Dissociation as a coping mechanism

[big kim]

I blanked everything out as a kid in the 60s & 70s. I rarely spoke to anyone, never expressed feelings or emotion. I never felt I belonged to any group, I hung around with the misfit kids when i felt like company, the fat kid, the ginger kid, the boy with a stammer yet I felt an outcast among outcasts. By the time I was 13 I was already drinking regularly & dressing in private. At one time I wondered if I was an alien & not even human. I would often feel what I saw was blurred or 2 dimensional.
When I started treatment the dissasociative feelings slowly went away. 7  years ago I had severe depression & the anti depressents brought it back.
I think Michelle Duff (former Canadian motorcycle racer Mike) said it best "Life was like a race were I was given 2 right hand shoes!"

[PurpleWolf]

I thought of a better analogy/example in my case. I have - literally - spent more time looking closely at my own shadow on the ground than I have in the mirror. My shadow is more familiar to me, and it always had a sort of anonymity that helps when a person is suffering from severe gender dysphoria - you know it's you, but you don't necessarily have to look too hard at it, or confront the things that bother you when you look at a shadow. Doing that a lot can lead you to have a similar attitude to your own body and self. If does end up feeling like a shadow rather than a full sense of self, and the picture you present to the world can become like one as well, filtered through the invisible problems making you hard to define, evasive and hazy. I sometimes think of my life before as the shadow of who I really was, rather than the real thing, since that was completely hidden and it was also pulling the strings with who I was and wasn't allowing myself to be and do.

Haha, I hate looking even at my shadow though Somehow that still accentuates my hips and everything and makes me uncomfortable and reminds me of my eunuch body shape.

But a good way to put it though!!!!!! Totally feel that way too.

The strange thing to get used to after that is NOT being a shadow of yourself any more. Trying to let the authentic stuff come through, trying to get used to the idea of being "a real person", visible, and not a flat, compressed, suppressed version of yourself.

Indeed.....! Getting used to it right now...

[Virginia]

Your shadow analogy is a powerful one, Kylo. It made me remember something I haven't thought of for years. In the aftermath of the death of my first wife when I was in my mid 20's, I would drive on the desolate highway, not by looking through the windshield, but by staring at the rear view mirror. I could go for miles this way. By the grace of God I never hit anyone or had an accident, but there was a surety in knowing where I had been, rather than where I was going.

[Lisa]

Wow!  This was exactly the thread I needed to see right now - thanks so much for starting it, PurpleWolf!  The links were really helpful as neither my doctor nor my therapist had made a connection between my gender identity issues and my master-level dissociation skills.

A little background on me since I've not posted much here yet:  I'm in my early-mid 30s, and I've had gender identity issues since I was around 7, but I didn't grow up in a very open and accepting environment for that; so I spent 20+ years trying to hide it, deny it, and avoid it.  I finally managed to start getting the help I needed recently, and I've been on HRT (MtF) for about 3 months now.

Things have changed significantly since being on HRT, but here are some of my thoughts and experiences from before that:

Over the last few years, my dysphoria had kept getting worse, and I had an immense feeling of hopelessness about it, so I spent more and more time just shutting down or disconnecting from my life and the world around me.  For example, I couldn't go for a walk on a trail and actually see or experience the woods; instead I immediately went into my own head and desperately focused on work, or my todo list, or my anxieties and fears, or I just zoned out completely to the point that it felt like a dream - anything to avoid experiencing reality!

I often felt like the world was somehow unreal, or that my experience of it was incomplete.  I felt like a passenger in life rather than a participant - I was just along for the ride.  I sometimes felt like I like was half asleep and watching life go by on a screen rather than experiencing it.  I had times where I really, truly questioned reality:  'Am I in a dream?  a nightmare?  Am I already dead and living in hell, and I just don't know it?'

My sense of self and my identity was a total mess.
I often felt 'foggy', and like I was just going through the motions, or on auto-pilot, without any sense of my own existence as a person.  On the foggy days, I was completely emotionally numb - I never felt anything, whether good or bad, aside from hopelessness and occasional anxiety.  In some ways it felt like a case of 'depression as a coping mechanism' - if the only thing I could feel 99% of the time was pain and suffering, then better to feel nothing at all!

