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Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

CannonSaltSenior Contributor12 Oct 2015, 9:14 pm AEDT

Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

I self harmed in response to a stressful event, and have quit now. Or else, I may just not be doing it right now, and return to it in the future. I'm not sure yet. 😛 Yay me! While I was in the grips of it, I felt like I was watching a movie, and I couldn't stop myself until I had finished. Is there a name for that feeling, the movie-watching feeling? I'm confused about that, and the confusion itself bugs me - does that mean that I could go back to it at any point?

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In response to: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

chookmojoSenior Contributor12 Oct 2015, 10:33 pm AEDT

Re: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

Hi @CannonSalt,

Is the term you are looking for dissociation? In the NLP world that's what we call it when instead of seeing a scene through your own eyes you watch it from the outside like a movie. Dissociation helps to distance yourself from both physical and emotional pain, and judicious use of it can be beneficial to reduce trauma, but too much leaves you disconnected from all emotions.

It is excellent to hear that you are not currently self harming, it can be a very difficult habit to break, so that is a real achievement. Do you have other coping mechanisms that you are using instead?

In response to: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

Unknown userMember13 Oct 2015, 1:26 am AEDT

Re: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

I have experienced things like that and I do think it's dissociation - my psychologist had explained it as that anyhow.

In response to: Re: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

CannonSaltSenior Contributor13 Oct 2015, 6:57 pm AEDT

Re: Self-harm felt like I was watching a movie?????

I don't know - I looked up dissociation and I got this page: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Dissociation_and_dissociative_disorders which is written by the Victorian health department and so should be reliable. A lot of what they said for "dissociation disorder" fitted me after I had gone through the experience and thought that I couldn't change anything to help stop it from happening to anyone else. I probably am using coping techniques, I probably just don't call it that. Being able to escape the situation and effect some changes helped.

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