lucid and departed

dpdr/vent (side)blog | I'm an adult but this is an all-ages blog | everything is fine to rb unless it says otherwise | don't follow unless you have some sort of dissociation disorder (self dx'ed is fine!) | dni terfs, promote eating disorders (aka have them in your bio!!!) | edits are mine, any pics that aren't are from unsplash | I'll make an about page eventually

[existing-in-nonexistence]

"you know I value friendships as much if not more than romantic relationships/I don't feel the same way about you but I promise that doesn't mean I care about you any less"

THEN WHY DON'T YOU WANT TO LIVE TOGETHER 😭😭😭 YOU JUST WANNA LIVE W YOUR PARTNER 😭😭😭 I thought I meant just as much to you 🥺 I'd gladly live w both of you but I guess you don't want that anymore, if you ever truly did.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

What a wretched feeling to be jealous of a gameeeeee for the SECOND time in my life. It keeps taking people away from me and I just feel so left behind bc I'm bad at keeping track of everything so I feel extremely anxious when playing it so even if I DID get the chance to join them I wouldn't/couldn't. WHYYYY do I have to be jealous of fucking dungeons and dragons.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

The video game with a limited-time mission won't load. Nobody online is helping me figure out what's happening. My friend didn't get me something I asked for because he couldn't remember specifics. Nor did he get the direct info about the thing because he waited until the last minute to check them out anyway.

I feel like trying to shove a big rock in my mouth and breaking all my teeth on it.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

who'd have thought leaving my main source of debilitating stress behind would cause a lot of *gestures vaguely at my other posts* to die down. anyway dropping out of college is okay and good and you should never be ashamed to change your life path to accommodate your mental health

[existing-in-nonexistence]

I feel like I shouldn't think that all drugs could be classified as dissociatives/have dissociative qualities

[existing-in-nonexistence]

Wow I tried to join a friend's minecraft server but I've literally never played survival mode before and it SUPER strongly activated my rsd what the fuck

[existing-in-nonexistence]

Found out about SCT/CDHS. That explains uhhh a lot

[greelin]

“i don’t understand how you just get so much stuff done under pressure and like don’t freak out” i just go into autopilot bro like i genuinely do not know what happens in high volume situations. i let my body deal with that shit. not for me

[greelin]

if you completely block off a whole portion of your mind you’ll find that it is actually quite peaceful and you can move very fast, almost ungodly so, and achieve a lot while feeling absolutely nothing

[greelin]

i have been informed that this is not how normal people process and handle stress.… . dam that shit’s crazy. sorry y’all have to deal with it in like a rational healthy way

[findingfeather]

So for the record as both a long-term user of this feature and someone who had what I’m about to talk about happen to her: 

If you rely on this too much you are at ever increasing risk of it not working anymore, very abruptly, at a really horribly inconvenient time. 

You are also at risk of it working less and less over time when you have no other coping mechanisms in place. 

And finally even if it continue to work, you are doing continual damage to your ability to handle non-crisis situations! And increasing the chance that you will start unconsciously turning everything into a crisis. 

All three of these options are Sub-Optimal, to say the least. 

(this is because this method is essentially harnessing the dissociative capacity of the brain for moments of extreme trauma more or less At Will except the will involved amounts to convincing your amygdala to let go of the right juices by convincing it that the tiger is in fact right there. It can be a superpower! But it’s also, well. Risky. If you find yourself literally doing it for everything, be aware that it’s kind of like running an engine at max at all times without ever really replenishing the oil. Eventually you will start burning shit.) 

[punkinspicelattes]

I think there’s potentially one more option that occurs if you’re *especially* good at this, and it’s that your threshold for “crisis” unconsciously becomes higher and higher.

Oh, you wrote that paper in a week no problem? Now it’s not a crisis until three days before.

That worked okay? Now it’s not a crisis until the day before.

That worked out too? Hey, now the crisis point isn’t until *the day of*.

This is how I ended up writing a 30 page PhD level literature review in 12 hours—and presenting on it the next day—during finals week. And you know what? That sucked! It almost just didn’t happen!

