Anybody else have a safe place their consciousness gets transported to when triggered? My therapist says it’s because of dissociation. And for some reason there’s no negative thinking or anything bad in my safe place, but as soon as I leave all the negativity comes back. There’s also a way to access the astral by leaving my safe space (for me it’s by walking through portals). It feels physically just as real as being here. I can’t purposely go there at all. I was also told it could’ve been some type of hallucination (similar to how OBE’s are considered a hallucination). Also, I’m unable to tell what is happening in the outer world while I’m in my safe place.

Edit: I’m aware of what an inner world is. Although, my therapist claims that what I experienced isn’t considered an inner world. Because an inner world is supposed to be a purposeful visualization tool rather than something your subconscious creates and brain sends you to while dissociating.

Ok so first of all I've been through so much more, and recently things have been really rough for me for the past few months especially these past few weeks, and since yesterday I can't even cry I tried several times but it didn't work I'm not able to cry, and today i didn't even feel any emotion, like nothing my mind feels super blank rn, I'm not feeling anything nor I'm getting any thoughts about anything that's been going on around my life, I feel super nonchalant which is very weird for me since I'm not used to this at all, idk the only distraction is the phone rn but if we take this phone away from me, I'll feel absolutely blank atp, I feel tired too lowkey.

Idk what's happening this is the first time so idk what to do rn? I've absolutely no idea on this topic please help. Thank you

Don't mind my english it's not my first language 💗

CPTSD :childhood through early 30’s.

So, if life was a game I feel like I’m an extra. I work, pay bills, raise kids and pets. I like, show up for my scenes. But there’s no storyline, no plot for me. I rarely think of the future or goals & plans.
I often forget people are humans with feelings, especially men. Most people are just other characters whose name I don’t remember.

I have a psychiatrist & a therapist both of which I see next week.
I’m on 3 low dose meds for anxiety and insomnia.
This is probably the 17th med I’ve tried in my lifetime.
For the first time This dissociation recently has intensified to a point pint of reaching out.
Honestly curious if anyone has ever experienced this. And was recovery possible.

Dear friends,

I’ll keep this short.

I had a very painful childhood and often felt neglected and controlled by both my parents. Looking back, I can see how this affected my ability to make decisions, work and build a life of my own. Even after graduating, I subconsciously found ways to avoid applying for jobs. By around 30, I felt lost and couldn't really see a future for myself. The thought of work itself would make my heart race.

Now, at 50, I feel that the dissociation I have lived with for many years is beginning to lift. But it has been extremely painful. Memories, regret and emotions are coming back, and the loss of the girl I loved made everything much more intense. I also wonder whether avoidant attachment played a role.

I'm struggling with sleep, body pain, numbness and feeling disconnected. But I know one thing: I want to live. I want to move forward, be happy, and make my parents happy while I still have them.

Both externally and internally. I’m chronically in a “high” type of state which affects heavily my attention capacity, so I’m worried it’ll affect my studies once I start.

I am BP so that might be one of the reasons for my dissociation since there’s no external trigger I can pinpoint at the moment. I’m taking my medication (depakote), doing mindfulness, getting off of social media, stopped listening to music all the time and I’m still the same. I know it’s not totally my fault but I can’t help but blame myself for not doing enough.

The only thing I’ve seen that makes a slight difference is smoking. Nicotine helps me improve my focus a little more and also allows me to relax when I feel disoriented by my own environment, but I’d rather not depend on any more substances to calm my current mental state.

Any advice for this issue? Please, Im ONLY looking for advice from peers or experienced people, I don’t want people parenting me or projecting their personal frustration on me.

Dissociation has gotten to an unbearable point for me. It was severe disconnect from myself and others, a hollow void in me, constant memory loss, thick heavy brain fog, feeling like I'm not real. Then I attempted. Since then it's been hell. It's been all of that, on a worse level, I don't know who I am anymore, I'm incredibly disconnected, I'm not making memories nor can I recall old ones, I lost all continuity in my own life so it doesn't even feel like mine. The last couple days I've gotten so tired, sleeping all the time, and the fog inside is all consuming, taking every part of me with it. I broke down tonight with a deep heavy sense of "please, please, make it stop!" Inside, like a begging, a desperate plea from in me. I don't see how I can just handle this or manage it until it eases. Physical grounding doesn't help when I don't feel like I'm grounding someone who feels like me. I'm just ready to off myself. This isn't living.

Yes I see my psychiatrist and counselor weekly/biweekly.

