Couldn't find a general dissociation thread so here's where you're free to rant about that hand that's connected to you that doesn't belong to you! I've had this problem most often when it comes to handwriting. It comes and goes but it was worst when I was on Seroquel, that drug is a mindfuck. And it varies from "I have control over my hand, I have control over the pen, what the fuck that is not my handwriting" to "I wanted to write the thing and I am writing the thing, but I have no control over my hand and no control over the pen and what the fuck that is my handwriting." So, don't know if it's a side effect of drugs or what. But it's coming on super strong today and I don't know why. Also had a mildly traumatizing experience when I was around 12-13 when I was literally experiencing things as if I was walking behind myself. Felt like this for a good solid hour. I could see the back of my own head. Probably just tired/stress/caffeine but I'm side-eyeing it super hard to make sure it doesn't turn into anything else.
That sounds scary as fuck, wow. Ive done the tether-bel thing where nothing seems real and all my emotions are happening somewhere else far away and everything is just sorta muffled and removed, but the idea of not hving control of my own body and what its doing is giving me the screaming mimis. D:
yeah, i'm not sure what's worse, "i wanted to do the thing and it is happening but it doesn't feel like me doing it" or "i physically cannot move my limbs even though i am screaming at them to move because they are no longer under my agency." seroquel again. fucking scary shit.
ugh, the lack of agency sounds awful. Many sympathies if wanted. I get the kind of 'what is this. who am I. why is everyone so far away and behind a glass wall' a lot. It's kind of terrifying, especially when my brain has dialogues like 'look, your wife is literally two feet away' 'no she is at the other end of the world and maybe also a hallucination'. Also it was either induced or made much, much worse by mirtazapine, which annoys me along the lines of 'stupid shitty drug couldn't cure anything and instead gave me two chronic effects'. >:|
oh shit, a drug i am currently on. maybe this is a known side effect, although it's strange because i only get it sometimes. or maybe lingering effects of seroquel? that making everything worse? no longer on that drug. unclear. also i am tire and stress.
Googling suggests it's not unknown - seems to go with the knockout effect for some people? (did for me - slept forever, never rested, dissociated during the day). but may well be other things too. stuff is complicated.
yeah i remember the knockout when some shitass phd who had only seen me for 90 seconds prescribed me 30mg of the stuff which can actually lead to irreversible liver damage at that dosage haha nice. i slept 16 hours a day on that. i'm on 1/8 of that dose now and it still gets me to "dizzy, go the fuck to sleep" every night. waking up at 2 in the morning and needing to pee is very confusing in my life and it needs to stop
I used to have that a lot as a kid. Moments like I was on the bus but I was feeling like I was on the outside looking in at me on the bus. Brains suck, I was on no meds at that time.
i'm weirdly happy that you used tether-bel to describe it. i wrote bel doing that based on my own experiences with dissociation, and it seems it came across pretty well! i gave bel the ability to dissociate on purpose, which is something i can do. i spent so much of my childhood dissociating -- basically all day at school every day until around 8th grade, i felt like i was piloting myself like a mecha most of the time -- that it's a state i can enter intentionally whenever i'm even somewhat stressed. i feel like the soft and vulnerable part of me is floating high overhead like a weather balloon, and any emotions that get in my way, i can run them up that tether to take shelter in the balloon. when i write it down, it sounds like it ought to be really unhealthy, but tbh i think it's an extremely functional coping mechanism when, say, seebs was hospitalized for heart problems and needed me to keep my shit together. or a friend is breaking down and needs someone to be calm and make coffee. it might be more 'healthy' for me to be paralyzed with emotion and blubbering like a toddler, but the tether-jesse method actually gets the people i care about taken care of when they need me. so i will stick with it thanks.
Sounds like crisis mode dissociation, which I've heard from family friends in emergency services is a really common and actually kind of necessary thing. Like it's unhealthy when you're not in an actual crisis, but being able to box that shit up and Get Things Done is a skill they develop. I think mine is kind of like my anxiety in that regard. I've been in situations where the fight-or-flight reaction was helpful, or where not having emotions atm was a good thing. But my brain's not so great at identifying those situations, and the switches for those reactions get stuck. So sometimes it looks at a situation and goes "should I be really scared? Eeeeeh I'm not sure but may as well just to be safe" and boom, panic attack because I'm having a hard time finding the honey. Or I might have an unpleasant thought in my head that's mildly distressing so it goes "welp time to shut the whole emotion sector down" and suddenly I'm watching myself do things through a keyhole because I had an intrusive thought while I was playing clicky games. One of my main problems with the dissociation, besides it feeling really weird and being really annoying, is that I don't pack up my emotions for later. I just throw out everything. I don't have a tether-Laz. And even when the episode is over if I poke at the memory of it there's still this weird void of emotion (and sensation and detail etc) other than the disquiet "that was fucking creepy" feeling. Trying to feel anything is like swimming through jello, even in retrospect. Spoiler: Self-harm My dissociation used to be a lot worse, to the point where most of my waking hours I was at the borders of it when I wasn't actively drowning. When I was at least in a state where some emotions got through I was pretty freaked out because spending a good 80% of your time staring at yourself from the end of a very long hallway is scary! But a lot of my brainweird is maladapted survival skills, so when I had the presence of mind I would oneup it by hurting myself, because a certain amount of pain means I have to go back into my own head so I have the faculties to make the hurting stop. Dissociation!me is a very glitchy robot and so not good at defending myself, so if I'm hurt it has to shut down. I'm actually kind of not here right now so sorry if something is rambly or incoherent. Ask me and I'll clarify once I'm back in my head.
