So I wanted a thread for the "is this an autistic thing?" thread, but more generalized for any brainweird. This thread is intended to be open to everyone, so feel free to respond! To start us off - So sometimes when I'm reading a really good book, I'll get so engrossed in the book that the outside world that feels less real than the book world. Like, I'd be at school and everything was kind of foggy and I'd basically do everything I could to just get back to reading the book because that wasn't foggy and muddled. I'd feel like I had tunnel vision, couldn't really see what's going on around me (nothing actually wrong with vision), that kind of stuff. I was thinking about this recently and I kinda just stopped half way through and though "oh wait. Is THAT what dissociation is??" It doesn't super match other descriptions I've heard. I didn't really feel away from my body or anything. But the part about the real world not really being real certainly sounded like it to me. What do y'all think?
I totally do that too! Idk how accurate this is, but I have heard it said that getting super into books and being immersed is a form of dissociation. Idk if that extends to the like, the real world feels strange thing or not tho. I always feel like the real world is less colorful after getting into a good book, like even if the story is bleak, the real world feels even more bleak somehow
The thing that makes me wonder is like... I remember just kind of going through the motions, and I don't really have detailed memories outside knowing that I was reading the book at the time. Like there were definitely times when I was just super excited about a book, but the times I'm thinking of were more escapes or hiding
I get this way while absorbed in media and I don't really consider it a sort of dissociation, no. I dissociate quite a bit and that's always very...numb and distant. It's also extremely unpleasant. At times it is this sort of emotionally numb anxiety too. Like you know you should be anxious and that in some capacity you are, but you are like trapped and kept far, far away from that part of you and reality as a whole. The world not feeling real feeling of my dissociating is also pretty distinct from the world not feeling real because I was currently absorbed into fictional thing. That strong level of absorption into fiction is more like...what happens when I roleplay or act. I'm putting a mask on and with that mask is coming a new veil of reality that is placed over this one. It takes a while for me to be able to take both off but they do come off. I think part of what distinguishes it for me is because I am still part of a reality and I am still connected to feelings. They are just not necessarily this reality and these feelings. With my dissociation I'm attached to...nothing. At all. I'm thoroughly untethered. There is nothing to cling to, no identity, no reality, no feelings, no continuity with anything. There is simply numb discontinuity. It's like watching yourself pounding against the walls of a padded, soundproof room.
I get the same thing sometimes and I don't do dissociation at all. It might be an ADHD thing relating to hyperfixation or issues task switching? Like my brain's not 100% switching away from the book reading task until its Done aka i finished the book.