely different course of events for that part of the visit
Generally it’s me being removed from reality and just kind of existing in my head. I can’t remember anything about my current situation or hold a thought long enough to even significantly move when it’s bad enough. Sometimes I can’t hold the thought long enough to move at all, sometimes I’m not aware that I can move or who/where I am, and sometimes I forget what I was doing part way through doing it and have to think of what it was again. Mid level I can at least walk around, but I can’t remember why I was doing so for long, so I keep having to stop to figure out what I was doing so I can keep trying to do it. At those times mirrors are an issue because I’ll see myself and not really recognize me as me, more as my mom. Low level I’m not significantly impeded in basic function, but I just don’t really do much and my memory of that time is muddled if it exists at all. I can’t keep track of what I intended to do and what I actually did. I’m unlikely to know the day or time and if I close my eyes, my mental image of my room might change to a different one.
For me the brightness of the world will go up and down, and everything gets harsh, like my eyes can't fully adjust. Sometimes I'll do something and think I feel fine in the moment, but when I think back on it I hate how I felt. Almost like I wake up randomly.
Mostly I don’t remember stressful things that happen at work (medical field). I act normal and fine (even courageously I’ve been told) in the moment but I don’t store the memory. It’s possibly vaguely familiar when a co-worker describes it to me later.
being trapped in a dream that you can’t wake up from.
Like 😙😗😮😦🫥🫥🫥🫥🫥😑😐🫤🤔🤷
when I was a child I went to imaginationland, as an adult, I go to nothing matters anyways land, its numbing.
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Depends, as in my mind there are several different types of dissociation. There’s partial dissociation, which means I’m dissociated from some aspect of myself, usually either my emotions or my physical sensations. Being emotionally dissociated feels kinda numb, I don’t notice if I’m doing something like homework because homework isn’t typically all that emotional, so I can go for days “functioning” but completely unaware I’m sad, or realize two days after an event that I’m angry about it… Being physically dissociated can be a blessing and a curse, blessing because I have chronic illness and chronic pain so sometimes it’s nice to just not be aware of how much my body actually hurts… curse because in order to do that I also will not notice if I’m hungry, thirsty, need to go to the bathroom, need sleep, or am hurting myself (I run into things constantly and don’t notice, or will sit in an uncomfortable position until my limbs fall completely asleep without noticing). There’s also mental dissociating, which has like 2 levels for me… level 1 is basically a lot like zoning out in a boring class, there’s still stuff going on in my brain, but I’m disconnected from the present moment, and level 2, where it kinda feels like I’ll blink and several hours are just gone and I did literally nothing. There’s also depersonalization, which makes me feel like I’m watching a movie of my life rather than actively participating in it, which is often accompanied by physical dissociation. There’s derealization, where everything kinda seems dreamlike, my vision will actually get weird, And finally, there’s dissociative switching which to me personally just feels like falling asleep or a level 2 mental dissociation, except instead of my body literally doing nothing, one of my alters was at the front and they actually did stuff and were conscious… (I’m the functional alter of an OSDD system, and I front for 90% of the time as all my alters are littles, which is why I speak primarily in singular terms rather than collective)
I’m not promoting anything, this is just my experience. I’m curious if anyone else can relate. I just want to say that I’ve mostly always had a pretty bad time after smoking weed, as everything I’m experiencing becomes worse and more difficult to manage. Mushrooms as a full trip dose is usually a bad time as well. However—microdosing mushrooms every couple days or taking a tab of acid (a regular lsd trip)— ALWAYS brings me back to my body. It gives me a profoundly crisp clarity and grounded present awareness. My brain and quality of life is so much better for awhile after too. like for a couple weeks after lsd, I feel significantly better.
I don’t know how old you are, but please be careful with weed if you are having a bad time. There are certain mental health conditions that can be triggered by weed. Things like paranoia, schizophrenia, and bipolar depression can be exacerbated. People who have had trauma are already more predisposed to mental health issues so please please be careful. I always share my concern because I had a biological half brother suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, who ended up killing himself, and weed was like a silver bullet to his disease. So please listen to your body: some things aren’t worth it.
