Emotional Recovery #1 - Progress

I am dissociative. It comes from my Bipolar disorder, anxiety, and what I believe to be some sort of trauma from my previous relationship. It lasted right at a year, we lived together for the majority of it. I was the primary provider for financial stability, household organization and cleanliness (including her), emotional support, and overall relationship security and progression through difficult times. I willingly put myself into that relationship and situation, believing it was the perfect opportunity to a) get laid and b) get into a relationship; within a month after dating, I can also add c) make something long term, this was because she moved in with me.

What I feel deeply affected me the most is how I now feel towards intimacy. I am exceedingly uncomfortable with physical touch towards females and dominantly feminine people. While I push through minor acts (such as laying your hand on someone to get their attention, handshakes, and hugs) even with total consent, I still feel deeply ashamed and disgusted at myself for it. For a while, hugs were extremely uncomfortable. To an extent, they still are but I’m okay with them now. As of right now, there are only two feminine people excluding family members who I am fully comfortable with hugging.
One is a friends wife who lives a very actively sexual lifestyle who, although initially made me uncomfortable for reasons I’ll dig into at another time, came to be a source of emotional comfort and was really my first platonic friend. Still is after almost two years. The other is someone I haven’t known very long but instantly became close friends with. On first meeting her, I did not think much of them at first as we met through a mutual friend and it was a more business orientated interaction. However, they quickly became a closer friend to me than the mutual friend we met through and have since provided me with what I feel is a new basis for me to find comfort and security in myself. I’m more comfortable now with hugging than I have been in well over a year, although it is still a struggle.

Even right now as I try to gather my thoughts on what I feel I need to discuss next my mind is easily flooded with varying memories of my time in my recent relationship crossed with my previous relationships crossed with times I tried to pursue intimacy with people over the last year (which has been possibly the most psychologically draining time of my life, by no faults other than my own). Somewhere in the middle of all this whirlwind, there is a solution I feel like. Or at least, I like to hope that there is. Something that would just allow me to process everything all at once and come to a solution which will set me back on true sanity. The ugly truth about mental health is there is no simple and easy solution to any problem, no matter how hard we look or how many pills we take or how many sessions we have Inside the office with a shrink or outside your home with friends. All we can ever do is make progress.

Diagnosed Bi-Polar Manic Depressive with Anxiety and underlying Trauma. That’s what it says on paper. But earlier, after some reflection, research, and consultation I’m certain that I have developed Dissociation from the cocktail mixture previously mentioned. There have been moments where I stop what I’m doing and I just go blank for a few moments until I just snap back to cognitive thinking, many times a month in the last year. Alongside this, at least three times I can think of in the same year I have completely detached from reality. I wake up and nothing seems real, the people I interact with seem imaginary, and there’s just nothing on my mind. No bad thoughts, no good thoughts, just mindless observation and muscle memory. It wasn’t until today that I finally questioned what this state of mind was, assuming it was just some sort of wave of heavy depression but it in fact is not.

Dissociative Detachment. A psychological defense mechanism in response to stress, trauma, and feeling overwhelmed often associated with Bipolar disorder and Trauma. Common symptoms include Depersonalization, Derealization, Emotional Numbness, Memory Gaps, Identity Confusion or Alteration, Time Distortion, Out-of-body Experiences, Difficulty Concentrating, Detached Physical Sensations, and Reduced response to external stimuli. Of the ten common symptoms, I noted that I regularly suffer from nine of them. I’m no professional, I can’t diagnose myself, but the writing is on the wall. Something that really sticks out to me is the Identity Confusion or Alteration which entails that an individual suffering from Bipolar disorder can develop multiple versions of oneself or even other identities. I may have to also accept that this has also happened to me. There are times where I have no explanation or recollection for saying or doing things.

In my lifetime thus far there has only been a handful of people who have seen these extreme differentials of me and even fewer have witnessed the subtle transitions that move me from one variation to another. This is taken from accounts of the people who saw it happen. I cannot recollect all of these instances, but there are some that resurface when the topic comes up. As I sit here reflecting in real time while I write this, I’m beginning to wonder if my issues surrounding intimacy are somehow tied to the Dissociative symptoms. I am very unsure. And I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of what I will have to deal with if my suspicions (or are they delusions?) are indeed true. As far as I have come, I know that I’m going to be dealing with more. But it’s progress.

This will be my therapy. Or at least part of it. Maybe I’ll do more than one, maybe this will be the only one, but regardless it’s progress. Admitting when you’re wrong, accepting when you may have issues, telling someone else what’s going on in your life, being upfront with how you’re feeling, all of it is progress.