Wondering if any of you experience this

I was just wondering if anyone feels like this.

When I get triggered, I get really foggy-headed and feel like I am away from myself. It feels like I am in the corner of a dark cave. Or it's like trying to experience life underwater, from inside a tiny fish bowl. Sounds muted, vision unclear, severe lack of clarity and connection with the world around me. Hardly a connection with the world within me too.

And when I am like this, I get these urges. To scream, to growl, to rip things apart with my teeth. I get dark thoughts, of --

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Warning:

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Warning: harm

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I get dark thoughts of hurting things, hurting people. Sometimes I laugh uncontrollably.

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End warning

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It doesn't feel like me, and I get so foggy-headed it's difficult to remember everything I was doing. It feels kind of like living in a dream then waking up and trying to recall it. I get bits and pieces but it's not clear. I remember feelings more than I remember actions.

Is this a form of dissociation? What would we call this? Do any of you experience it?

It is a form of dissociation. Feeling "away from the body" is specifically called "depersonnalization".

The "urges" are intrusive thoughts, a way for your brain to express hidden or repressed emotions. It could also be the expression of a part of you that is so repressed that it became a dissociated part.

There are ways to listen to all of this and manage all of this. You will find general advices and ressources in the link in my signature. Especially books like "Coping with trauma related dissociation" and "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors".

You are not alone and what you experience is normal for someone who is under lots of stress and has always been under lots of stress, in the same way that a broken bone is normal for someone who had a nasty fall. It does not mean it's pleasant or normal to stay like this forever though. There exist therapies and exercises to manage and make things better. You are not a bad person, just very hurt by huge loads of stress and your brain reacts in impressive ways.

ArbreMonde wrote:It is a form of dissociation. Feeling "away from the body" is specifically called "depersonnalization".

The "urges" are intrusive thoughts, a way for your brain to express hidden or repressed emotions. It could also be the expression of a part of you that is so repressed that it became a dissociated part.

There are ways to listen to all of this and manage all of this. You will find general advices and ressources in the link in my signature. Especially books like "Coping with trauma related dissociation" and "Healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors".

You are not alone and what you experience is normal for someone who is under lots of stress and has always been under lots of stress, in the same way that a broken bone is normal for someone who had a nasty fall. It does not mean it's pleasant or normal to stay like this forever though. There exist therapies and exercises to manage and make things better. You are not a bad person, just very hurt by huge loads of stress and your brain reacts in impressive ways.

Oh okay, I think I thought depersonalization was dissociation. Can the words go hand in hand? I look at "dissociation" meaning you are dissociating, disconnecting, from yourself. Sometimes with another personality and sometimes not.

Oohh that makes sense. I do repress a lot and I feel like what I repress gets stored in something else inside me. I envision them caged, usually

Thank you very much for the links

Thank you for saying so, I do tend to feel like a bad person when I come out of it, it's nice to hear

Crawly wrote:Oh okay, I think I thought depersonalization was dissociation. Can the words go hand in hand? I look at "dissociation" meaning you are dissociating, disconnecting, from yourself. Sometimes with another personality and sometimes not.

"dissociation" is a family of conditions. The more you pile up dissociative symptoms, the more intense the condition and the name of the diagnosis changes. To dumb it down a bit, dissociation is the fuse of the brain. It can either be a fuse that is off most of the time, or a fuse that was never actually put in place so there is a "gap" in the circuit.

Depersonnalization/derealization are fuses that can function on/off, though when it's "off" most of the time to the point it has a negative effect on your life, it's called "depersonnalization/derealization disorder" (because of the negative impact on your life).

Trauma-related dissociation (PTSD, c-PTSD, ATDS, TDNS, p-DID, DID, some forms of borderline personality disorders) is when at least one fuse was not yet put in place in your brain so there is a structural "gap" in the circuit. This is why alters can feel like they are independant from each-other: there is a "gap" in the circuit so they are unable to see they are part of the same circuit. Therapy helps progressively bridge the gaps which heals the trauma and helps to function better. It also bridges the gap with a functional fuse so there is no functionning issue, no flashback, no pain... like we experience when we try to activate a part of the "circuit" without putting a fuse on it first.

Depending on how many fuses are missing and/or staying "off", how often they stay "off" and how the different parts of the circuit organize their functionning, the symptoms vary (flashbacks, switches, amnesia, fogginess of the brain...). The diagnoses is a one-word summary of the symptoms in a given point of time. Which means that when we heal, our diagnosis changes category, because the symptoms are less and less intense.

Some diagnosis categories include symptoms that can also exist by themselves. If we have the whole packages of symptoms we call it DID. If we have only one symptom it can be "dissociative amnesia" or "depersonnalization/derealization". It's a bit like having a car. If you have a whole car you'll call it "a car", not a "car with tires and windshield and an engine and I put fuel in it and there are doors too and...". But if you only have two tires and one seat, you cannot call it a car, it's called "two tires and one seat". Diagnosis works that way too. DID is the full car. Depersonnalization is a tire, derealization is a windshield, and so on. Some people only have depersonnalization disorders but when we have DID, depersonnalization is part of the package so there is no need to say "and I also have depersonnalization".