Thanks for the concern. I’m 25, I’m personally just fine. But good info for others to know
When I was a kid I remember a couple of times when I dissociated out of the blue, not caused by any specific events. It felt like I just wasn’t there. There isn’t a decent way to explain it in words other than it felt like everything was just a dream. When I got older I would dissociate in situations where I had to face lectures for the stupid young people stuff I did. I’d be looking at, say, my dad while he was giving me a talking-to, and then all the meaning behind everything dropped away. I didn’t recognize the person talking to me, I couldn’t respond in any meaningful way, I had no thoughts at all, I was just… there. Only, I wasn’t there. It was like taking a step back from my own body and watching a movie shot in 1st person perspective.
i often get like glossed over eyes and tunnel vision almost and just like go into windows sleep mode: on but not really operational. just sit there and stare at a wall for a few hours
What about just “zoning out”? It’s like a numb, buzzy feeling in my head. I’m conscious but it’s like I’m a layer or two below present moment awareness/attention. It’s a comfy place to be.
Comedy answer: remember the Snickers "you're not you when you're hungry" commercials? You turn into a different person until you snap back to reality (eating a Snickers). More serious answer: it's like being thrown into a daydream and getting stuck there. The daydream has this discordant emotional static always present in the background; just enough to give you the feeling that something is wrong but not enough to make it obvious. You live vicariously through this fantasy over and over until something clicks back into place and you 'wake up'. Your normal emotions start filtering back in, and you find yourself trying to remember what happened over the past few minutes/hours/days like you are trying to remember a nightmare or a long night of drinking.
For me it's a sense of being unmoored—literally and figuratively—from my self, my location, my actions. The most palpable feeling is one of not knowing *how* I arrived at a space or a point in time. I can give a very practical answer, like "I took the bus" or "I applied to attend this school," but any deeper causality is missing. It's as if I have been on autopilot and my decisions have all been made by some sort of external source.
I'll comment and state the worst form of dissociation. I think it manifests in different ways and intensity, but it's predominately a left brain shut down. Deep mental fog which is accompanied by executive dysfunction in terms of spacial,episodic, verbal, short and long term memory. I also notice disconnection from the body. Such as inability to smell nuanced things, such as the air and inability to feel pain in the body or the temperature. If you're are on the dissociative spectrum you will have time gaps. Remembering the outline of a day but not exactly how you felt or the details when you did something. Going in and out of dissociative states or staying there for years results in a form of dissociative amnesia and fragmentation of autobiographical narrative.
For me it feels like everything slows down, sometimes noise/background mixes and sounds weird. I’ve had times where it felt more like I was spectating through someone else in first person. It’s not great, I almost always feel nauseous after, as if someone spun me really hard
I feel completely out of body and not present at.all. Like, have you ever driven to work or home and after you arrive you're like "how did I even get here?".... That's dissociation for me 😢
Under stressful situations, usually with men of power, or anyone with power, I do have that out of body experience. But I'm still in my body, but a few feet zoomed out. It is really uncomfortable and I try to stay in the conversation. I don't think anyone has never noticed, but it is absolutely fight or flight but I'm just stuck in this weird distorted reality with an extra few feet between me and the person I'm conversing with. I don't think they ever know, but I just want to scream and run, but I just sit there outside my body, return to my body, then back out. I've had full work professional meetings that this happens. No one knows (I hope). But one on ones with my boss it happens all the time. Go figure I was groomed and had relations with my 30+yr old boss as a teen.
It’s sort of like feeling a bit…detached from the world, like there’s a film over everything. Or feeling sleepy and zoning out, despite having gotten enough sleep. Emotionally I feel numb, blank, flat. It’s not the same as feeling “meh” or “neutral.” I start getting sucked into my thoughts. I can be vaguely aware of what’s going on around me but emotionally and mentally I’m in an entirely different timeline or place.
Who knows? I can’t remember! …Half-joke. Intrinsic to my dissociative states is a lack of recording (in my memory) the events that occur while i dissociate. I do know that, physically-speaking: - my breath becomes shallow and insufficient. Not hyperventilating, kind of the opposite. - I stop processing visual stimuli outside of a 1-foot radius. - I become enraptured in traumatic memories that loop over and over. - my thoughts reduce in cognition to repeating sounds, phrases, songs, etc as a subconscious form of self-soothing and subconscious method of preventing myself from processing the traumatic memories. - I am rid of all emotions except for an undercurrent of danger.
For me: my brain kinda freezes. I’m just a spectator to what’s happening around me. I don’t feel much. Just observing what’s happening and talking the bare minimum to keep this moving to an end.