I think I've properly disassociated once? I'm not sure if this is actually disassociation or not, so please tell me if it's not. I was at school and I just kept like. Having gaps? Like I would suddenly be in maths class and I was like, "What??? When did I get here??? Wasn't I just in history???" and then I'd suddenly be at my locker getting my lunch and then I'd suddenly be sitting on the lawn eating my sandwich and it was a very strange and unsettling experience. It was like I stopped being conscious in those gaps, but I obviously wasn't because I'd gotten from class to class with all my stuff and was doing my work, and I'd been able to unlock my locker and get my lunch. But I had no memory of doing those things. But I was fine the next day and that's never happened again so I don't know what the fuck. I wonder if I was maybe having a shutdown or something? Bleh. But damn, that happening frequently would be damn terrifying D=
Holy shit, I took mirtazipine up until a few months ago and I had dissociation too. I've had it forever so it didn't cause it, but it definitely made it worse. I mostly got the "this person is on the other side of the desk but is also extremely far away and also their face is melting, what the fuck is going on here." It also made me sleep forever (like, I would sleep all night and then go to work and spend half my shift sleeping on a prayer mat on my office floor, and frequently I didn't even go to work), and I was exhausted all the time, and I completely stopped eating BUT gained thirty pounds. That should not have been physically possibly because I lived on milk for six months, but I told my psychiatrist about it and he was just like “oh yeah it causes that.” So he knew I had dysphoria that was so bad it was making me suicidal, but he put me on a medication that he knew caused significant weight gain, which made my dysphoria so much worse and did not stop me being suicidal. I don't even think it helped my depression at all. I stopped taking it several months ago and my appetite hasn't really come back, I still barely eat, but I have lost some weight, so whatever. If the weight loss gets dangerous I'll worry about it then. I'm really glad other people have experienced this too! (Sorry you went through that though). Fuck mirtazipine.
I have that too, I'll randomly lose hours or days (I don't think anything triggers it), and in my case it's dissociation so maybe it is in your case too. Mine's the result of abuse, and I've known some other abuse survivors who had it too. I don't know if it's expected to go away, but I don't think I have it too much anymore. Although I don't work or go to school, so who knows, I could be wrong. Like I have no memory of ever being to this forum before today, but I already had an account and was already logged in, so apparently I have.
does it count as dissociation when you feel kind of... i don't know, frozen and numb and it doesn't feel like you're talking directly to people when you do, exactly? because i don't do it often, but when i get like that i have to kind of... it feels like i have to carefully pick out each piece of whatever i have to say, and put it all together, and then, like... set it away from myself for the other person to take in, if that makes any sense? and pick apart whatever they say into its constituent meanings a bit at a time, also separately from myself? the best way i can describe it is that my brain/emotions feel like a knee that just got slammed into the floor, and the only emotion i can feel at all internally is this weird awful sick/numb cold static, and it feels like all my normal thoughts and feelings and responses are in a mailbox away from myself, and that's what people are communicating with when they talk to me when i'm like that, because trying to feel anything or talk to anyone without said mailbox would--i don't know, make me pass out? the same way that re-bumping your knee would? i don't know, that's all probably confusing as hell and i don't know if it's dissociation or something else, but the mailbox/hit knee analogy is what fits best, i think.
i've found i'm getting what i think are disassociation episodes more often than i ever have before in my life. it's getting more and more common as i go out, to places via bus. the first time was when i was at a government office therapy thinger. i just was like "... i feel like i stepped into some alternate universe" and i felt that way from there all the way home. like i was watching from some other place. that i wasn't actually a part of this world. the feeling is so hard to put into words it was just like "oh. i don't actually feel like i am a part of this world. weird." and i texted my boyfriend and he was making some silly jokes but it didn't really register because i was so... flat. it happened again after meeting with a local lgbt counselling service too just that. feeling of unreality. of being separate. i get it here and there now, for a ten to fifteen minutes at a time since those episodes. it doesn't really disrupt my day but it's just... idk. weird. uncomfortable.
I used to do a lot of "experiencing my life as a character in a book, nothing feels real" thing, though sometimes it feels like body parts/my reflection aren't totally mine. It doesn't... feel scary though? Really weird, but not scary. I notice when I talk in therapy and stuff, the words are mine, I know they are my thoughts that I am saying as I think them, but it feels like I am listening to someone else talk. Like I am on autopilot and saying things I know I should say for the best possible outcomes while mentally sitting back and observing things.