I had intense internal conflict due to various needs being at direct odds with one another; for example, the conflict between needing to express my feminine side and needing to feel safe in the closet.  The intense internal conflict also came with some wild swings in my taste in clothing and decorating especially.  For example, I bought curtains and loved them for a few days, then suddenly thought they were too feminine and felt repulsed.  I would have the memory of liking them, but I couldn't understand how I'd felt that way before when I hated them so much now!  Eventually, I'd end up reaching a level of acceptance for most things that I kept around long enough, even if they didn't seem to totally fit me all the time.

I was often very detached from my physical body.  The best way I can describe it is feeling like a floating consciousness with no physical form at all (assuming I was even aware of my consciousness at that point). I had days where I would keep bumping into things, because even though I saw them there, I had no real awareness of my own arms or legs or any of my body really, so it was surprising to bump into things!  I could see my arms and legs, and I knew logically that they were mine, but they didn't feel like mine.  I also hated mirrors because my reflection often didn't feel like my own - I don't mean that it felt like someone else's reflection, but more like it was just some phantom image with no basis in reality.

Thankfully, things have been getting better for me.

When I started estradiol for the HRT, the horrible depression that I'd been struggling with off and on for over 20 years was almost completely gone within 2-3 days, and it hasn't been back since!  Before that, I'd tried multiple anti-depressants, and I'd been through hundreds of hours of therapy over several years, and none of that came close to providing the level of relief that I got from the HRT!  I've also started having fewer issues with dissociation, but that's been a much more gradual process.  At 3 months in, I'm now at a place where the world feels 'real' more often than not, and my body feels like 'mine' more often than not, but I still have times of milder fog, and certain parts of my body still feel strange or foreign to me much of the time (mostly any distinctly male characteristics - but that's what hair removal and surgery are for ).  I'm also still struggling a fair bit with my sense of identity, and whether I'm a woman or maybe female-leaning non-binary, and just generally who I am and what it means to be myself.  Sorting all of that out will probably be one of the most difficult parts of the journey for me, but I am making progress on it, and that helps me feel better as well.

[Tara P]

I can relate to so much of the stuff that has been said here thanks for the interesting discussion.   

Unfortunately I've learned to do most of these things over the years too.  Like Kylo said it wasn't a conscious effort or anything for me either.  It was just the way I figured out how to deal with these feelings by trying to shut them out completely.  Being numb can seem preferable to constantly being anxious, worried, unsure, sad, and dysphoric.  I still sometimes think to myself that being numb is preferable but it becomes harder and harder for me to keep that up which is I guess why I'm here.

The strange thing to get used to after that is NOT being a shadow of yourself any more. Trying to let the authentic stuff come through, trying to get used to the idea of being "a real person", visible, and not a flat, compressed, suppressed version of yourself.

Yeah after years/decades of using these coping techniques it's really hard to not go back to them automatically.  Since dissociating became easier with time hopefully the reverse is also true. 

[Sno]

Yay, another classic thread, started by the ' Wolf...

Hmm. Where to begin.

A sense of detachment or estrangement from your own thoughts, feelings, or body: "I know I have feelings but I don't feel them"
- Feeling split into two parts, with one going through the motions of participating in the world and one observing quietly: "There is this body that walks around and somebody else just watches"
- Feeling as if you have an "unreal" or absent self: "I have no self"
- Experiencing the world as distant, dreamlike, foggy, lifeless, colorless, artificial, like a picture with no depth, or less than real
- Being absorbed in yourself and experiencing a compulsive self-scrutiny or extreme rumination
- Having an ongoing and coherent dialogue with yourself
- Feeling like a veil or glass wall separates you from the world
- Emotional or physical numbness, such as a feeling of having a head filled with cotton
- Lacking a sense of agency – feeling flat, robotic, dead, or like a "zombie"
- Inability to imagine things
- Being able to think clearly, but feeling as if some essential quality is lacking from your thoughts or experience of the world
- A sense of disconnectedness from life, impeding you from creative and open involvement with the world

- of course it's yes to all of the above - recent lessons have been that derealisation and depersonalisation are my 'goto' Mechanisms.

