Question from non: How? (Possibly triggering)

I am really curious about dissociation, and I don't know if its dangerous or anything, but I'd like to..experience it, if thats possible for a non. I do not use drugs apart from some herbs like St Johns wort (lol ) and I am not planning to, so maybe its impossible. But I heard you can get in a mild dissociative state while meditating. I never experienced that, but can you tell me if there are more triggers?
You probably will ask: why do you want it? Well, I am really curious about it, and I'd like to perceive the world in another way WITHOUT drugs, but if that isnt possible, sorry for asking.
On the other way, when I typed this it already sounded ridiculous, because dissociation seems pretty damn scary to me...So I am really curious:

* If with dissocation you can have an out of body experience, were you ever scared that your soul would not go back into your body (if that makes any sense)
* if you forgot who you are or if you didnt recognize yourself anymore, were you afraid you would never remember it again?
* Did you ever wanted to commit suicide when dissociating?

Thanks in advance for the answers... Dissocation is really a mystery for me..

Hi,

The best way to experience non pathological dissociation is through an established religious group - one that has been around for awhile and has experienced practitioners. You don't want to be somewhere where it is unsafe - if anything gets triggered, you want someone who knows how to handle it. I would try an established buddhist group.

SL

Thanks a LOT for the answer. Have you any experience with it yourself? How did it feel?

Hi,

I am Buddhist. My psychiatrist recommended that I stop meditating so I wouldn't dissociate unnecessarily. I changed to going to church for awhile.

You have to try it out for yourself to see how it feels - there is nothing like personal experience.

- SL

I have dissociative identity disorder and up until something shifted about a month ago I could dissociate without switching to another personality. I LOVED being able to dissociate, although I didn't even know that's what it was until this year. It's something which is necessary for DID and I remember doing it as a small child. For example, I was locked in the basement by my mother, it was getting colder and colder, so I simply sat there and dissociated. I was still in my body technically, or something was, but I was up higher in the stairwell, immune from temperature. This was imagination I guess, I wasn't looking back down on my body I don't think, but I knew I had floated away. The benefits are being able to create amazing distance from a present you don't want to be in.

In the past year, I dissociated when out to dinner with my sister and a friend when something was triggering about her way of interacting with us. I couldn't stand to be there but found myself, not on purpose, leaving my body there and floating away into my head. I could still hear them but they didn't matter. I would send back a word or two in answer to a question here and there to let them know I just didn't want to participate and doing that would pull me back outside just a bit. The lights looked very different, people almost seemed to move in slow motion, the noise of the restaurant faded away, and I was in a calm, peaceful place. It was awesome. My alters have been able to dissociate just exactly as I've been able to.

I've dissociated at meetings I had to attend but which were so boring I would have stuck a fork in my head if I'd had one. Instead, I dissociated, left the meeting and went away into a peaceful place. I knew I had to maintain some semblance of normalcy on my face so I would send periodic changes to it and to the body's posture, but I was able to escape the mind-numbing boredom and enjoy myself, like sitting far away on a beach somewhere, thinking other things. If I had wanted to add the sounds of seagulls to drown out the far-away sounds in the room, I would have, except then I wouldn't have heard someone say my name or something.

I used to be able to do this at the dentists and it was very, very useful. I wouldn't actually feel any pain, it was more like "there is pain somewhere and it exists but it is not flowing to me." I had two teeth extracted very recently and I confirmed that I am no longer able to dissociate like I was able to do before. The inside I went to seems to be gone. I've thought of bringing it back but that doesn't seem to be a very bright idea somehow.

Wow, it's great that you actually enjoy dissociating. I think what you describe is how I imagined it in the first place, that was why I wrote this post and now I feel slightly less stupid for imagining it that way. It sounds very traumatic that your mother locked you up like that, I hope you gave it a place in therapy if you did not have a good relationship with her. I am glad dissociating is not something scary for you. Thanks for your reply.

So there are others out there who enjoy dissociating? Thank goodness, I thought it was just me.

The ability to daydream is one thing, of course. That way I can cope with boredom, routine activities and even stress. If I know I´ll have a difficult day tomorrow, I can still pretend that "tomorrow" will happen to somebody else, so it is none of my business. Of course, there are also downsides to these things. Making strange faces in the supermarket. Not preparing for that difficult day. Spending hours staring into the void instead of doing something.

The other thing I dig is trance. Even as a child I was so interested in hypnosis. I often tried to hypnotize myself. Okay, I was actually obsessed with hypnosis. And later, when I was 13 or 14, sometimes I just stopped moving and focused very hard and tried to desensitize myself to fear and pain. When you are with your friends and suddenly you start to play dead they will try to provoke you by poking you, tickling you, or sticking crisps up your nose. And often I managed to build up an imaginary brick wall between me and them. I wasn´t scared of what they might do, and it wasn´t as uncomfortable as it would normally have been. It felt like I was separating myself from my body, and I could watch from a safe, comfortable place inside what they were doing to it. I was not scared, though, that I might not be able to return into it. I felt in control, after all.

There were other occasions, though, when everything felt unreal to me and I had trouble feeling connected to the people who are most important to me. That´s very uncomfortable and scary.

Interesting posts.

I had an operation a few months ago, and I guess I used that to block the pain. So basically, it went pretty well. It was not the first time I did that, and it can be nice when it is done more or less on purpose.

The problem is that I never really came back, or so it seems. And there are periods where it gets worse and it is scary. Like forgetting who I am, or being unable to choose anything. I am a little like that naturally, but it has gone out of hand. As soon as I stop focusing, I become spacey. I loose track of what I am doing in line-ups, for example. It's ok if I have nothing to do, but going outside becomes a little burdensome. Crossing streets is a little more dangerous too, since I forget there are cars and people.

