u/xVeterankillx

I’ve been in this chronic dissociative state for so long, I genuinely have no idea what life is like without it. I don’t know when it started, I just kinda realized one day that my experience of life was wrong. I started having panic attacks at maybe… 5 years old? And my parents did nothing about it. Severe social anxiety, hypervigilance, the works. I guess at some point something just broke and ever since I’ve been in this foggy nothingness where I have no sense of self or connection to my human body at all. I feel faint embers of emotional memories occasionally, all made 10+ years ago, but they’re very distant and it’s like I have to mentally squint to see anything.

I wonder what it’s like to not have this. I genuinely have no idea. I don’t feel like I have a “before” DPDR, I just feel like some schmuck who woke up in the middle of it.

I feel no fear of it, like I said it’s just been my default state of reality for all I’ve known. I just… don’t know anything else.

I've been dealing with chronic dissociation for... longer than I can remember. Probably 10+ years at this point. I've only been actively trying to take care of my mental health for the past 6 years or so and started seeing my therapist probably 5 years ago.

In that time, I feel like I've made very little progress on uncovering the true cause of my DPDR, very little progress on improving symptoms, and overall I feel like I've just spent the last 4 years spinning in neutral. My therapist has no experience with dissociative disorders aside from her schooling, but I felt it was fine as I had already built a rapport with her before realizing my disorder (previously thought I had ADHD).

It feels like every weekly appointment is just me venting about how I hate this grey purgatory feeling, how I don't have any reference point of what 'not being dissociated' feels like, etc. and her just listening and going "well, chin up, you're doing great!". Her conclusion for what caused my chronic dissociation is my family's emotional neglect and my severe general anxiety, rather than any event in particular. I just don't feel like I'm making any real progress, but I don't know what a 'proper' therapist would be doing instead.

And of course, the only therapist in the Portland area that specializes in DPDR specifically doesn't take insurance. Everyone else just uses the generic "DID" label as their 'speciality'.