Sephira, images paint a thousand metaphors, but I'm so glad you found my portrait.

(Hugs)

Rowan

[Lisa]

When I started estradiol for the HRT, the horrible depression that I'd been struggling with off and on for over 20 years was almost completely gone within 2-3 days, and it hasn't been back since!  Before that, I'd tried multiple anti-depressants, and I'd been through hundreds of hours of therapy over several years, and none of that came close to providing the level of relief that I got from the HRT!  I've also started having fewer issues with dissociation, but that's been a much more gradual process.  At 3 months in, I'm now at a place where the world feels 'real' more often than not, and my body feels like 'mine' more often than not, but I still have times of milder fog, and certain parts of my body still feel strange or foreign to me much of the time (mostly any distinctly male characteristics - but that's what hair removal and surgery are for ).  I'm also still struggling a fair bit with my sense of identity, and whether I'm a woman or maybe female-leaning non-binary, and just generally who I am and what it means to be myself.  Sorting all of that out will probably be one of the most difficult parts of the journey for me, but I am making progress on it, and that helps me feel better as well.

Just an update from me as I've continued down the road of transitioning.

After another month or so of physical changes (and getting started on hair removal!), and a *lot* of progress socially in terms of coming out and being accepted, things have continued to improve for me.

I did have a few times where, for lack of a better way to explain it, I suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable, as if I'd been wearing a thick padded suit of armor my whole life, physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially.  The feeling of suddenly going around without it was a little scary at times, but also very freeing.  It was like I could actually really touch and feel the world for the first time in as long as I could remember and that was wonderful, but I also felt fragile and vulnerable, like suddenly realizing that any little thorn could hurt me and damage me.  For any given change, the feeling of being extra vulnerable resolved on its own after a few days, and being 'armor free' became my new and much happier normal.

The more I continue to change physically, and the more those around me accept me socially as a woman, the more I continue to feel like my sense of self is more stable and more complete; even when I'm not visibly presenting as female, there's far less divide now between my public self and my private self, and that feels very reassuring.  My wondering about being non-binary has also decreased significantly, as has the amount of time when I feel disconnected from my gender, though neither are 100% gone yet.

My 'girl voice' still feels a little unnatural, like I'm deliberately changing it, which makes sense because I am,   but hopefully that becomes more normal with time.  My feminine posture and mannerisms and just the way I express myself socially though feel very natural and automatic now, and I tend to do them without thinking even around people I'm not out to!  That's such a huge change from how much I just held back on overall expressiveness and engagement with others for so many years, and it feels really, really nice!

I guess it just feels more and more like gender dysphoria was at least one of the major causes, and potentially the only major cause, of my dissociation coping strategies and the more comfortable I feel just being my whole (and girly!) self, the more in touch with myself and the world around me I feel.

[Tara P]

It's great that transitioning has helped you so much in feeling like you can show much more of yourself to others.  Hopefully things will just get easier and easier the more you practice this stuff too and the further along in your transition you get.     It's probably a good sign you are already doing some stuff automatically without thinking about it too.

Voice training is a tough slow process for most people I think so don't worry too much if it doesn't feel 100% right just yet.

[Sarahthenerd]

I disassociate somewhat frequently, sometimes I'm not aware of it. I can't be sure what the underlying cause is but there are multiple possibilities in my case. I have been diagnosed with the usual depression, anxiety, and sleeping disorders along with cptsd and GD. And maybe others. I went a long time without understanding that I was even ptsd or trans* Needless to say it's a daily thing I have to deal with. Dissociation is a natural process to help protect one self. But the longer it continues untreated the longer and harder it is to treat, and the worse it gets. It interrupts when im talking to people, by myself reading, driving, using power tools, or even in bed with my SO. The symptoms were not recognized when I was in grade school. (And that is for another thread) And go back 30 years give or take. The impact can be debilitating.

I would caution anyone thinking of it as a way to cope with anything from trying. Keep in mind this is different from day dreaming. Physical injuries can happen during dissociation and because of it.

As the usual advice goes.... therapy, therapy, therapy.

And I wish it was more common that men would acknowledge they can be trauma victims too, and there was less stigma in seeking treatment(No rant I promise.)

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