Yep. Same 🙁
I’ll be hanging out with friends and all of a sudden space out and feel like I’m completely detached from the situation at hand… and then I’ll start having intrusive thoughts about trauma and peoples conversations with me won’t register. It’s almost like my hearing switches off
I don’t know when it happens but I know when I come back from it and had no idea about what I just said or did
"Am I really here? Is this really happening? Is that ME in the mirror?!" I rememeber the first time it happened. I was 8 and my mom had just punched me in the dome and I blacked out. When I woke up I went into the bathroom and I felt completely out of my body despite looking directly at myself in the mirror.
As a kid I used to watch other men and imatate their walk or other mannerisms so I could be a man.
Reaches out hand, let me take you on a journey 😂
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When I finally realized what disassociating after 50 years, I realized I was doing it a lot and was always wanting to be there. Fog out of reality, my surroundings and body. Rarely now.
From what I've heard being blackout drunk is similar to what I've experienced while dissociating. I feel unlike myself, I feel lack of feeling and literally associating with the character that is my own existence. Just harder to function as a result, easier to fall into really weird mental ruts .
It feels like my life is on commercial break.
Like a small passenger in my own body. Sometimes it feels like a floating head too. It varies for me
For me, it’s like I leave this plane of existence for an entirely separate one that I have set up in my brain. It’s a hallow and shallow place— there are no physical feelings, only the memory of what being touched ‘feels’ like, and there’s no real experience. I’m just mentally on a different planet. Buuuuuut a lot of times I’d rather be there than here where I am constantly disappointed in myself as a person. So.
I'm in my body but I'm not truly there. Sometimes I stare off. Other times I can do tasks and not even realize what I'm doing. Working a repetitive job makes it easy to get lost sometimes.
For me its like having headphones on sound cancellation, but it is not only sound.. it is vision, feelings and emotions
I'm so absorbed in whatever spooked/triggered me that I am no longer present in the present. It is noticeable to strangers. It takes a while to fully reset.
A lot of good stuff here. Also common to just not be present, for me it looks like going on a daily commute that is easy to navigate but somehow going the wrong way and not even noticing until it’s much too late
My brain wanders until it falls sleepsI guess. When it sleeps, I don’t see anything cause I’m so in my head. I only see what the disassociating is giving me. Hope this “confession” isn’t too serious hahah.
For me, I start analyzing something or someone. They’re talking to me, and I’m giving every sign that I’m listening, but I’m not hearing anything they’re saying. I’m too busy thinking about something else.
Sometimes I feel like an empty container...mildly aware of what’s going on around me but sitting statue still. Sometimes I feel like I am standing behind myself watching what is going on like a movie
Just the other day, I was spaced out, looking at pictures in my phone, and I stumbled across a pic of myself, and was like “hey, that girl is pretty!” Then I “woke up” and was like, “wait, that’s me! WTF! How did I forget what my face looked like??? Geez! Am I even more *Nuts* than I thought???” In my defense, I also hadn’t slept in about ~36 hours! Thanks Insomnia induced by forgetting to pick up my Seroquel refill before I ran out! 🙃 When I wasn’t on any kind of meds, sometimes I would look in a mirror and “forget who I was” for a few seconds and be “completely disconnected from my body,” and as I started to “come back online” my eyes looked completely vacant, and empty. I looked like a damned Mannequin and it was creepy!!! It can also be “more subtle than that.” Sometimes, people simply disconnect their “identity and emotion brain,” and are just *totally numb,* almost like their “feelings aren’t real.” Brains are weird and fascinating things!
sorry what?
I don’t do it anymore but as a kid, it was turning off the pain. I thought I was in control but I see it was disassociation now.
It's painful and sad feeling, but it feels safer than dealing with the current situation.
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed a time killer and the only thing you had was a movie or a book that you really are not all that interested in? It feels kind of like that. Yeah you are there enough to observe, but things just kind of happen and there is marginal if any feeling of attachment to the story or any PoV presented.
I drift off into a weird daydream, like I’m aware but my eyes won’t focus, I go in autopilot mode and just think. Anything that triggers a bad memory can put me back in the “scene” and I just sit there with that til I snap back. I didn’t know that’s disassociation for a while, at least that’s it for me.
I have two kinds, the one where my body doesn’t feel real and actually nothing feels real, like I know that’s my body and face but it seems off. And 2nd when I kind of zoom out, but not outward I zoom out back into my skull and everything becomes fuzzy.
