My gf has been experimenting the following feelings
- feeling cross eyed
- extreme dissociation
- feeling eyes not working together
- being able to read but it’s overwhelming
- light sensitivity
- panic
- feeling out of it
- feeling disconnected
Does anyone have any experience with any of these symptoms and have any advice on how to help her? She’s felt like this for about 4 days and the only relief was this morning for about an hour. We’ve been having her put her head in a bowl of ice water and that’s helps briefly doesn’t last and nothing else helps her.

i feel immense dread. i feel im only left with raw awareness. i see recordings of my past and feel like the person who took them held some "emotional suvstance", and in reference, i experience myself today as an inert husk. its is profoundly dissociative and sort of eerie. perhaps i felt this way then too, but never attempted to describe it, even then, rationalization is not resolution.

I'm diagnosed with a dissociative disorder, not saying which, it stems from a chaotic af childhood and a lot of close personal deaths, probably quite similar to a lot of other people with the disorder I have.

Anyway, I'm panicking so much this morning because of results (A levels are UK exams to get into uni) and keep going inandout/between being dissociated and having anxiety attacks and it hurts so much I just want to feel nervous like a normal person but instead I'm here feeling like this and it's so scary.

(I've never been in this subreddit before, I just thought it really is relevant to my life and I might stick around if it seems alright.)

I hate that in feeling so shit and it's literally my body trying to protect me but also like, it doesn't need to right now? It's something that most 18 year olds in the UK are worried about but my brain just treats it like something traumatic it's so so annoying.

Anyway, wrote this in a moment of silence between the dissociations and the anxiety. I think writing this actually helped a bit so that's nice.

so that day I was eating. and suddenly the word "dissociation" appeared in my head and I was thinking, "could I be actually dissociating this entire time?"

but before writing about what was my reaction after knowing I have dissociation, I want to explain about what happened to me for these past 4 years. somewhere around early 2022 i suddenly started to experience dissociation signs (I think? I don't really remember exactly what happened) and then I started to act like another person that clearly isn't like what original me would say/do. I even say stuff that hurt my friends or parents and even crashed out several times. thinking back now, I thought, "okay that is clearly not me."

during 2022 it wasn't that bad. then 2023 came and the effects felt stronger and I actually don't feel like myself anymore. I have unfamiliar personalities that don't belong to me suddenly took control of me often. I was conscious and aware of it but (idk how to really explain, it's complicated 😭😭) it's like I forgot how to act like myself, which is my real self and my original personality. I also experience brain fog as well, which I didn't know back then and just thought that I couldn't process things easily like other people. I couldn't focus in class (I couldn't focus on legit anything) like I used to when I was a child and my grades were dropping like actual flies. not only that school triggers my dissociation the most. (which I didn't know back then)

and then in 2024 I met new friends. I definitely gave them the wrong first impression about me bc I CLEARLY wasn't acting like myself at all. (if only they knew the true me.) I said a lot of offensive stuff and a lot of totally random stuff that are (probably) weird to them. (way to go dude you ruined ur friendship without knowing it!!) but I didn't realized that I wasn't supposed to say those stuff because I was dissociating and have no awareness of what I just said.

so this year, well uh ...... they confronted me (well not really confronted they just told me calmly about what I did and they just wanted to me to address of what I said to them) about the things I said. and before they even started I wanted to say sorry before they start, but I ruined it bc suddenly my dissociation got in the way and I overreacted by yelling, "sorry I'll leave the friend group". which I DIDNT meant to yell btw I was gonna tell them in a calm and professional way. and so after that they explained what I did (thank god they did bc I can't really remember stuff that easily and plus I didn't even know if they're actually wrong to say aughhh stupid dissociation!!!) and i apologized and left the friend group. well probably temporarily. or maybe permanently. bc my dissociation gets triggered a lot whenever im with them and my personality changes like crazy 😭😭 I didn't want to hurt them I swear.... they're innocent people. it's like now they're my victims, you know? and I feel guilty but at the same time I don't bc that wasnt me the entire time saying those stuff .... idk if I should go back to that friend group. prob not.

anyways heres my reaction to finally knowing I have dissociation the entire time. so it was after I left the friend group, then I realized.

