DISSOCIATIVE DISORDERS (from_PTSD_to_DID)

@Former-Member Sorry abou the length of the post as your last question was a tricky one to answer clearly.
There are many elements to my experiences (as there are with everyone). I used to live with fragmented identity and experience that occured across the continuum of my life. For me, in my understanding of my life, childhood was seperate from adolescence, adolescence was distinct and seperate from teenage years and teens were different and distinct from my twenties, same as 30's etc. For the last 3 years I have been working hard (with help) to see that it is me who lived in all these periods and that these experiences exist on a continuum and that they are in fact not seperate and distinct, as in I didn't just spwan in a a new character at each phase which is how I would talk about it.

Now I have developed a much more hollistic picture of myself, however there are still two clear seperations in experience. Professional and Emotional self.

Professional self is all the best bits of my personality on display for all to see (this isn't just work related, this is my default when dealing with other people). Maintaing this level of control is exhausting emotionally and physically. At this time in my life it is still the only way I can comfortably interact with people. This is a very well rehearsed lie (it took me ages to write the word lie). It is not a complete lie, not by any means, it is just a very closely guarded, well maintained front that has enabled me to function amidst chaos.

Emotional self is kept very hidden and is very invisible. This is all the parts that I have grown up believing (generally from continually being told) are wrong, ugly, bad etc. This often means that I get lost in emotions and expereinces that have been long surpressed. Daily activities adds to this backlog and it means more stuff to process later. When emotional self takes over, I completely lose track of time, space and experience because i dissappear through my 'portals' (worlds within worlds that sit like tv screens all around me). So when I am in this mode, interacting with people is almost impossible as it cause worlds to collide that causes genuine physical and emotional stress. I lose myself in these worlds as their is no pressure to be anything but the person that I want to be or have been. When emotional self takes over, it can become very dark and it has led to very destructive behaviour including self harm. I can get so caught up in the emotions and experiences that if they turn too dark (say for example a portal I have jumped through has a friend of mines child dying, this isn't true) then I act as if I am physically in that space living out this moment in time. The emotions, smells, tastes everything is very real in my mind and so is the pain that can come with it.

And this is why professional self is necessary, I can (if I am in control of it) in blink of an eye shut off the other side of me and continue on. Once again this takes monstrous amounts of energy.

For the most part I have learned to live with this very well, however as the stress mounts, I find myself losing track of my actual world because I lose all concept of time and space. I miss appointments sometimes, not because I am avoiding that particualr thing, it is just that I have lost track of what day it is and lose track tof tasks Ineed to do.

So to summarise, for the most part I use emotional self as a self care mechanism that allows me to let the locks off, by allowing myself to be me and experience the sepctrum of emotions and occasionally (it used to be for months at a time) I lose my ability to control this and I become lost in fictional worlds that are as real to me as the keyboard I am typing this message on.

@BlueBay I don't see talking to yourself as strange. I do it all the time 🙂 and I often do this before I go to bed to help me prepare to go to bed.

What I didn't include in my last post was that I constantly catch myself talking to myself when I am out and about. If I let my mind wander for a second then I get caught up in whatever world I have stepped into. I have had, including recently, experiences where I have started to cry or laugh out loud, which has no relation to what is going on at the time.

My dissociation has always been a coping mechanism, to escape the abuse, stress and horror of the world around me growing up. The trauma continued into my adult years and it wasn't until I was 29 that trauma was introduced to my vocabulary.

I live with a diagnosis of complex trauma and fragmentation and disassociation are a big part of this experience.

hi @Former-Member,

didnt quite understand the rate bit or understand how they are questions but out of the 28 things there i in my life time have experienced 25 of them and some as frequently as twice or more daily when you say that these are screening test questions you mean that you get asked if you experience these i have had these types of thing happen for aslong as i can remember down to even bein oblivious to my mum slapping me because i didnt pay attention to her i have already been diagnosed with ptsd and i have only just sought medical help with my other symptoms i have not been diagnosed yet but my GP strongly believes this is what i have