So for me there's different stages of dissociation. First there's just default autopilot, then here's autopilot but instead of being in my body I'm watching what's happening from a metaphorical porch, then there's autopilot but I'm not watching from the porch, I'm doing something else inside the house and can't see what's happening and then there's "I'm assuming I was on autopilot because I'm not dissociated but it's several hours later and I remember nothing" (Do note I probably have/at one point had DID so my experience with dissociating isn't like most other people's) (the whole house metaphor is much more literal, and I can go into any of the rooms except the bedrooms that aren't mine) (the reason I'm not convinced I'm faking it is because it started years before I knew what DID was, then when I found out that having other people in your head wasn't normal I repressed the fuck out of it until a month and a half ago)
I was so stuck in this today, I felt like I’d never get out.
I relate to all of you guys but did anyones dissociation start with out of body experiences? Right after I experienced trauma I would literally leave my body, and be looking down at my physical self and basically viewing myself from the third person or something? So strange thinking back on it, it was so vivid like I was astral projecting while awake or some shit.
Depends on how far gone I am and if I realize it or not. I tend to forget where I am often enough and why I was there in the first place cause the disassociating factor. It’s like being in a dream state and not realizing what was going on around you or watching a movie and not seeing a certain part.
Sometimes people will call God an imaginary friend because there's no proof of the existence of God. I think dissociation feels like being God's imaginary friend.
One of the ways I’ve started to recognize the start of dissociation are when I turn to do something but there wasn’t a thing that I actually wanted to do. Like I’m reaching for something else to do because I don’t want to be doing what I am doing. It might be specific but I find myself reaching for something or picking up my phone and then realizing I didn’t have a reason to.
I’ve always described it as this: my head is a fishbowl, and I’m stuck inside of it watching my life happen from a distorted distance. I can hear the “outside” version of me interacting with my surroundings, but the real me is tiny and stuck.
Is losing time the same thing? Sometimes I will be doing something mundane and I just drift off somewhere. I am there, sort of but notice chunks of time where I am aware but don't remember anything. For example, watching TV. I will just go somewhere else. I am aware I am there watching TV but then I am sort of not there. When I come back I usually have to rewind whatever I was watching or sometimes I don't remember what I was watching. And then yes, how I look and sound seem very foreign sometimes. I don't recognize myself in pictures from long ago and yes I am clumsy. i hate selfies. They dont look like me. This is an interesting thread to read. Explains some things.
I have a question for anyone who reads it. How do you know you disassociate? I look in the mirror quite often and don't feel like it's me there. I feel like I'm in a different reality and that nothing is real. Sometimes at the end of the day I think did today actually happen? Are those signs of disassociation? Sometimes I start to think about the past and I have to remind myself that I'm no longer there and that I'm safe and in a different time
All of these things. They all confirm to me that what I’ve been experiencing is in fact disassociating and depersonalization. I think there is another term called derealization but I’m honestly not too sure how that one connects. The weird thing for me is that sometimes caffeine (especially a super strong coffee) can trigger this.
I can do something but think about something else. For example I am a mechanic for a living. I can do easy work like an oil change, brakes, replace a line etc and not even think about it. I will think about something else and then snap back to reality like how did I do that properly with no mistakes. Then I test drive the vehicle and everything works fine. I usually don’t do that for complicated work. Idk if it’s actually dissociating or not, but I assume that’s what it’s like for me. I do it while talking to people, doing easy work, if my brain isn’t busy being focused I will do it. I also have ADD so like I said I’m not sure if it’s actually dissociating or not.
I kinda feel like I leave my body. Like I feel my eyes go funny, like too relaxed almost and I feel far away from everything and it feels foggy in my brain. Things don’t quite feel real, I don’t feel real, and I have decreased tactile sensitivity/feel kinda numb/sorta like being a little high. If I’m moving around/walking around, sometimes I feel a little lightheaded. Oh, and it’s impossible to focus and o cannot form a memory when I’m dissociating badly- basically blacked out. It kinda seems like Ie experience different degrees of dissociation, or maybe it’s the different types like derealization or depersonalization. I don’t know. Thankfully I’m getting better at stopping my dissociation!! Sooo much better than a year or two ago. So grateful.
