I'm curious about people's experiences with dissociation. I'm currently experiencing intense burn out from my social-service job, and I've been looking back at the last year and realizing there were signs I was developing really bad anxiety way sooner than I thought. Months back, I began experiencing odd episodes of deja-vu. I would look around me and be sure that I had seen this place, this moment before, and particularly in a dream. I didn't necessarily doubt that what I was seeing was real, but I was certain that somehow I had dreamed that exact moment. Sometimes it was just a flash, sometimes it would last a few minutes. At its worst, it came with a heavy, sick feeling in my chest. It was frightening, and sometimes thinking about it or focusing on it would make it worse. After doing reading, I'm pretty sure this was a form of derealization. I don't have those episodes anymore, probably because I've spent so much time in therapy and practicing mindfulness meditation, but boy was it not fun. Has anyone had similar experiences of deja-vu like derealization? Or other kinds of dissociation?
I'm sorry to hear about your experiences, they sound hard. I can relate, especially to the missing earlier signs. It happens to a lot of people, I think, perhaps even most. On to your question. Yes, I've felt what you've described. but I can't really put words to the deja vu sensations. They're just random, intense feelings of 'wait, I'm certain this scenario has already happened. Was that a dream, or real?' I don't know why or how it happens. As far as dissociation/depersonalisation/derealisation in general, unfortunately, I have a history of this going back all the way to childhood. As a child, I have significant memory gaps, and was able to determine what happened during one from court records - I witnessed a felony-level act of domestic violence, but don't remember it happening, or any of the surrounding circumstances or events that had to have happened around it. Not a damn thing. As an adolescent, I have fewer missing memories. But I do recall distinctly almost constantly internally role-playing, like, that wasn't me bad things were happening to, it was a fictional character from x/someone I made up. Somewhat similar to maladaptive daydreaming, I think, but more active. This stopped around the age of sixteen. As an adult, though it's become classic feelings of numbness, disconnection, not feeling real, etc., which sort of show up not infrequently at random (or caused by something specifically) and go away just as randomly (although I'm learning ways to help encourage it to abate. Doing something tactile like driving really helps). At this point it's not too scary, any more, now that I know what it is (I thought maybe it was just the ADHD brain space out. This was not accurate). Most of the time it's just frustrating and annoying.
I think it depends on accompanying emotions, intensity, frequency, etc., kind of how very occasional and situational intrusive thoughts are pretty 'normal', but frequent ones are very much not.
i don't know how often; more often recently, though it's been happening for years. it just feels like i've been here before, i've seen this before, i know these words, and i try to reach for the context but it's always just barely too far away. it makes me feel frustrated and lonely and worried. i almost always feel like i'm missing something important and everything is going to go badly because of that.
I get the really disorienting deja vu!! And also lots of dissociation and derealisation and stuff. I had not put them together as connected before but it seems.... possible that they might be. This describes it pretty well for me. Suddenly I feel like I've been here, done this, it's familiar and overwhelming and impending-sense-of-doom because there's something just out of reach that I'm missing... that whole thing.
Ack, I thought I was getting notifications for this but I guess I wasn't, so I'm late to my own party. It's fascinating and kind of a relief to hear other people have felt this same thing. It's bizarre. I definitely feel that. And I've found that when I try to figure it out, the feeling intensifies. I'll start trying so so hard to figure out when or where I could have seen this before. And it's so dumb, because it's regularly a place I have stood and worked for months, so of course I've seen it. But anyways, when I try to chase the explanation, it gets worse, more powerful, scarier, more uncomfortable. I spoke to my therapist about it recently and she suggested mindfulness and grounding techniques. I don't chase the explanation anymore, since that makes it worse, and there is, of course, no actual explanation.
I agree - before this last year, I would definitely have very occasional deja vu that was just simply deja vu. It was just sort of, "Woah, that's funky, I could swear this has happened already." But my brain would immediately move on, and "huh." would be my only emotional response. This stuff is very different.
I derealize. IDK what triggers it but every so often I'll wake up like my head is stuffed with cotton and nothing is real. It sucks!
I have episodes of depersonalization, dissasociation, and derealization. For me it's still hard to parse which is which as an experience, but when I would describe what was happening to me to a therapist she told me that I was experiencing these things and explained each one but I'm not sure which goes with which experience. So something common for me which I think is derealization is when I feel like I'm in a dream and everything seems far away and ... well... not real... It's sometimes intense de ja vu, but for me it feels different than de ja vu but that fuzziness that comes with de ja vu is the same for when I'm experiencing derealization. I don't know if I'm making any sense xD
