[numb1]

I’ve have this for 30 years and came out of it once. Here’s a few quick things I’ve thought about that ay or may not have contributed to it.
1. Taking the attention off yourself and placing it on your environment. I will say I was taking an acting class that had us focus on a activity while another actor entered the room and had something they needed. What followed were two people that both needed something and all that was talked about were how the other person was feeling and how you were feeling. It was CBT on a level and this is something I think has helped.

2. Daydreaming, overthinking, and not being present. Going back to taking the attention off yourself. I wonder how many people are thinking about other things while working on a task. Even thinking about the DPDR while doing any activity. Can we be so caught up in our thoughts or being distracted by thoughts that we are not focusing on the activity at hand? I am constantly doing this and trying to be mindful. In school I would spend all day daydreaming and I wonder-if it’s a muscle in the mind that if worked on enough becomes dominate. Like a left hand right hand use of skill. If we spend all this time dissociated and thinking about a fantasy wouldn’t that become stronger overtime?

3. Screen time. There was a time where I didn’t watch tv for three months. This was right before smartphones. On top of being busy I didn’t watch any tv for sometime. This can be a contribution to daydreaming. It already feels like we’re watching a movie with our lives. How would we know what that’s like in a time before tv or movies?
Just some thoughts I wanted to share that have been ruminating for a while now.

 

[Phantasm]

Yes, I think the mental self takes dominance in this condition, whereas in a healthy person thoughts are secondary to our physical reality and environment, and that's understood automatically. A person with dissociation gets caught in a bubble of themselves. I was always a daydreamer and trying to disconnect from the uncomfortable world around me. As the traumas mounted up, this reached a critical point, as a bottle can only hold so much before it breaks. Habits do form by repetition, including destructive ones.

That acting class sounds really interesting, like there was psychodynamics going on there. A kind of therapy. I've heard of therapies that use roleplay. I've also wondered about people before virtual distractions, and I try to keep the telly off as long as possible each day, but there are still stories of people who went mad in the past, so maybe it can help or hinder, depending on the circumstances.

Things that help me are anything that focuses me on my physical body and environment, what is often called grounding. I dismissed this for years as "soft psychology" as I was so mind-based I couldn't see how just physically feeling could make any difference, but now it seems so obvious. Another thing I'm doing recently is what I'm calling identity modelling, which is simply asking what kind of person you want to be and how they would spend their day. This includes thoughts and actions, but ones that are small and achievable (all the 1%s that build up) and is, again, about habit formation.

 

[numb1]

Even without traumas we still have the ability to disconnect. Just daydreaming all the time in school, I think, could cause dissociation. Not wanting to be in class and living in a fantasy world, playing with thoughts and not being present could be the same as surviving trauma. Not as bad a being traumatized, but disconnecting from your environment in any way I think could cause dissociation.

I think I’m the acting class you really has to focus on what you were doing. It had to be something you would do physically. The other person would show up needing something from you and wanting your attention (nothing life or death, but needing your attention) then while the other actor did their activity that needed to get done right then. It would give way to saying your emotions to each other. Meisner was the technique.

I’ve had a stellate ganglion block to mss as mage my anxiety, but I’m still dissociated. I can rarely feel sometimes I’m comping out of it