(Content warning – yet more mental health navel gazing, mention of roleplaying sexual assault)
Dissociation is something that in reflection I’ve always been trying to avoid, things that ground me are things that I enjoy doing and they’re largely physical. I’ve always struggled not to paint with my fingers and to wear gloves when I’m gardening or dyeing my hair.
Chronic fatigue has meant my concentration gets really shot, more so than my baseline ADHD, and when I get really tired I hurt and then sweet dissociation comes along to whisk me out of it. I had not noticed how bad it had got. The background stress, which honestly is what I’m assuming is responsible for the cortisol rather than there being something physically wrong, has just meant that I’ve been dissociating possibly more or at the very least as much as I did as a kid. Honestly, I hadn’t noticed what was happening and that’s my main concern.
Anchoring through physical activity and touch is always my preference but as that has become less possible I haven’t been as solid at replacing it as I could have been. The breathing exercises are a good start point, so is the writing every day, but I need to secure these habits before I build more. Everything still feels very precarious.
There was a point last year where I literally couldn’t remember what kind of porn I liked, like the information had just floated out of my brain. That’s such a core part of me but it was information that just vanished and sure there’s a level to emotionally significant information is treated the same way by ADHD brains but that’s way more than me forgetting to put empty milk bottles out. When doing things with people felt so like home because I had just stopped doing me things as part of my regular life that should have been some kind of warning to me that my regular life had become stress interspersed with dissociation but I just did not see it.
I suppose forewarned is now forearmed but the idea that I got so lost between the pain and the stress that parts of me went missing is terrifying. Honestly I am not sure that all of me came back yet.