Dissociation is a normal mental process where an individual will disconnect from their thoughts, emotions, feelings and personality. The most common and "acceptable" forms of dissociation are daydreaming, zoning out, high-way hypnosis or loss of focus during reading or watching TV. Like all mental health 'issues', this state of dissociation only becomes a disorder when it impacts your daily life in a significant way. Abnormal/extreme dissociation is a symptom of dissociative disorders or complex PTSD. Dissociative disorders impact about 2% of the population making it rare but not extremely rare. Chances are that at some point in your life, you have met someone with a dissociative disorder or condition without even knowing it.
So the question you all want the answer to...what does dissociation (in DID) feel like?
Dissociation can cause physical, emotional and mental symptoms that can be very hard to deal with.
Physical symptoms:
Nausea, dizziness, fatigue, insomnia, headaches, odd cravings, loss/increase of appetite, light-headed feeling, fainting, blackouts, non-epileptic seizures, numbness, pins and needles, loss of control over body parts, shaking and even pain in areas of the body for no apparent reason.
Emotional symptoms:
Being detached form emotions, crying or laughing for no reason, mood swings, numbness, unable to deal with emotions, derealisation, depersonalisation, feeling trapped, experiencing emotions that "don't belong to you", overly stressed and paranoia.
Mental symtoms:
Depression, anxiety, developing eating disorders, addiction, self harm, amnesia, somatisation disorders, flashbacks, memory issues, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, no thoughts at all, shifts in mood, switches between alters, thoughts and emotions become blurry, forgetting personal information, identity confusion and hearing voices.
These areas of systems mixed together are not pleasant and can drastically effect how someone functions daily. Another way to think about this is imagine that you are drunk, concussed, drugged and sick all at the same time. Not all systems have these symptoms but will defiantly have a few from each category. When I get dissociated I typically have the worst headache, feel dizzy, have short black out moments, fatigue, mood swings, depersonalisation, derealisation, amnesia, hallucinations, identity confusion and will often switch when these thing happen.
Dissociation can feel like you are watching yourself from an external point of view and therefore the body and identity is not yours. It can feel like the world around you isn't real and you don't belong there. It could also feel like the world around you is too big or too small depending on which alter is experiencing the dissociation. It can feel like you are slowly drifting off to sleep despite you being alert and awake. It can feel like drowning or suffocating in your own body. It can feel like you are being hypnotised or possessed by emotions and thoughts that aren't your own. To put it short, it can feel scary.
If you have DID or OSDD then theses symptoms will be all too familiar.
DID is completely different form system to system! if you have other symptoms that I didn't mention I either forgot or just personally didn't know they where symptoms in the first place. This dent make you any less valid or real! We all have different experiences and that's what makes this condition so special because we are all so different from each other.
DID and other dissociative conditions obviously have more too them than the symptoms of dissociation but I hope that this cleared up what it can feel like to be dissociated and help you understand a little more about dissociative disorders. If you want to have a say in what I post head over to my instagram @diaryofapsycho1 and vote on my regular polls or DM me with your suggestions :)
Jen xx
(I am not a professional)
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