I'm Too Young to Lose My Car in the Parking Lot: except I did. Too bad my hyper-alertness didn't remember where I parked.

Today the lights were too bright.  The noise was too harsh.  I couldn't put together one of my child's toys by following the picture directions.  The ability to concentrate and hold on to thoughts was diminished.  It was all about being overloaded.  I went shopping today.  By the time I finished at the third store I was finished.  Too many people.  Too much everything.  The cashier said something to me three times and I couldn't understand what he meant.  Another customer repeated it to me in a simpler way and used fewer words.  I replied with some sort of response back that I hope made sense.  I'm not sure if it did.  The cashier looked at me oddly, but still tried to carry on a conversation.  I think I had one semi intelligent sentence.  He kept looking at me strangely.  I wonder if he knows me from somewhere, or if maybe he thought I was high or drunk. 

I left the store and looked for my vehicle.  I couldn't find it for quite a while.  I think I went up and down half of the aisles at Wal-mart looking for it. 

Today was a mix of dissociation and being hyper-alert.  Hence my inability to find where I parked.  The headache and tiredness came from just being alive today.  It's a different kind of tired.  It's being wore out from the inside out.  I may be doing a decent job numbing my pain, but I haven't been able to turn off everything else yet.  I'm still dissociating and having PTSD symptoms.  It's hard to get all areas shut down at the same time.  Like right now as I'm typing my eyes are doing funny things and going all blurry and not letting me focus.

New Experiences in Dissociation and Friendship

Some more on dissociation.  I haven't been having much of a problem with it for the last few months even though I've been in church and fully engaged in listening and participating in the services.  A few blips here and there at church, but nothing I wasn't able to hide due to how the service is structured.  I may sit down or get up a bit later than everyone else or blank out for most of a song but it has been manageable.

One thing I've never done, up until last Monday, is to purposefully fight the entire time to not dissociate without my fighting it off method to be loudly arguing and slamming doors.  I was at a friends house, a very good friend who didn't freak out that I was shaking with cold in front of a fire and had strange things going on with my eyes.  She got me a blanket and a shawl and kept talking to help keep me in the here instead of drifting off to safety.  I think I fought so much to stay "here" because I knew I was completely safe, and that's my guess as to why I didn't just drift off.  I actually had blurred vision and could barely see and my eyes felt stretchy and like I needed to shove them back into my eye sockets.  I don't know how long I shivered in front of her fire wrapped up in blankets listening to her talk and talking some myself too.  My speech was also messed up. 

That was another first time event; talking while in the warp speed mode of dissociation.  If you have watched much Star Trek then you will have likely seen the Enterprise going into warp speed.  Somewhere along the way I saw an episode where time was distorted and someone got stuck in an alternate time.  Just imagine the effect on yourself if part of you is at warp speed and the rest of you is at half impulse.  It's a major disconnect and communication between the two parts of you is greatly distorted.

I'm not positive that my default to dissociate under stress is something that will go away, but the longer I am in a place of safety and have close friends that I could see myself wrapped up in their living room fighting to stay in the moment, the less I actually do dissociate.  Of course the exceptions are when something new gets opened up that has been buried for most of my life.  It was such a topic that spiraled me almost back to how I was coping about a year and a half ago. 

Friends are of all different sorts.  I am blessed with growing, face to face, local friends that in some small ways know my story.  I also have some friends from my childhood that remember who the 6th grade teacher was.  They are still my friends and even though we don't see each other, we maintain some connection.  Thank God for facebook and phones!  Other friends are no longer local to me; I moved or they moved, yet I can call and we are instantly reconnected.  Strangest of all are the friendships which came through facebook and turned into something real.  These last couple of weeks have been like friendship growth on overload.  What is completely amazing to me is that these are friends who have been able to hear my story and more categories of it than anyone else; they even beat out my incredible pastor who in the last two years has brought me from an incoherent mess to a point of beginning to thrive.

