Trying to understand dissociative disorder

[Unity]

Here is what i understand of dissociative disorder.

For example, it happened to me that after watching certain movies that involve violence, one that i remember particulary is G man, i don't remember anything of the movie at all after watching it. Usually i'm someone with very good memory, and i have no problem understanding plot of complex movies with flash back like 24 or usual suspect, but with some movies, it's like my mind is unable to memorize it, or to make sense of the plot, or remember the character or anything, which is quite embarassing when people are speaking of the movie and i'm there and it's like 1h30 passed that i don't have any memory at all.

I guess that's a sign of dissociation, like my mind shut down, and memory stop recording, and my mind stop trying to make any sense of what it's seeing or frame it in a coherent chronology, and refuse to function normally and memorize succession of scene or memorize and analyze anything at all.

Now i'm more careful with what i watch because this is disturbing to me, it's why i don't watch tv mostly because too much scene of violence and psychopathy and i'm not sure my mind really function normally when i watch this kind of things, so i just avoid to watch things that can contain certain scene, because i know it triger weird things in my mind, of which one of the most blatent sign i can see is being unable to reconstruct the chronology of the movie and remembering some scene.

Well this kind of things can happen to me also in other circumstances, well as far as i understand, there would be different stage with dissociation, first stage would be collapsing of regular mental functioning when faced with threats or violence or stressing situation, that can lead to inability to recollect events with a normal chronology, and can lead to a paralysis that can be both mental and physical, due to an inability to project oneself with an identity and line of conduct in the situation, which force the mind to abandon normal functioning, and memories that happen during that period can be masked or eliminated or erased from consciousness, and can create very sharp change of personality or mood or behavior when those memory and identity can surface in a way or another, but are generally erased from consciousness to maintain normal functioning in every day life or in other context.

Well i'm just trying to put things together to understand certain things that happen to me, or i think to other people i know too.

Do any of you experience things like this, like black out that can happen for some reason, linked to images or other, or strange dizyness like blanking out of sense of self and weird sense of presence without being present, or that you can sometime do things that doesn't seem like you, or having weird vivid dream that can get mixed with true memory or that kind of things, or strange flash back that come like electroshock often when i'm bit tired and my mind wander out or when i lay out, it's like micro nightmare of 5 sec where i feel totally elsewhere and in state of total terror and then i open my eyes back like if i woke up but i was not really asleep just sort of zoning out and vaguely thinking about unrelated things.

I did self injury about one year ago, well i was in stressing period for some reason, i had not really eat for some days, and i was already feeling that things were not right in my mind, and i decided to watch some ghost in the shell with some alcohol to change my mind, but then idk it triggered plenty of things in my mind, but as i was already ko and in super tired mood my mind got sort of hypnotized by it, and then it triggered super weird emotional reaction where i felt totally overhelmed and opressed and i couldn't get my mind out of this, and weird memories surfacing etc

It really both scared and disturbed me because i'm not like this at all usually, i didn't tell about this to my familly or to much anyone actually, well i had some people to speak to fortunately, but well i can't even really explain clearly what happened to me during this time, but i know there is some dark part of me that keep surfacing in many manner, and it sort of worry me, even if i think it's manageable, but well idk

All these things are so weird. I was seing a psy when i was child related to night terror and other things like pb of behavior, but i was young, and there was not many diagnosis at that time either, and even sometime i told him certain thing that seemed super weird to me but he never really answered or explained much, i'm not specially fond of going under drug treatment either.

when i was younger i was living with huge blinder and denial of many things and just didn't care about needing to be accountable for all my time and what i do and i never really tried or even was more avoiding to have a more global perspective on myself, or to have more consistent personality in general, and keeping more consistent chronology of life events, just enough to go along socially in a group, and more generally avoiding close relationship or people who ask to much question about myself, often because i know it ask me some kind of effort to really gather memory and well it's clear to a degree my life is a disorganized and it can be hard for me to put together a coherent sense of self with a clear history.

Well idk why i post this here or if it's relevant with the forum.

