I am starting to emerge from a dissociation episode that hit me a few days ago. The first one I have had in quite a while.
During this episode, I shut down and self-isolated. I didn’t care to interact with anyone, and I just zoned out and felt really exhausted. I didn’t even want to write or draw, two things that I have found enjoyable as of late. I guess you could say I went into hibernation mode. This usually happens if I am triggered or I get overwhelmed emotionally and dysregulated. For the last couple of weeks, my sleeping was being interrupted, and I was having a lot of crazy bad dreams. I was also getting restless and irritable. I now recognize that this was all warning signs and my body’s way of letting me know what was about to happen.
The body keeps the score.
Even though I am feeling better, I am still slightly tired, and my brain is a bit—as I like to call it—gooey. Where it is not firing on all cylinders. I am also still feeling it in my body, as tension had built up in my neck the past week and it has caused me some discomfort. It really is true when they say the body keeps the score in everything to do with trauma.
Making space for myself and naming my feelings is proving to be the way for me to get to the other side. It helped that I took myself to the beach for a bit yesterday, even though the weather wasn’t the best day for it and it was cold. Just being by the ocean helped. It allowed me to get centered and absorb what was going on inside my head without all the chaos that takes place in the city on any given day.
The more I practice digging down into my feelings and recognizing what’s happening inside of my head, the easier it is getting. Eventually all my stressors were processed, and I slowly got back to being a human being. Or as close to being a human as I can be at the moment.
Today is a new day
Because I am now able to notice why, when I dissociate, it allows me to cope better than I used to. I have also noticed that these episodes are happening less, which is a good thing. It tells me that all the work I am putting in to healing is working, and as I work through my past traumas and gain skills to manage the dissociation and flashbacks, it is giving me a sense of taking back control.
So, I am going to take today as it comes. I’m going to go easy on myself and not go into a shame spiral of feeling bad that I disassociated and know that being self-aware that this comes with territory of having cPTSD is all a step in the right direction.