I think there are techniques that put you in some sort of a trance, and then someone hits you, and that is supposed to more or less create a dissociation. Not sure who does that though. I read that a long time ago.

I believe I have undiagnosed DID. Dissociation has mixed feelings with me. I certainly can't dissociate like I used to, but it's also not gone.

When I dissociate, it's more of an attack. It takes the form of DP/DR (unless, of course, it's meditative, like switching or something). It strikes most easily when I'm tired, and being an insomniac, that's not all that uncommon. But for these attacks, usually it will start with things just feeling... off. Things just feel strange, like something is wrong. It usually comes with a feeling of dread. Oddly enough, this feeling of dread isn't always a bad thing. Sometimes, the feeling of dread is what clues me in that something is wrong with me, and I'll get over it. Sometimes, I feel like something is wrong with the things around me. Each time is different. One time, it struck as soon as my friend left the apartment and I was alone. Right where I was standing, I sat down on the floor and was just gone. I don't remember anything until about 3 hours later, my friend walks back in the door and I haven't moved from the spot. Another time, I swore that my world was not really there, and it was fading away around me. The only thing that didn't seem to fade out was the music that was playing, and I swore I could almost see the music floating through the air. Then I started to panic because I was sure that if I didn't do something, I would disappear too. I don't remember how I snapped out of that one. Another time, for no apparent reason, I had the mental image of ripping my skin apart. No idea why, I felt no pain, as though everything except my hands was completely numb. It felt relaxing. I don't remember snapping out of that one either, but I remember being called for dinner in the middle, and mentally I just kept going, but somehow I managed to get dinner eaten and back to my room with absolutely no memory of it. These episodes usually don't last more than an hour, unless it's a trance, in which case it will literally last until something triggers me out of it. I have only had these attacks during the time that my alter was missing.

The other type of attack that I get is completely emotional. I just... snap. This, I love. I think it's the freedom. I don't think it's triggered by my environment, but I can feel one of these attacks coming for days before it hits. I try to keep busy, because it hits when I'm alone. When I wake up in the mornings, it's always worse, so it's always just a matter of time. And when it hits, I just... stop. Emotionally, I just turn off. I still go through the actions and people rarely notice. But I am not mentally there, I remember little, and I get nothing that takes any thought accomplished. My friend discovered that during these times, I can generally be found at home ripping apart an old sock, if I'm not doing something. And if I am doing something, I know I generally get restless. But I feel like I'm just gone. Sometimes I laugh if someone notices, but that's about it. My friend has told me that I don't speak coherently in these states - my words make no sense. I can't remember afterwards to tell her what I meant, so it generally remains a mystery. But when I'm in these states, I don't want to come out of them. When I feel them coming, I look forward to them, except that I know I won't get anything accomplished. These states can last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. It's an escape. No idea where I go, but again these attacks only happened when my alter was missing. When my alter is here, I generally go inside often enough that I don't have these attacks.

But I'm never fully present in the situation. Ever. It's like when you drive a long distance in a car and you zone out and don't really quite remember the trip when you get to your destination. That is normal dissociation. But I have that regularly. I never notice detail, I am never fully involved in anything. I have only been fully involved a couple times in my life, and if not for those moments, I wouldn't even know I'm so zoney. It's seriously a normal thing to me now.

Sorry for the long, weird post, but describing my dissociation is hard. I don't generally think about it when it's happening, and afterward, things are fuzzy. So I'm sorry if it seems sporadic or confusing.

To me dissociation is like a mental shut down. No thought nothing coming in just completely blank. . . Another form of dissociation for me is my thoughts become seperate like someone inside is looking down observing everything saying how i feel and what i am doing. That happens when im very stressed. Sometimes i can comtrol the mental shut down feeling. But ive been doing it for so long its hard sometimes to control it which is annoying for me because its been brought up to my attention a many of times. . I also get tunnel vission. Where im at a place and i dont see everything around me and not completely aware of whats going on. i would not say its a scary feeling. Its created to protect and make a person feel safe in the first place. But i do get embarassed when people notice or when im having a convo with someone and realize i was not there during the convo. This is the most frustrating to me because i know how it feels to not be heard and would never want someone else to feel that way. Plus those that do not understand just assume your some spacey ditz which is not the case. Its never intentional. Now what i do if i feel the person will not take offense i will ask them to repeat what they said which helps me too because im also making myself pay attention by asking them to repeat the info.

-- Thu Sep 20, 2012 3:36 am --

To me dissociation is like a mental shut down. No thought nothing coming in just completely blank. . . Another form of dissociation for me is my thoughts become seperate like someone inside is looking down observing everything saying how i feel and what i am doing. That happens when im very stressed. Sometimes i can comtrol the mental shut down feeling. But ive been doing it for so long its hard sometimes to control it which is annoying for me because its been brought up to my attention a many of times. . I also get tunnel vission. Where im at a place and i dont see everything around me and not completely aware of whats going on. i would not say its a scary feeling. Its created to protect and make a person feel safe in the first place. But i do get embarassed when people notice or when im having a convo with someone and realize i was not there during the convo. This is the most frustrating to me because i know how it feels to not be heard and would never want someone else to feel that way. Plus those that do not understand just assume your some spacey ditz which is not the case. Its never intentional. Now what i do if i feel the person will not take offense i will ask them to repeat what they said which helps me too because im also making myself pay attention by asking them to repeat the info.