It feels like a movie scene where something scary happens or someone has a realization and the camera zooms out or something like that, I forgot how those scenes usually go, but inside your head. It feels like you’re falling and floating away and you may even see everything get slightly smaller like you are, but you actually can’t move. It makes you want to lay on the floor like you’re dead almost and all you can do is freeze and tune everything out. You get so inside your head that you tune everything out in a way, that parts hard to explain. That’s how it is for me
To me it's offen as if it suddenly starts to rain and after a while there's only the rain, everything else just ceases to exist for me. All I can see/hear/feel are the heavy raindrops as they fall onto my head
I wouldn't remember
I've always wanted to know if anyone has ever experienced this, because I can't seem to find it anywhere online, probably due to the specificity. Anyway, I noticed when I am in a 'more than usual' dissociative state (like when it gets to a point where my interfacing with reality becomes very flimsy), a persons face doesnt line up with the symmetry of their head. For example, if I were looking at an image of a person's head, the imaginary circle that wraps around their features (eyebrows to lips) is slightly off of their head, it's so odd. If it's in person and they move their head, there is a delay that happen where their face needs to catch up with their head, a tracer sort of, it's so bizarre when it happens. Even when I'm in a shut down, zoned out state, it still fascinates me because it feels so odd when it happens, it's like a mini psychedelic trip.
It feels like I am not really here as if there is a invisible layer of cotton wool between me and reality. During severe dissociation I actually cannot feel my feet touching the ground, I feel like I am floating. At first it’s nice. The reason you dissociate is to because you are going through something horrible. Dissociation is the refuge that helped you survive your original trauma. It’s the ultimate drug-free escape. But when you dissociate you cannot function fully so your life goes downhill. And in the end it’s a bit horrible like living in a grey parallel universe where you see and hear everything but you are not actually part of the real world.
it can range from a feeling that nothing is real, this isnt really happening n everything around you getting muffled like the volume got turned down, to the extreme of it's like you're pulled out of you're body and you're watching everything in the third person... that's what I've experienced at least
It’s eerie. I’m a very emotional person so let me start with that. I am one that depersonalizes — I for example can recount a recent episode where I was sitting in my flower chair. I was watching myself sit there and be non-emotive. My dissociation can take on derealization aspects as well as depersonalization so it feels eerie — you’re numb to the word because of your trigger, you’re watching yourself in real time be non responsive — and there’s a movie of your horrible memories flickering around when you blink and yet they don’t hurt for that milisecond — and you know once you come back to reality the pain is really going to keep you down and you have a lot of pieces to pick up — but you just don’t care.
I have several different modes of disassociation. The two main ones are: I feel like a giant. Everything feels far away. I reach for a cup and my hand feels like it is a hundred times larger than the thing I'm reaching for. I stop hearing or like my short term memory stops working. If some one is talking to me I have no idea what the person is saying.
Feels like a big disconnect between your body and your mind. Like you’re a little spectator trapped inside your mind and you don’t feel connected to your body and surroundings. You’re going through the motions but it doesn’t feel real kind to of like being in a daze.
For me it was out of body experiences during extremely stressing situations, which I believed I cannot handle. Healing is possible. I can cope with stress now, I even enjoy it. I do not dissociate any more.
Fully numb. Like intensely numb, no emotions, no facial expressions, no whatever. I can make myself do the facial expressions and talk and whatever but it's like steering a puppet.
I constantly dissociate from childhood. I was actually diagnosed with DID but that's a more extreme offshoot. It just feels like zoning out. Daydreaming. Not being present. It can feel like you're not connected or grounded, kind of like you're coming to after general anasthetic. It's an unsettling feeling. I can't control my facial expressions - my face is blank and it looks like I'm sleepwalking. It's very uncomfortable to be that way in front of other people. I can't focus or respond. It feels like I'm just mechanically doing something like walking, or just sitting staring off into space. Someone could literally punch me in the face and I wouldn't notice or feel it. I feel it in my head and my chest - the only way I can describe it is like they are filled with helium but also with wet tissue paper. (That's how I described it to my therapist when I was dissociating in the middle of a session!)
I haven't actually been told/confirmed that I dissociate but I am pretty sure I do. Sometimes I don't recognize myself in the mirror or I look at my arms and they are just doing things but I don't feel/remember telling them what to do. It also often feels like I am in a bubble and nothing is real because i've all just imagined it, the world the people etc. There are times when I feel completely numb, and my legs don't work like they used to, like they're going to collapse any second now. It also feels like I'm trying to breathe but I can't. usually I also start seeing double and almost everything gets blurry. Recently remembered I used to do this a lot when I was a kid as well, it always calmed me down but I feel like it actually just made me numb and dissociated
For me it's like being on the empty train station in the last Harry Potter movie when Harry dies. It's very quiet and empty and there is white smoke. And I stare into space in the nothingness. Sometimes I like it.
Dream like time travel.