[Tangled Web]

Hi Unity. I think people experience dissociation differently depending on your circumstances. I can relate to some of things you have stated and I can easily zone out/black out when I am tired. For me it takes an incredible amount energy to keep everything under control and functioning as best I can but when I am tired I don't have that energy so things can get a little dicey. I can really identify with this statement you made.........it's like micro nightmare of 5 sec where i feel totally elsewhere and in state of total terror and then i open my eyes back like if i woke up but i was not really asleep just sort of zoning out and vaguely thinking about unrelated things.
I call those my puzzle pieces, but usually I am to afraid to look at them so I try to push them away and shrug them off which usually isn't hard because as soon as they come they go when I feel that type of fear. It is when they linger that causes a problem for me.

I hope you can find some answers.
TW

[nats]

hi Unity,
i think everyone dissociates to some extent and obviously some more than others. what you describe sounds like types of dissociation. whether dissociation could be considered a disorder depends on the extent and nature of the dissociation and normally requires professional assessment. however, correctly identifying different types of dissociation can be tricky even for professionals.

[Unity]

Well i don't think it's a major problem in every day life, even if don't have much life either so i guess in some standard it's still a problem lol

But clearly it's something related with triggering things, well i guess that's certain type of violence that trigger this kind of state, and it makes really weird reaction, sometime either like the whole thing is erased or just don't register in the memory, or then it can create very weird reaction in any case.

One kind of reaction for example some time ago a friend got into some story, and it ended that a weird guy supposedly from the army sort of threatened him, apparently saying he was working with the police to intimidate him, i was not here when that happened, but if i'm there in that kind of situation, it's clearly not good 

Well i did 8 year of judo/self defense, in competition etc, i know about not hurting people, and to handle it, well i tried to analyze what's going on during this kind of moment, i have seen they speak of tunnel vision, well i guess it looks like this, i know my mind switch into another state, where i become ice cold, and my brain analyze all threat in a blink, and sort of lock on the situation in weird manner, generally wen this happen people feel it and they just give up, i'm not sure what's going on then but it definately seem to scare people off efficiently. Well in another situation a bit similar it still ended to me 'out of control', well i don't think i could have really hurt him, but i don't know what could happen in a situation where a person is really trigger something like this and would not give up.

Well other than this as long as i don't watch violent movie i guess it's mostly fine, but i can have also reaction on the other extreme too to just mind goes blank, or drug use, or some self destructive behavior, but in any case after effect are generally several days of weirdness in my mind.

I looked into bipolar thing at first, but i don't think it's really this because it's definately linked to trigger, and probably triggering of some memories in sort that i revive some past situation and it retrigger a reaction related to it.

But usually i'm not like this at all, it just happen in very specific kind of circumstances or with certain movies. I also notice i can have very hard time to follow some discussion around certain topics, like my mind flash out or it trigger the same dissociative disruption of memory etc and generally associated with very negative emotions. 

[Unity]

Regarding therapy, well i already thought about this, about one year ago i started to get into cognitive therapy kind of things, and there are auto evaluation sheets that looks like emotional diary, and from there, trying to figure out the kind of thought that are present that can create this reaction, it's based on the principle that lot of emotional disorder or unwanted emotion, or automatic thought, panic attack etc are caused by a negative approach on life, or some cognitive bias, that is more or less aquired during childhood, and examining what kind of though create negative emotions and how to replace those thought by some other that do not create negative emotions.

Well i found this efficient to deal with already tons of things, but when i started to do this, it's clear that there is some peaks of negative emotions associated with specific things, and it's not exactly of cognitive origin, or doing this kind of work to focus on the though that trigger the emotion seems rather difficult, like my brain block or is reluctant to really do this, and i guess cognitive therapy is rather useless for this, in the same time it's also close to budhist practice of zen and observing one own thoughts to analyze one own brain process, but it's when i started to want to do this that also i was pretty scared to go see a therapist because i was very destabilizing for me, and my brain didn't seem to be able to really put this in a form that would be productive for therapy, and i'd rather avoid having to go on drug as well.

Well i've seen psy before, i'm not sure at which degree it can really help, i guess there is no miracle solution anyway :p The psy never really got rid of dreams or other things.

Well for the moment i just try to avoid triggering things, but in the same time it's still something i feel i need to look into at some point.