I've been a good friend to many people, but I am in awe of these two ladies who are able to be good friends to me even though they know so much of my story.  It is an unexpected gift at a time when I really am in need of it.

Dissociating Doesn't Have to be Forever. Hope is Real.

I have some goals I'd like to meet, and counseling is helping me move towards those goals.  One fairly simple sounding one is to be able to read the Bible without being triggered, having flashbacks or dissociating.  That's not an easy thing for me.  I can't just turn all that off.  The ways I have to turn it off are to shut emotions down again and go into robot mode, or to not read the Bible.   I can listen to it being read in church, and it's now only occasionally a problem.  When I read it or someone reads it to me personally then it becomes some sort of a weapon aimed at me.  (And it's not the sword of the spirit bringing much needed conviction to my life.) 

My pastor read Matthew 15:10-20 to me in our last counseling session.  He thought it would be a comfort to me; instead it was a major trigger and I zoned in and out and had flashbacks too.  It was really weird to have so much going on in my mind and yet a kind of nothingness going on at the same time.  I was able to listen and hear what he was saying pretty well, considering.  I learned something surprising, the flashbacks and all the other involuntary things are not "my" evil coming out of me or a lack of applying Philippians 4:8 properly(think on those things that are lovely etc).  It is a result of evil done TO me.  Along with this idea that I think has finally sunk in, came the statement.  "You can't separate your body from the rest of yourself."  That surprised me.  For the last two years I have been reconnecting and it has been a rough transition.  I have kept separated for most of my life, but I know it's not a good long term solution.

From the time I was young I would go into a dark little room in the corner of my mind until it was safe to come out.  Most of the time the room was dark and my "inside me" would just curl up there for a while.  Other times it was a whole nother beautiful world where I was the hero and I was surrounded by friends who were family to me.  I didn't dare go there too often because I think it made me smile or something that made things worse for the "outside me", and when that happened I would be jolted back to the outside.

As a child, Spock was my favorite Star Trek character.  I studied him nightly with every episode.  I practiced in the mirror complete facial control of emotions and ultimately successfully suppressed involuntary emotional responses.  It took practice, but I was motivated.  This complete emotion control was necessary to shorten the beatings and lectures at home.  A lecture doesn't sound bad, but it is when you have to stand perfectly still, but not too still, and have the correct facial expression at all times for 45 minutes or more.  If my stance shifted or my expression wasn't correct; then I would get another spanking for the "offence" I was being lectured for.  If I was lucky I would only get three sets of "spankings".  You would think I would be quite good at standing still by the end of 6th grade, since that was one of his favorite tortures.  Making me stand facing the wall for the 45 minute recess while he told me what I had to do to get off the wall.  Talk about controlling my facial expressions and just leaving my body.  I was good at it.

As a teen I added in Data from The Next Generation to my studies.  I didn't do so well with modeling Data.  He wasn't inconsistent enough, but it was still helpful.  For most of my life I've done this thing called dissociation, but didn't know the name for it until this past year.  Dissociating is what allowed me to stay sane and function.  This separation is my default and that's why I dissociate so easily, it removes me from what causes me pain.  It separates "me" from my body and mind.  At this point it is no longer a help.  It has become a hindrance and gets in the way of comprehending truth, dealing with current events in life, or being able to read the Bible.  Increasingly I am gaining hope that I can relearn everything, and be whole again.  Someday the old tapes will be completely destroyed and new ones in place.  Right now the old ones are being overwritten, but they still leak through pretty strongly.  What's awesome is that I recognize when garbage leaks through, or someone else recognizes it; and I am in a place where God is busy writing over the old tapes through friends, sacraments at church, Psalm singing and my pastors.  

Psalm 121:1

I lift up my eyes to the hills. 

From where does my help come from?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

The Lord has sent help and a whole lot of it.  I may not be able to look at v7 right now without problems, but someday maybe I can.