Posted by rskontos on October 28, 2008, at 13:31:55
In reply to Re: What does dissociation mean?, posted by turtle on October 28, 2008, at 0:48:28
Kath,
I have the label of DID or the ex-term multiple personalities. and I have experienced fugue states as Phillipa suggested. I have also experience depersonalization and derealization. I have argued with my p-doc about this dx but he just continues to look at me like why are you arguing about this. As he stated the reason that dissociation can be bad when it reaches the level I did and continue to do is that my brain does it now when there is really no actual trauma or abuse going on. Today at my nail appointment I had a fugue state where I slipped in an out of reality twice. Why. What was threatening. It is I feel because I was talking to her, my nail tech, who is a friend to me about something that had me very upset. So my brain felt I was at risk and protected me by letting a different part of me come out while I was inside "safe". But i wasn't really in a bad situation. That is why my t is trying to help me stop this. But l it is hard to stop. I think it is going to take a long time.
The problem as I understand it is when the trauma is so great and you are so young as I was, you split yourself off and you dissociation from the dissociated self. So you can have levels of dissociations. Or split of splits. And those memories each part carries but no one carries all of them especially the main you. I have absolutely no real memories but 3 maybe 4 and all of them all fragments.
Dissociation exists on a continuum like Happyflower said, where you daydream and then on the extreme like I do or others that have a dissociative disorder where we dissociate one time to protect us for survival but now it is considered dysfunctional.
I hope this helps.
I hope you don't think of me as weird although I certainly feel that way sometimes.
rsk
Fragmented. That is a very good way to describe it. I have alot of fragmented parts to myself. No real connections to all my feelings and emotions and it is so tough to get to them.
Also this was tough to write so go easy on me.
poster:rskontos
thread:859540
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20081018/msgs/859613.html