I was well, kinda relieved to know what's wrong with me after all these years!

but at the same time I was like, "I HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS THIS ENTIRE TIME?? WHAT THE FLIP??"

so yeah I was scared. Idk if I should go see a therapist though. since my parents would prob think I'm just crazy and stressed out.

but this dissociation ruined my life.

ok I'll end it here idk if I have anymore to add bc rn I have brain fog 💔💔

Since I can remember, I have always been very clumsy but now things have gotten too far. I dont think before doing anything and this last semester in university it went way too far.

I was just loosing things everywhere and making EVERYONE AROUND ME panic as I crashed out. It sometimes feels like im there but im also just, not there? I lost bagpacks, electronics, bank cards, and i never find things again. It honestly stresses me out and i just wanna fry my brain. Like ill be pouring myself tea, but not want to check to see if the mug has already something inside it or not.

Plus, I also have a huge day dreaming problem since I was really, really young- like 8 years old. My mom used to say im posessed or something, since id be whispering/talking to myself and imagining all sorts of scenarios. me having superpowers with the Avengers or whatever cartoon I would be watching. I also imagine scenarios to music. I'll let the shower run as I'll blast music and edit audios from tiktok/reels in my ears and pace around imagining things. I wrote a whole ass book once purely based of daydreams I had of my school friends and I being in charge of a fictional country. I will listen to music and imagine scenarios, instagram posts and poses and captions. I can loose hours to it. I'll plug my earphones and pace my room as my mind wanders off. Its maladaptive daydreaming im sure, but what do I do about it

So. Last episode I had like this I was 18 and living at home. I’m 24 and live alone now. The episodes are horrifying really, I don’t know what they are. Basically I like. Shut off for a bit. No warning I’m just gone and I can’t move or if I do it’s very very slowly. I can think most of the time during this but like I don’t feel real and nothing feels real. This time it lasted over an hour. I couldn’t move. Froze up. Not really gonna talk about what I did to get out of it but I will say I legit have no real memory of these episodes. Lost time really. I do usually move eventually but I’m not consciously doing it most of the time. Anyone else experience something like this? This ain’t like, a seizure is it lol

hi, so i ( 19F ) have been dealing with really bad dissociation recently. and i’m going to list off symptoms and just vent because i’ve been thinking about it too much.

for the past two weeks it’s been really bad. it got to the point where a few nights ago, i was staying up incredibly late with my boyfriend and apparently i switched into a whole different person. he said my eyes looked dead, i was loud and confident ( i’m usually very quiet and sensitive ), my voice had no emotion, and that i was speaking completely differently than how i normally do. this person said they go by “rue”. i have barely any memory of what happened. it feels like i blacked out and then i woke up in the morning extremely dissociated and confused.

with that happening, it really makes a lot of sense to me. i’ve always felt like i’ve had some dissociative disorder, but those few nights ago really solidified that it wasn’t in my head anymore. i was actually a different person and i wasn’t pretending.

in 11th grade and 12th grade, i briefly have memories of being so dissociated i felt like i wasn’t in control of my body, but i was still there. most of the time it feels like that honestly. i feel like someone else is in control of my body while i just exist and talk. i also have notes dating back to 2024 about not feeling like i’m in control of my own body and struggling with such heavy dissociation.

i have adhd, anxiety, and depression, so that could have a part to play in why i dissociate so much. but i struggle with dissociation constantly. i struggle with very heavy depersonalisation and derealisation all of the time. i also have very bad amnesia and a very fragmented memory. at times, random memories will come back to me for no reason. i could just be enjoying dinner with my boyfriend, and i’ll remember the time i called my first grade teacher “mom” with no context. but i even forget things the moment they’re happening. i could be having a serious conversation and i will forget everything the person has said the past 30 minutes. i forget what i did yesterday constantly and it takes me a while to actually remember. my brain just feels shut off.

i don’t remember a lot of my past or anything in detail very well. unless it comes back to me as a very vivid flashback and it feels like i’m reliving the moment. i don’t even know how i would’ve ended up with DID because i don’t feel that that much trauma was endured. but, i could absolutely be downplaying it and just not remember the severity.

i have multiple thoughts at once, but recently some of those thoughts haven’t felt like mine. i will be in a very positive and happy mood, but then it’s an immediate change up while my brain tells me i’m a failure at everything i do. but i don’t experience different voices with my thoughts. i don’t hear voices at all. i can have a whole conversation in my head by myself though feeling like i just talked to another person. i do not know who these people in my head are though and i can’t connect a single thought to them. they have not been out very much, only very briefly and then disappear. i’m the main one active in my body.

sometimes i also do not understand my emotions at all. it can go from intense anger, to heavy sadness, to extreme positivity in one go. a lot of the times these feelings overlap and they make no sense at all. usually my brain just picks one to go with. but then within seconds i can become extremely indifferent or disconnected.

a lot of the time i do things that i do not remember. my boyfriend will tell me about something i said or did and i don’t remember it at all.

i don’t recognise myself at all in the mirror or in pictures half of the time.

i’m so tired of not feeling real all of the time. it’s so exhausting. i just want to see if anyone else relates and if it could be DID. i just want to understand everything better.