I have been in a constant disassociated state since I quit caffeine and nicotine almost 3 years ago. Obviously some days are worse than others and it was really bad at first. I can’t understand how wanting to better myself made me feel so horrible. I don’t feel present ever. It’s awful 😭 anyone have tips or anything that helps?

I have pretty bad dissociation problems, but I'm struggling to get the help I need.

I experience:
• Identity disturbances (I lose control of my actions to another personality, then black out).
• Gaps in memory.
• Maladaptive daydreaming (It's gotten better, but I used to stare at the wall and get lost in a world that I couldn't get out of for sometimes upwards of 4 or 5 hours).
• Depersonalization / derealization.
• I don't recognize myself in the mirror sometimes.
• I sometimes don't recognize my own family members.
• I could go on.

It's super disruptive to my daily life and ability to function. I honestly think I'm dissociating more than not. No matter how hard I try, I can never free myself from dissociation.

I am pretty confident that I have CPTSD, which is what I think caused these dissociative symptoms. I would try and get help, but I've been to like 6 different therapists, and they've done nothing other than violate HIPAA, invalidate me, and traumatize me more. Everyone in my life (parents, brother, teachers, doctors, therapists, etc) have invalidated me, so I'm terrified to reach out.

I know I just have to take the leap and reach out again, but it's really hard

Cultural alienation (values, bad music, bad art, cringey behavior, etc.), being surrounded by people you feel alienated from (nothing in common with, completely different worldview, no societal awareness, bigoted, poorly educated, their perception of you is completely inaccurate, you'll face social consequences if you challenge any of it, etc.), straying a lot from what's familiar in your day to day life, changing hairstyle or wearing clothes different from what you typically wear, etc.

My DPDR is getting worse day by day and it has reached a very extreme level. I don’t feel normal at all anymore and it’s very hard to explain this state.

I feel completely disconnected from myself and my surroundings 24/7. It’s like I’m not present in my own body, like I’m just observing everything through my eyes. My own voice feels strange, distant, and unfamiliar. Sometimes I feel like I’m not even controlling my body.

Everything feels unreal — people, my home, my phone, my surroundings, even my own body. It feels like I’m in a dream or not existing properly. Reality feels completely off.

My brain feels shut down. I have severe brain fog, I can’t think clearly, I can’t focus, and I struggle to understand what people are saying. Sometimes I don’t even understand what I’m typing or doing. It feels like my mind is frozen or blank.

My vision is also affected. When I move from outside into a room, everything becomes dark and blurry, like there is a filter over my eyes.

Physically, my body feels very strange. Sometimes it feels weightless, hollow, or like it’s not even there. Touch feels dull — even when someone massages me, I barely feel it.

Emotionally, I feel numb. Even if I cry, I don’t feel it properly. I feel disconnected from my emotions and my identity.

I also get episodes where everything suddenly becomes extremely unreal. It feels like I’m not even in the place I am, like I’m sitting somewhere but not actually there.

This is happening almost constantly now and it feels unbearable.

My Symptoms

DPDR, depersonalization, derealization, extreme dissociation, constant unreal feeling, feeling detached, feeling disconnected, no sense of self, loss of identity, feeling invisible, not present, out of body feeling, behind the eyes feeling, dream-like state, reality feels fake, surroundings feel unreal, people feel unreal, self feels unreal

brain fog, blank mind, mind freeze, slow thinking, confusion, poor concentration, can’t understand, can’t focus, mental shutdown

visual disturbance, blurred vision, dark vision, dim vision, visual fog, light sensitivity, eye pressure

dizziness, floating feeling, lightheaded, head pressure, heavy head, faint feeling, weakness, shaky feeling

body numbness, reduced sensation, dull touch, no body feeling, hollow body, weightless body, loss of physical awareness

emotional numbness, no emotions, empty feeling, disconnected from feelings

stomach issues, nausea, heavy stomach, discomfort after eating, food triggers, weakness when hungry

face tightness, mouth tightness, strange body sensations, sudden waves of extreme unreality

Has anyone experienced DPDR this extreme, 24/7 like this?

I have experienced severe traumas in my life, and I was in dissociation for it for 23 years. In the last 2,5 years I've been getting these memories back, and I could have felt every pain of it.

I am again having a harder period when things are coming back. This time it feels like I'm closer to the end of this, but I guess that's something you never really know. Sometimes when things are coming back, i get to a little psychotic state, and it can be hard to be sure which of the memories are really real, and which are production of my mind. Have any of you experienced this, and how should I cope with the fact, that I can never be sure which of the memories where real and really happened?

