u/jaaaaden

i just wanted to ask if anyone else experiences dissociation this way. i do dissociate from my sense of self, but instead of feeling “out of body,” i tend to feel like only my body. say i’m at the dentist and dissociating because of dentist trauma. instead of leaving my body or the room, i basically feel like i become the tooth that’s being worked on. or, i’ve had a lot of physical injuries, and i feel like i become the injury and my only focus is surviving and taking care of myself.

my whole life, i think i’ve placed taking care of my physical body and ensuring future safety as one of my main priorities. my own body always has been a special interest of mine, and i am hyperaware of every aspect about it. not in a hypochondria way, but just in a very observant and proactive way.

i wonder if this has to do with how i experience dissociation, and if i’m subconsciously always avoiding discomfort, because it becomes all i am? not sure, but i just wanted to put it out there in case anyone feels similar

hi all, i'm gonna be writing this out partly to just put it into words, and partly to see if anyone has gone through anything similar.

so i'm sure we all have had struggles with nightmares. i've been having strange and upsetting nightmares almost nightly since i was a kid. since i'm pretty used to it, nightly nightmares aren't the problem. what's been really strange, is for the last 6 months or so (maybe even longer, time flies), my nightmares have been building like, a dreamworld i return to every night, rather than just one-off things.

the "dream world" is still dreamlike where things don't really make sense, but i keep finding myself in the same messed-up places, and these places connect like a video game map. the people there are usually people from my life, but they don't act like people from my life. it doesn't necessarily feel lucid, like i know i'm dreaming, but it feels as real as life while i'm there.

the next part is why i chose to ask the DID subreddit instead of somewhere else. i feel like a part of me is being tortured every night while i'm sleeping. sometimes i can tell if a specific part is in a dream, but whenever these nightmares are happening, it feels like this mortal anguish that i just can't escape. but...then i wake up. and the memory is basically completely gone until something reminds me of it. for example, say i was being drowned in a nightmare. i won't remember until i see a news article about it happening to someone, and the dream flashes by, and i go "damn, that was fucking horrible" and move on with my day. i almost feel like i'm being traumatized in my dreams every night.

i've been talking with my therapist about this for a while. i have chosen not to bring it up to my actual doctor because while the nightmares are horrible, they don't impact my sleep. so far i don't feel fear about going to bed, but when i'm asleep, i'm more scared than i've ever been. it's like multiple critically-acclaimed horror movies happening to me, or someone in there, every night. luckily i somehow learned how to fly and/or exit to a literal minecraft pause screen, but then i just cycle to a new horrible scenario.

i'm not sure what i'm looking for by sharing this here, but if you read it, thanks