You may spend much of your time in a fog or distracting yourself with daydreams. You may have a pattern of spending a lot of time avoiding real life by being on the internet, reading books to escape, or zoning out in front of the television. You may have been told that you sometimes don’t seem ‘fully present’ and people in your life ask you to pay more attention to them. You may feel strange because sometimes you don’t remember conversations with friends or loved ones, and you just chalk it up to ‘bad memory’.
You might be experiencing a form of dissociation. All people dissociate to some degree. Almost everyone has had the experience of driving (or riding) somewhere familiar and getting there and not remembering the trip. Dissociation can be a form of protection from past negative experiences or trauma. The past traumatic event might be something related to childhood, or a single event like a car accident. Experiences like physical or sexual abuse or repeated hard experiences in childhood, especially young childhood can lead to higher levels of dissociation.
If you feel this describes you, you may be an excellent candidate for EMDR and therapy may be very helpful for you. This is my favorite area of therapy to work in and I have had such great experiences working with folks who dissociate.
EMDR helps reset the brain and in the process of preparing for reprocessing, we spend a lot of time figuring out positive coping skills and developing resources to help you come back into your body and be more present in the times of your life where it is safe to do so.
Healing is possible. You deserve to feel better. I look forward to hearing from you and helping you further along your journey toward Healing Self.
If you are in crisis or experiencing high levels of depression or feeling suicidal right now and need someone to talk to 24-7, please call or text 988 or visit the website at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ for chat options.