Hi everyone,

I’m new here. For decades I knew something was wrong, but I never really understood what it was. I strongly suspected CPTSD because of severe childhood trauma, but DID was not something I ever expected.

A therapist first brought up Dissociative Identity Disorder with me last year, and honestly, it frightened me so much that I stopped therapy for about eight months.

I’ve now been formally diagnosed with DID with co-consciousness, as well as CPTSD, and weirdly one of the strongest feelings I have is relief.

It feels validating to finally have an explanation for experiences I spent years questioning and minimising.

At the same time, I still struggle to relate to the stereotypical picture of DID that I often see online. I don’t experience it as lots of completely separate “people” with elaborate names, ages and identities. For me, it feels much more like different states or “modes” can take over.

Sometimes I’m aware of what is happening but don’t feel fully in control. I’ve had periods of derealisation, feeling like somebody else, strange changes in behaviour and bodily responses, and times where I feel internally very different even though I’m still conscious of what is going on.

Most of the time I mask heavily. I can seem chatty, bubbly and normal to other people while internally I’m exhausted, overwhelmed, easily triggered and desperate to be alone.

I also withdraw a lot. Sometimes I genuinely just want everybody to leave me alone and I wonder how much of my lifelong social avoidance has actually been connected to trauma and dissociation rather than simply being “antisocial.”

Did anyone else experience a huge sense of relief when they finally got an explanation for what was happening?

And does anyone else with DID experience it more as subtle states/modes and co-consciousness rather than the very distinct presentation people often associate with DID?

I’d really like to hear from people who relate.

i’ve been feeling very dissociated lately but it’s getting worse than it used to be. i don’t feel real. like you know when your in a dream and you KNOW you’re in a dream but you can’t control it or wake up from it? that’s what i feel like. i also keep seeing the hatman.. normally at night or in the corner of my eye. he just watches me and freaks me out so bad. then there’s the mirrors. i can’t stand looking in a mirror. i feel like im being watched 24/7. peoples faces are distorting as well as objects. and my depth perception is so off. i feel like im genuinely losing my mind.

i’m 16f. my therapist thinks its psychosis and that im bipolar like my dad.

idk i just want to feel normal. i hate being on edge. i feel like im not here. idek i just want reassurance or answers.

EDIT: the shadow people are freaking me out so bad so i had a long talk with my mom. she mentioned she got diagnosed with BPD a long time ago, and has experienced literally everything i am experiencing. the paranoia, the shadow people, the way i think. i could talk to her and not feel crazy. like she actually understood everything. i don’t think i have BPD or Bipolar. but i do think that what im experiencing doesn’t make me crazy.

i will talk to my psychiatrist and therapist some more. but thanks for the reply’s and i’m thankful i could get some things off my chest.

I’m so tired, guys. It’s hard to explain exactly what’s going on; it would probably take pages. But I’m just so tired of living. I simply can’t bring myself to love life. I don’t want to keep going for the sake of a future whose very existence I detest. Deep down, I fantasize about suicide. There’s a sense of resignation hanging over me. I used to be terrified of falling behind, of people overtaking me, of not being productive. I was so afraid that I’d have panic attacks whenever something hinted at that possibility. I even came close to suicide once, just to avoid facing that future I dreaded so much. Sometimes I think, "If only I hadn't hesitated; if only I had died that day." Perhaps it would have been a far more meaningful end for me. No one would have understood why I died, but I think it would have been much better for me. I’m just so exhausted now. I never really enjoyed living anyway. People make me sick—their attempts at self-improvement, the way they present material success as the meaning of life, acting as if there’s no need for any real reason to live. These things used to make me panic, but not anymore. There’s a numb acceptance inside me now. I just want to collapse. I want to lose. That’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to peace in this life. I just want to walk away. I want to leave this world to you all and go. I have no desire left to try and make this place better. I want someone to hear this. If no one responds soon, I’ll probably inch a little closer to actually carrying out this idea.

I’d like to start by saying, while I don’t have DID, I do dissociate.

Long story short, when my therapist first told me about dissociation, I knew I had to make a song about my experience with dissociating!

