[Mari]

International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation

http://www.isst-d.org/education/faq-...tion.htm#cause


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT DISSOCIATION

[Mari]

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communit...ssociation.htm


Other dissociative indicators are as follows (usually defined in % of time occurs)

+Driving a car and suddenly realize you don't remember what has happened during all or part of the trip
+Listening to someone talk and realize did not hear part/all of what was just said
+Find themselves in a place and have no idea how they got there
+Experience feeling as though standing next to themselves and watching themselves do something
+Have no memory for some important events in their lives eg. wedding, graduation
+Experience feeling that their body does not seem to belong to them
+Experience of sometimes remembering a past event so vividly that they feel as if they are reliving it
+Experience of not sure whether things that they remember happening really did happen or a dream
+Experience of being in a familiar place but finding it strange and unfamiliar
+When watching TV or movie they become so absorbed they are unaware of the events happening near them
+Become so involved in a fantasy or daydream it feels as though it is really happening
+Find that they are sometimes able to ignore pain
+Sometimes sit staring off into space, thinking nothing and not aware of the passage of time
+May act so differently from situation to situation they feel as if they were two different people
+Sometimes can't remember whether have done something or just thought about doing that thing
+Feel as if looking at the world through a fog so that people and objects appear far away or unclear

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The symptoms of Dissociation are many and varied. They include the following:

-feel as if you are a "witness" of what is happening to your body
-feel as if you are falling into a void
-feel as if you are "outside of your body" either situated alongside, above or behind it
-feel as if you are floating
-feel as if you and your surroundings do not seem real
-you experience a visual sensation where stationary objects appear to move
-experience your surroundings through a diffused light, fog or mist. . . .
-experience your whole body enveloped in light
-feel as if your body is expanded so that it feels huge/larger than normal
-feel as if your body has shrunk to minute proportions/ smaller than normal
-feel as if your body is being pressed to the ground
-sensitivity to light and sound
-tunnel vision

[Dmom3005]

Gosh I have to say something. Lots of the things you just listed also fall under a category I have. Its so odd. But mine has been determined
to be a neurological issue. So that to me makes me wonder if disassociation
is too.

I will be reading more on this, because Derrick also does lots of these things,
in and out of seizure mode. And he also has a aura, which is a small seizure
in some of these things.

I will be back to explain later. But I'm due in a conference call in less
than 15 minutes. So I can't research right now. But this really may
help me with myself and Derrick.


So I have to say to both Me BP and to Mari, and to Bizi who told Mari
that she was very amazing and helpful.

Today you may have solved another part of the non-seizure or the
even at times seizure world for my son and even sometimes for
me.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Because the only way that
I can help my son is to understand were he is at or coming from.

And honestly Me BP, that is what you have had missing in your life.

So know that now you have a whole forum here that wants to do this
for you. Especially the first being me DOnna, mom to Derrick.

Donna

[minymo]

About ten years ago I realized that my body, to me, is a vehicle for my mind, which lives in a tiny pinpoint an inch behind my forehead. I had never thought about this, but wanted to try hypnotherapy. It was not possible. Then I wanted to try something where they put their hands on your head and give you something from India. I was impenetrable. Someone who had proven again and again to be able to heal things with her hands tried to heal me. I had a rock-hard shell around all of my body. She had only seen a really mild form of this once before. I have been told I started screaming when I was a baby when anyone tried to touch me. I always ducked, involuntarily, or withdrew, startled, whenever anyone tried to embrace or touch me affectionately and it took me by surprise. I could only refrain from it when I saw the person coming.

Something like nine years ago, I saw a psychologist who did talking, then made me lie down and she rubbed spots underneath my toes. She asked me to name the emotions this evoked and where they were. It was so surprising to find that so many different emotions were clearly there, and they all had a different area of my skin. But she had not realized I was already very emotional, because I was in the habit of not showing emotion. I had been badgered a lot by my mom, my sis and at school. So the night after this treatment, I had a bump, the size and shape of half a tennisball, sticking out of my stomach right above the belly-button. It throbbed like a heartbeat and only disappeared in the morning, I did not sleep all night. The woman was very worried when I told her this. She otherwise made me feel more relaxed than any other therapist.

I have also found that when I was in extreme emotional pain, I would obsess about the person I had the conflict with or was about to lose. Once I did this to the point of sitting on a chair, trying to frantically think of solutions, and I just lost 3 hours. I kept going to work but made too many mistakes, so I was sent home for a few weeks. I got myself two baby cats and went painting in the park a lot. That helped me get over it. And music. I feel the obsessing, dissociating, had everything to do with being unable to feel emotion as emotion, it was a huge pressure from below the diaphragm upwards instead, which made my brain go into overdrive, which made it worse. I can now sometimes be in the present long enough so I feel an open flow between that place under the diaphragm and the brain. That is the desired result. I have also got excercises, very simple one's, like feel the pressure on the skin of your butt, on the soles of your feet, when sitting down. It makes me spread out into my body from that pinpoint behind the forehead. And praying and feeling confident that my Higher Power can and will take care of my also lessens the fear.

I am autistic also. People say autists cannot feel the emotions of others. This is not correct. I feel them very accurately and usually get cowed or insecure. I have to be careful to react to what someone is saying, not what they are feeling. Autism is a form of hypersensitivity of all the senses, including the sixth sense, whithout the possibility to react adequately, hence the impression that there is no empathy.

[mymorgy]

that was fascinating...maybe as an infant you already picked up what your mother was like...lol...sorry
I wish I could think of the name of a female therapist who wrote on active imagination. My friend who is a therapist used it on me and it was amazing. She told me to imagine I was a tree stretching to reach the sun with its warmth and my feet as roots grounded in the soil.
She had me draw imaginery figure eight with my mother in one circle and me in another to help separate all the disturbing emotions she caused. My friend lives in India now and I no longer have her email so can't get the name of the author
Bobby

[Mari]

Yes, Minymo,
I have learned how much harmful emotion we hold in our bodies.
Often we need help getting it out. And traditional talk therapy is not strong in that area.

M.

[bizi]

bumping.....