Because at some point, your brain is going to just believe nothing is a crisis anymore. It fails to recognize pain. And pain is important, because it’s a sign that something has gone deeply, deeply wrong. If you believe that nothing is a crisis, *you will not know you’re in a crisis situation until you’ve fallen off the cliff of what is possible*. You will not recognize the pressure you’re under until it’s crushing you, and possibly not even then.

And this doesn’t just affect your work or school; you don’t recognize these signs in your relationships either, and it primes you to be able to take whatever others may do to you. It’s not even that it lowers your self esteem and makes you believe that you deserve it—you literally just cannot recognize when situations are harmful anymore. Have you ever told someone a “funny” story from childhood and they look at you and reply “holy shit, I’m sorry you went through that?” Yeah, that’s your whole life now.

If this sounds dire, it’s because it is. Do NOT let yourself get to this point if you can.

[findingfeather]

Excellent addition.

[eminems-skittles]

“my child is completely fine”

your child relates a little too much to “that funny feeling” by bo burnham

[existing-in-nonexistence]

Yeah! I am a tiny person with tiny hands because growth is weird in my family and they can fit in the palm of my hand!

how small!! i love them

[existing-in-nonexistence]

They actually live up high too! I’ve seen them at my local beaches before!

that's so cool! i'd love to see them in person

[existing-in-nonexistence]

You made a post about jellyfish=disassociation mascot and although it is not technically a jellyfish I offer these guys

Comb Jellies, they turn rainbow because they reflect light and in general are just cool

oooo very cool!! i love those deep-sea reflective creatures, they're all so otherwordly

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

Kill Manual, Cassandra Troyan 

[ID: I want an experience that is not consuming. Body out of body out of time out of feeling.]

[existing-in-nonexistence]

dissociative amnesia sucks. I hate it so much. Like where did I put the thing I just had in my hand when I stopped thinking about it for two seconds? Also what did I eat yesterday? Did I eat yesterday? What day is it today? I'm in a brainfog. How many days has it been? I blinked and exactly 10 minutes passed. I blinked again and another perfect 10. Another. Now I blink and the clock still says the same. Did 24 seconds or 24 hours pass? I'm not entirely sure. I've been sitting here for two hours and all I know is my arm hurts and it won't stop but every time I think about it I lose another perfect 10 minutes. Last week went by so fast. I remember none of it. How did I end up at the store I don't remember driving here. How did I get home? I have a bag of things next to me. Did I really just go to the store and back? Or is the bag not real and when I touch it it just dissolves? Is the reason time is weird because I'm still dreaming? Time is the wind and I'm a hand sticking out of a car window going 15 over the limit and trying to grab it, claw at it to try to slow it down.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

I really hope you don't mind me posting these bc I just... It's so oddly specific but the checking the clock and the "did I just imagine it was light out" just hit so home for me ;-;

[existing-in-nonexistence]

My tag ramblings in the last post maxed out the tag limit whoops but anyway yeah!! I'm not actively angry at the people who Made Me Like This™️ but I sure as hell don't forgive them! Like I genuinely don't care what they're doing nowadays and I hope they've changed for the better but they knew they were being awful in the moment! And still they chose to hurt me, knowing just how harmful it was. So no, I will not be forgiving them.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

It's so strange, how I always feel like an outsider. I know it's the trauma and as long as I remember that it's relatively easy to rationalize it but still. I can be somewhere with friends and even if they told me unprompted that they're glad I'm with them, I feel like they'd rather me not be around. I can hold a long heartfelt conversation with someone and if they're not one of my absolute closest friends (like 3 people fit that) I will still assume afterwards that they were only talking to me out of politeness. I don't know what I'd call this but good god I hate it. I hate the people that made me this way. I hate how hard it is to feel comfortable and secure around other people, and in my friendship with them.

[existing-in-nonexistence]

I was pretty sick in the first couple weeks of April and when I'm physically uncomfortable/in pain w no way to alleviate it I dissociate (depersonalize) REAL hard. A check to see if I was improving in my sickness was to look at my hands and see how unfamiliar they still looked.