Thread: Questions about Lucid Dreaming and trauma?

Originally Posted by svance22

I feel I relate to your feeling of dissociation, and sometimes, I feel that "reality" isn't real, and like i'm "stuck" somewhere.. I feel sometimes, and had nightmares, where I believed my dream was an alternate reality, and that I would be stuck in that place, unable to wake and come back to real "reality"
I'm very interested in hearing about your experience with dissocoiation, because I've never met any one who understood what i was feeling, but i think that you would understand..

Certain levels of dissociation are normal with everyone, then there are dissociative disorders, these are on a spectrum and I sit at the higher end of that spectrum. My dissociation could read from a symptoms list, it's almost disconcertingly accurate, here are some of the main ways I experience it on a standard level.

Dissociation makes me feel detached and the things I experience from dissociation vary from being on autopilot for much of what I do, staring of into the distance completely unable to move my stare, feeling like I'm trapped between the two worlds and as a result a part of and also not a part of either of them, I can't feel pain, everything is less colourful, I lose hours and hours on end on a daily basis, I can't remember getting dressed or sometimes going out (I ended up 200 miles away on a train once when I suddenly came aware, my brain was safely taking me to a friends but aaaaggh!) but I am and that's always a surprise, I can't connect the dots of my own memory and I've ceased to exist, like I'm turned off in a very literal sense or tuned into the wrong radio station - actually it's more like I'm tuned into white noise and everyone else has a station

Depersonalisation makes me feel like I'm watching myself do things but have no control over whatever it is that I'm doing, other times I feel as if I'm living someone else's life except I know that's not the case, but it doesn't feel like it's me. It feels like the world has become vague/hazy - I just can't grab hold of anything, nothing makes sense, it's kind of dreamlike and less real, and everything seems to be lacking significance. Also recognitions of my own sense of self become less stable and it's really difficult to remember every day things or anything linearly.

Derealisation is similar but rather than self directed, they are world directed. The world feels alien like I'm looking through a camera, mild fisheye lens, fog, or in more extreme cases through binoculars that are round the wrong way (but instead of blackness, its like a weird filmy fogginess). For me I get this more when I'm panicked and sometimes it seems like the walls or floor are rippling, that the floor is going to fall away. I'm scared and the more scared I get the worse it gets.

All in all incredibly difficult to live with and on top of all of that I'm so filled with self-doubt that even though I know I'm awake I can't really trust myself to believe anything I think which means I'm incredibly confused all the time. I would love to reduce the nightmares but really I don't know if the possibility of a good thing is worth the risk of adding yet another bad thing - my sleep bad as it is, is better than being awake because I'm so tired and even if I wake up, I wake tired, at least mostly I don't remember my nightmares or not for too long, they sort of fade, they're just constant. I'm concerned that by making them more real that I not only risking making my sleep more terrifying than it already is, but add another level of confusion to my awake life too. I think I do want to be able to LD but only if I know I can do it safely and it will help, but I'm too confused. At the moment maybe I just need to wait and some time longer thinking about it.

Originally Posted by KasCanFly

Certain levels of dissociation are normal with everyone, then there are dissociative disorders, these are on a spectrum and I sit at the higher end of that spectrum. My dissociation could read from a symptoms list, it's almost disconcertingly accurate, here are some of the main ways I experience it on a standard level.

Dissociation makes me feel detached and the things I experience from dissociation vary from being on autopilot for much of what I do, staring of into the distance completely unable to move my stare, feeling like I'm trapped between the two worlds and as a result a part of and also not a part of either of them..

Depersonalisation makes me feel like I'm watching myself do things but have no control over whatever it is that I'm doing, other times I feel as if I'm living someone else's life except I know that's not the case, but it doesn't feel like it's me. It feels like the world has become vague/hazy - I just can't grab hold of anything, nothing makes sense, it's kind of dreamlike and less real, and everything seems to be lacking significance. Also recognitions of my own sense of self become less stable and it's really difficult to remember every day things or anything linearly.

Derealisation is similar but rather than self directed, they are world directed. The world feels alien like I'm looking through a camera, mild fisheye lens, fog, or in more extreme cases through binoculars that are round the wrong way (but instead of blackness, its like a weird filmy fogginess). For me I get this more when I'm panicked and sometimes it seems like the walls or floor are rippling, that the floor is going to fall away. I'm scared and the more scared I get the worse it gets.

I can relate very much to this.. the best way i've been able to explain it is that i feel like im "not from here" like "im trapped in a body in a world im not a part of"..but its so hard to explain to someone who never felt that way. its nice to know that i'm not the only one. lol

sorry to hear your inability to remember things, or with the incident with the train, scary.. the only thing like that with me is that when im driving, i suddenly realize that im ten minutes past my destination, and have to turn around, or i end up driving to somewhere i wasnt originally planning on going, like my car just wants to go to acme all the time.lol