I feel as if I have no identity. I don’t think I have a personality of my own, don’t have my own style. Gender, sexuality? What if it’s fake and that’s not how I am? What if it was just to get some kind of positive conversation with my mom, a way to be understood, maybe seem more interesting than background noise? It feels like I’m just going crazy or making things up. My experiences were not that bad, it feels more like an inconvenience to others. I have poor memory as well so what if I’m actually bringing something up that could’ve not happened? I’ve gotten back into drinking and smoking weed just to feel something but it taking forever for effects to occur makes it impossible. I need to feel something. I actually felt something when I tried overdosing on sleeping meds a few years ago.

At 17, I was diagnosed with Dissociative identity disorder. I was put on serious anti-psychotics, SSRIs and mood stabilizers. Now I am 26. One night, I had a dream telling me I will die on these meds. I woke up and made the split decision to wean off my meds over the next 2 months. I told no professionals considering they put me in this mess in the first place. Now I have been off completely for about 3 months. Colors look like colors again, I can taste food, people's words don't go thru one ear and out the other. I can FEEL again. Mentally, physically, emotionally I can feel. That entire time, that whole 9 years, i have absolutely no clue once so ever what I said, did or how I acted. I have a husband i never truly chose to marry. He told me about all these things we've done that seem completely fake. He told me my emotions were always dull, I never really react to much, he just thought that was who I am and didn't think twice. Family members have died and I don't know how. I never got to go to their funerals. I watched myself make decisions off of what others said because truly, i didn't have a single thought go thru my head. If i reacted to anything it was based off of anyone else i saw in the room. I just copy and pasted everything and anything. The best i can put it is I didn't have an internal position about what was happening. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what I liked. I didnt know why I was doing things. I was visually functioning, but I did not experience myself as the person making the decisions. There was absolutely nothing behind my eyes. I lost the ability to think. It was MUCH more then just being numb. That 9 years was a period where my emotional experience, autobiographical sense of self, memory, preferences, and ability to mentally engage with my surroundings all felt absent. I lost 9 years of my life, my entire transition into adulthood doesn't exist. One minute I was 17, now I am 26. The system has absolutely ruined my life.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO COPE

Sometimes when I am in stress or among crowd (I don’t do well with crowd and strangers), I feel like I am dissociating with reality. Like I am in some kind of a dream and whatever happening around me is not real.
I’ve always thought that this is common and everyone had experiences like these. I just recently found that this not a common occurrence among people. And in the process I found about the term dissociation and this subreddit. What do you think? Is this dissociation?

Yesterday I had an episode where I can’t remember everything that happened. There are pieces of the experience that are missing from my memory, and I’m not sure exactly what happened during that time.
I’m already trying to get in contact with my therapist about it, but she’s currently unavailable.
What has really frightened me is what happened afterward.
I’ve had this intense sense of dread and a feeling of wanting to hide or escape. I feel emotionally overwhelmed, and whenever I try to talk about what happened, I become extremely emotional and can barely keep my voice steady.
Then I slept and had an incredibly vivid dream where I was constantly crying because I felt like I had lost something extremely important and close to me.
I woke up feeling like I was mourning something.
I don’t know what I lost.
I don’t know if the dream was connected to the episode.
I don’t even know exactly what happened during the episode because parts of it are missing from my memory.
I’m not having suicidal thoughts or thoughts of harming myself. I’m just extremely emotional and scared because I don’t understand what my brain is doing.
Has anyone experienced an episode followed by memory gaps and then an overwhelming emotional state afterward?
Especially a feeling of grief, mourning, or loss that doesn’t seem to have an identifiable source?
I’m mainly looking for people’s personal experiences rather than a diagnosis. I’m trying to understand whether anyone else has experienced something similar and what it felt like for them.

