Nurtured Words

Common enough until the whole self fractures

Hello my lovelies,

I figured it was time for me to go a bit more into an element of my mental illness: dissociation. This is not an easier post to write, it is very personal and a lot of people may not fully understand, but I hope this can be of use for even just one person.

What is dissociation?

According to Mind, “dissociation is one way the mind copes with too much stress, such as during a traumatic event.” It can come in the form of, “having difficulty remembering personal information.” You can also feel, “detached or separate from the world around you, see the world as ‘lifeless’ or ‘foggy’, feel like you’re seeing the world through a pane of glass or feel as if you are losing control to ‘someone else’”.

There are many forms of dissociation, anyone can experience it, like when on autopilot. The notion is that as the self fractures we lose more memory or get stuck into flashbacks.

My experiences are known as identity alteration and I have been diagnosed with the disorder of dissociative amnesia. For my identity, when my mind ‘snapped’ due to trauma as a child, a whole new woman who eventually named herself Medusa grew. She would, and still does, take over. She speaks to my fiancé and completes sometimes self harming acts. I have no control, I simply do not exist.

The more prevalent aspect is my amnesia. I lose all ‘autobiographical’ information. In essence, I forget all my life. As time is going on, I am forgetting my trauma, I know the memories were once there but now I’m not able to recall. Each day I have to plan my day so I remember what I accomplished. It is like being blackout drunk. I have no other way of describing it.

There is so much stigma. These conditions are under-researched, completely misunderstood and almost taboo. It is something we just don’t talk about. I only started feeling more comfortable last April. There are too many notions to try and tackle, but like every other illness, it is part of us but do not reduce us to that label alone.

Kindly, Leanne x