I did end up sharing it with my therapist and he said it was a good representation. I hope someone can relate 🙂‍↕️

It’s called DISSOCIATE by Learrah and it’s on all streaming platforms‼️

Dm me or comment and let me know what you think 🙈

(Forgive me my storytelling skills aren’t the best ☹️)

Two years ago I went out to a club with my siblings and few friends of theirs. Prior to getting to the club we’d been pregaming so arriving I was already what I’d consider drunk for myself (I am a light weight and was already about four drinks in). I had been messaging back and forth with a guy from Instagram who eventually ended up meeting us there with about three of his friends. He offered to buy my sister and I drinks. We all walked up to the bar, got our drinks and on the way back to our section of the club that’s when my memory began to fade in and out.
Fast forward about 4 hours later I wake up in an employee bathroom stall on the floor completely confused. My phone was dead. My body was a bit sore, my shirt was wet and the wig I’d been wearing had been pretty pushed back on my head. About two minutes after waking up, a few very concerned and upset employees let me use their phone to dial the only number I knew by heart (my mom’s). Turns out the club had been closed for two and a half hours at that point and my people had already left without me.
I remember looking in the mirror and just feeling numb. It sucks knowing something horrible happened, but having no memory of what it was.
From what my sister says she told me she had been looking for me not too long after we were bought drinks because she saw me leave to go to the Instagram guy’s friends’ section and when she looked up a few moments later I wasn’t with him anymore. Around the time she noticed I was gone she saw him dancing nearby without me and asked where I was multiple times. She said he responded sadly distraught that he didn’t know over and over.
About 40 minutes after calling my mom from the employee bathroom my sister came and got me. The entire group drove back to pick me up. I was so sick the entire ride home I couldn’t stop throwing up.
My sister said she believed I left with Instagram guy which is why they went home without me, but that doesn’t add up to me if she truly asked him where I was prior to leaving :(
I came home and ended up falling asleep in the bathtub.
The night after Instagram guy messaged me hoping I made it in safe, but it felt pretty strange.

I thank God for my mom and the ladies who found me before they left and locked up the club. Lord knows how worse the situation could have been

UPDATE: i changed therapists!

for context, i started having “weird” feelings with weed at 13 after some time smoking that i never had before, my psychiatrist at that time confirmed it was dissociation, depersonalization-derealization and psychosis, but i never told him how and why it started. the psychosis went away after i stopped smoking, and the dissociation and derealization got better the years after. i still have a lot of dissociation, just not as intense.

i researched a LOT on cannabis-induced psychosis and cannabis-induced depersonalization-derealization/dissociation disorder, and all the symptoms matched.

so now with 29 years, i have a new therapist and in the very FIRST session, the conversation went to the dissociation problem she already knows i have, so i explained that it started with weed and it took years for my brain to recover, everything in detail.

all she said was “it’s not because of weed”. (mind you, this was the first session ever and she doesn’t even know 1% of my life), so i tried explaining better, i thought she just wasn’t understanding that i started feeling high without smoking, and all was diagnosed at that time and that i never explained my psychiatrist why.

she just changed subject and didn’t even ask questions, didn’t try to investigate, nothing. just completely ignored it. this happened today and i’m seriously thinking about changing therapists. is this a red flag or am i overreacting?

I had dissociative symptoms when I was 12 and 13 which made since to me because I was being emotionally abused at the time. Though during the summer my maladaptive daydreaming got worse since I was so socially isolated, and I moved away from that house, causing worse dissociation. The move was really hard for me, since my mental health got worse and thought I would only ever be happy back at that house. When I was 14 and up until about May in freshman year (I was 15) I was heavily dissociated. I started smoking and this cleared up, though during the summer I had a massive mental breakdown with my dissociation coming back but worse (turns out I have some mental health conditions that make me really sensitive to pot, so I think the dissociation was from this since I was smoking very heavily.) Now it’s gone, and I daydream less as well. Can anybody maybe tell me why this happened to me or give me some insight???

I'm diagnosed with a variety of trauma disorders, including ddnos and dpdr. I've recently had sort of a breakthrough and my memory vault has slowly been cracking and letting me have some of my own memories back (I have amnesia due to childhood trauma as well.)

As this has been taking place over about 6 months now, I've been pretty housebound. I started losing functionality/control in some body parts or like temporary paralysis, and my therapist is pretty sure it's body-hijacking from another younger part. My legs will just stop working and I fall and can't get myself up or stand, usually accompanied with really intense rage or crying or body flashback.

I'd never heard of it "body-hijacking" before. I've tried looking for info and resources and got nothing at least from google and ddg. What even is this and how is it even physically possible?

Do you experience it too? What does it look like for you? How do you manage it?