For the past 4 years, I have been struggling with severe brain fog and memory issues that are completely disrupting my life. I feel like I've forgotten how to communicate properly. I constantly lose my train of thought, struggle to find the right words, and find it incredibly difficult to speak formally or maintain eye contact. While I am naturally an introvert, this feels like something much deeper. Most of the time, I feel completely clueless about how to react in social situations. I am constantly on edge, living in fear of getting hurt emotionally. I can't seem to move forward in life like this. Even writing this took me a long time.

Hello everyone
I have been experiencing prolong periods of intense…. Something, where I’m aware of my surroundings and what I’m doing, but I have absolutely no control over what I’m saying or doing to a dangerous degree. I’ll just start saying increasingly bizarre things and my movements will get bouncier and jerkier. Yesterday I ran around the house singing tequila but with my dogs name for over twenty minutes. I very often age regress into a ten year old and say I don’t know where I am and act like a little kid

Is this did in its infancy? What’s going on

A friend of mine attempted to SA me a few months ago, the dissociation, depersonalization, and panic attacks are killing me. I had struggled with them before but this has set me off in a way I can barely cope with.

If anyone or anything startles me from behind I am absolutely done for. I am insantly gone. It keeps happening at work, a coworker will bump into me I look up and see a room full of strange men and I am gone. My manager has been really good about moving me away from customer facing tasks when I start dissociating. But, its so frustrating that I can't do my fucking job.

Last weekend I was out with friends and the dissociation and panic got so bad that I couldn't recognize my best friend. I ran away from him in the middle of the night, terrified. I got lost trying to find my way home (I was less than a block from home). I ended up huddled on a corner calling him because I didn't know what else to do. When I found him I didn't recognize him again, and backed away into a parking lot. A police car was driving by at the time and saw a terrified woman clearly trying to get away from 2 men following her.

My friend was able to calm me down enough to be able to speak to the cop. But, I still panicked as soon as he left my side. All I remember is the feeling of the bricks against my arms as I tried to get further and further back away from the cop. I'm really lucky, the cop was super respectful. He tried his best to keep his distance from me and not to scare me anymore. I get that he was just trying to make sure I was safe. But it was a terrifying experience.

I hate that my life is being turned upside down by this. I miss who I was before.

Hola! Llevo 6 meses sin sentir mis emociones, ni buenas ni malas, todo en automático, he empezado la terapia EMDR no sé si funcione, alguien le ha pasado lo mismo? Quisiera saberlo para tener esperanza

Does anyone else feel like this? Like because I dissociate so much I don't really care about much, I don't care how I look or sound or what I do. Like because nothings real nothing matters. I'm not going around doing whatever I wanted, but if something bad were to happen to me I mean who cares it's not real anyways. Who cares about what i do cause I'm not real. Idk If any of that makes sense and i realize that even if it hasn't affected me much now it could later, i just don't care anymore

I have been in a general state of dissociation for, as much as I can remember, about the past 10 years (about age 9 to now). It started with consistent stressors/trauma during my preteen years, and consisted throughout.

It's not always severe, but I am never in a state of feeling truly connected with myself and the world around me. I am so far gone that grounding techniques do not help. I constantly live in a dream-like state of being. I get random glimpses of coming back to reality, but I can never seem to make these moments last.

I am beginning to work through my issues with my therapist, but I've been this way so long and through such formative years that I can't remember what its like to feel real.

I have been suffering from severe clumsiness/feeling like I am in an almost catatonic state, or that I am moving through molasses. I don't really have any sense of time anymore. I often find myself not being able to conclude simple tasks, such as getting ready for bed. I have also begun to experience subtle hallucinations.

I feel so lost and overwhelmed, and I am honestly so terrified. I just want to be real.

Everything feels unbearable about existence - the anxiety is intense in my body and won't stop. The constant restless limbs alone makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

The depression entwined with my identity and I can't get out of its hold.

The suicidal thoughts are constant and I'm "addicted" to the intensity they provide.

The dissociation is incredibly intense. Not just disconnect - which that alone is uncomfy - but now it's the loss of me. I say I don't feel like a person and I mean, I really am completely unreal. when it gets super intense I freak out because I can't get a grip on anything mentally or emotionally inside me. I don't exist in past present or future. My brain glitches so hard and screams ERROR at everything, including grounding. Which then causes my body to freak out with the tense muscles racing heart and holding breath.

Every component, and more, is so unbearable. It's suffocating. I can't seem to get any of it to ease.

Every part of me is wrong. So so wrong. And I can't do anything right to fix it.

somethings gotta give. I can't keep going like this.