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Hello From the Other Side: dissociation and its perils




 Currently, I am drowning. In dissociation. Those two sentences should have been combined and that will bother me for the next few hours, until my brain is back to its original factory settings.

Writing about dissociation whilst dissociated is harder than it might seem, but I thought it was important to record what's happening while it's happening. Future Louise might pop in (hi! I'm back!) and interrupt my ramblings with some degree of sense, hopefully, anyway.

Dissociation is a disconnect. (Google describes dissociation as a 'state of disconnection') Suddenly once there, you are not there anymore. Nothing makes sense, everyone, including me, talks gobbledegook and I struggle to understand what's going on.

I know I'm still me, I couldn't be anyone else, but the deep numbness and the staring and the thoughts-on-repeat persuade that I am to the contrary: I am not me, the logic and my mind at odds.

Bringing myself back from an episode is neigh-on impossible. I just have to wait and hope and pray that this isn't forever. And it never is. I always get back to how I was before, even if that seems impossible right now. The drowning is always reversed, the water seeps from my lungs and I'm able to breathe again.


Grounding techniques are unhelpful for me. It's true that I could hold ice cubes for longer now than during normal scheduling, but they don't bring me back, they simply demonstrate how far I am gone.

I don't think dissociation is talked about enough. A psychiatrist once told me that everyone dissociates to a degree. Arriving home after driving there and having no memory of said drive: that's dissociation. Picking up a pen and putting it down again somewhere: that's dissociation. But no one really talks about these things, not until they have to because they're drowning themselves or know someone else who is drowning.

Having a dissociative disorder is not exactly a party, it's actually pretty damn rubbish, but maybe, just maybe, talking about it like this, while I'm in it, will shed some light on what it actually is and how it feels. (Though I am only able to describe my experience, everyone has a different experience.)

I hope my brain (Brian) comes back soon.


Well, Brian's back and I'm feeling completely different. My dissociative episodes last around five hours, but they feel like days, as time goes excruciatingly slowly when I'm in an episode. Everyone's episodes are different and mine are affect me in such a physical way that my psychiatrist questioned whether it was epilepsy (which, thankfully, it's not).

I know this post has been, once again, about me. But! Dissociative disorders affect a whole bunch of people (I attempted to find a statistic about just how many, but I couldn't quite manage to find one... Okay, okay, I only checked Wikipedia!), and they need more press time. Dissociation is often caused by trauma, whether that is remembered or not, but can also be caused by psychoactive substances, or have no known trigger. Mine is probably more down the trauma route, but the exact traumatic event remains unknown. 


Ultimately, dissociation can't be cured, and that is vaguely crushing, but it can be managed. I'm learning to manage mine, which is a heck of lot harder than I anticipated. 

Do you guys experience dissociation or does someone you know? Or are you here out of pure curiosity? Let me know on instagram (you can message me!) @jumper.dweller or comment down below. Thank you for reading my incoherent rambles above. I hope this post was somewhat informative. 

Much love, the 'future Louise'! 

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