Hey Uglyducklin - I get the body sensations too, and I think they are called somatic flashbacks, also known as body memories if memory serves me correctly.
I was told by my therapist that yes, the physical sensations are a type of flashback.
Haven't been on this thread (or this site) regularly for a while, but I hope everyone is managing okay.
Thank you. Everything feels so heightened today the fear and anxiety is horrific and staying grounded is hard. Nothing seems to be working today. I'm so useless at grounding techniques . I just feel like a fat selfish monster today.
I'm sorry to hear today is so difficult.
I struggle with grounding techniques, but there are some I find that work well - one of them sounds odd, but it's to put an orange in the freezer, let it get cold. Then, when you feel you are having trouble staying grounded, feel the orange (the texture and the coldness) and smell it. I was told to use an orange because the smell is strong.
Sorry if that wasn't helpful.
Why do you feel you are a "fat selfish monster" today?
I hope you manage to get grounded and to take care of yourself.
Since a resent trauma I've started disocossiation. I'm scared by it. I lose all sense on day and time I put myself at risk.
I'm scared and don't know how to make it stop.
It's like I'm watching myself sometimes but can't stop my actions.
can anyone help?
The average,
well-adjusted adult
gets up at 7.30am feeling just plain terrible.
Call me Kate.
I have dyslexia so please excuse my poor spelling and sometimes poor understanding.
Hi Ballerina I'm sorry I don't have suggestions but I can so relate. I'm suffering from panic attacks and a lot of depersonalisation too . You are not alone x
We'd already had over 100 dormant alters reveal themselves in just 6 months because of memory floods, triggers and other people among them naming more alters.
So that's been enough, I'd say our system has already been stressed out over that.
In addition to that we've had an awful lot of stress and drama online recently. We've been made to feel highly unsafe and scared to be anywhere, we ended up deleting so many accounts and covering our tracks everywhere out of fear. We've had a lot of accusations and our system didn't know how to deal with it, we haven't had to have anyone to deal with this sort of thing before.. So we split again. And now I'm here and it's going to add more stress to everyone else.
I don't have communication with many of them yet, only one person and I think that's because he was out when I split. I don't know how they're going to take it and it's going to increase dissociation and time loss. I'm worried for how they're going to react to it, I don't want my existence to cause damage.
Ballerina - I'm sorry to hear you're struggling with this. Dissociation can be a highly unsettling sensation.
Do you know any grounding techniques that work for you?
Since you mentioned you lose sense of what day and time it is, could you try writing out flashcards that say things like "My name is - . I am - years old. The year is 2015 and I live in - . I am safe right now." And then you can keep the card with you and when you start to feel dissociated, you can read it out loud to yourself?
Another helpful thing to do along with that is to touch something that has a texture and sniff something that has a smell - for example, a frozen orange. It sounds strange, but I found it very useful and I learned about it in a trauma unit. You freeze the orange so it feels cold and you can focus on that, plus the bumpy rind, and it maintains its smell. All those sensory things, if you focus on them, can be helpful.
We are extremely dissociated right now and we're scared. We've been feeling relatively safe all day and now we aren't and we're triggered but our brain can't figure out who to send out and we don't want to make it worse with certain reactions or anything..
There's some people here that are doing really badly and they need support but we can't access any anymore.. Some of us need to talk to people who understand but we only have one person we can feel safe talking to.
We are dissociating a lot more because people are showing up and bad memories, too...
We're struggling and there's no one to turn to. I'm worried about our system. We're so alone now and we are just getting sicker while we just search around for help from others like us but there's none available to us. I wish we had a therapist.. I'm so worried about some people..
We have DID and haven't been doing to well lately. Close to a trauma anniversary of sorts and there is a lot of stress from other things. We have been a switchy, dissociated mess. We aren't really sure on how to cope.
"Problems are problems. We all make bad choices. Just some of us have different bad choices to make." -OitNB
I'm finding myself dissociating a lot today.. I'm getting triggered out often and when I've been out for a while I begin to disconnect and it feels like I'm floating in a really odd way. It feels uncomfortable and I feel mildly sick with an odd headache, it feels like a weird pressure from the inside of my head.
It's uncomfortable and I'm unsure how to cope with it because I can't switch easily yet. I find it hard to go inside and even coming out is a little bit of a struggle. So when I need to switch I end up just feeling like this for hours and it feels awful, it's like I don't quite feel like I can breath properly and my concentration levels are low unless I'm super focused on something that relaxes me, which isn't much..
Ugh, I'm talking too much. I just hate this feeling and I need it to stop, really. Please just cut it out, brain.
I have no idea where the last few days have gone. I was doing so well and now all the bad things are back and I don't know how to make it stop.
Surely the therapist made a mistake with this diagnosis? It can't be happening to me...
We r struggling right now =[ The recent holidays have been hard on us and our dissociation is very high, lots of switching and lots of feeling unsafe all the time. We had to spend time with some bad people recently too, so that made things even harder..
Not sure who's here lately. Always really blurry and it hurts my head =/
Leean - I know the diagnosis can be very hard to accept - I still fade in and out of denial and I was diagnosed about 8 years ago. I wish I had something comforting to say. Is the therapist helping you with your dissociation?
OrchestraSystem - I'm sorry to hear things are so rough for you right now. I don't have a lot of words right now, but I hope things settle for you soon.
