BPD Symptoms: Dissociation

hello everyone and welcome back to my channel for those of you who are new here welcome my name is kayla and i make videos about all things bpd now for those of you who have been around with me for the past year you know that i have a very cute and awesome cat named tuna well recently we just added a new addition to the family so welcome mojo so he will be with us from now on him and tuna are not the best of friends yet but i will keep you guys posted on that situation right mojo say hello now as you may have guessed it from the title of this video today we're going to be addressing the ninth and final bpd symptoms the one relating to dissociation and stress related paranoia it's kind of crazy to think that we've already gone through all the nine symptoms this has been a very interesting year and i've had so much fun getting to know all of you over the past year so just thank you for your engagement thank you for being present and thank you for always being here sharing your time with me on mondays now you're probably familiar with this feeling of being zoned out the best way i could describe this is when you're driving somewhere and next thing you know you've arrived at your destination and you don't even know how you got there this is kind of what it feels like to dissociate now dissociation is very common up to 75 to 80 percent of those who have bpd experience this symptom at one point or another the association though it's important to know that it's not just specific to bpd we also see this in things like ptsd believe it or not but dissociation is actually an adaptive function this is part of our ingrained system so it's there to help us cope with stressful situations and when you think about it this actually makes sense if you're faced with a situation that is highly stressful or triggering dissociating from it can actually help to lower anxiety fear and shame and this is beneficial short term of course we know that long term dissociation does not work because it's a form of avoidance it's a form of escaping the situations that we're dealing with but please know that at some point whether you started dissociating as a young child when you were in a very invalidating environment and you couldn't comprehend why maybe your parents were kind to you one moment and unkind to you the next dissociation makes complete sense it it makes sense especially with bpd with a history of trauma this makes sense it's just not the most adaptive thing that we can be doing when we're faced with difficulties so now that we have a general sense of why dissociation happens let's take a moment to really explore what dissociation looks like so that you can better identify it in yourself when it's happening so the first thing we're going to address is memory loss this is a big one this can happen for a short period of time a long period of time it's really individual to you it's unique i often get comments asking for different videos that i put out well can i experience this this way can it be mixed of different things yes so please know that your bpd experience is unique to you every single one of you are different the way that you experience the symptoms are different okay so know that even if you've never dissociated that's okay you don't need to have all nine symptoms to really be diagnosed with bpd the second distinctive component of dissociation is something known as depersonalization okay so this is a feeling from feeling detached from yourself feeling detached from your parts of your body from your emotions some of you and i've heard this from from different folks who do happy pd it's almost like looking in the mirror you're seeing yourself and you don't recognize yourself this is this feeling of feeling really numb so personally i know that when i'm in situations that are highly triggering to me so when someone is raising their voice on me or yelling at me or conflict sometimes in general when they pass my threshold of tolerance i do tend to dissociate and what will happen is i feel nothing i'm very disconnected from my emotions and i feel numb and this is the zombie mode that i go into this is part of this depersonalization relating to this is something called derealization okay so once again these are components of dissociation so we have depersonalization which is being detached from yourself and derealization is being detached from your surroundings from your environment or people that are familiar to you you might not recognize them anymore okay so oftentimes this is something i hear a lot is when folks who have bpd dissociate and they tend more towards this derealization component they might have tunnel vision meaning that it's very narrow they don't really notice their surroundings colors might actually look different so the way that your eyes perceive the world actually changes which is really interesting when you think about it but if you're experiencing some of these symptoms just know that this is part and a common experience of dissociation and the two last components so first we have identity confusion so not knowing who you are what you want in life so kind of losing sense of yourself as a person we also have identity alterations so almost feeling like you have different personalities and you don't really have control over those personalities people in your environment might actually notice that you're acting different so you might maybe speak a bit differently you might have a different mood altogether different how the way that you present yourself okay so we have the sense of not knowing who we are and we can also have the sense of having altered personalities instead of being one whole person it's almost like we become fragmented when we dissociate okay so that's essentially the main components that we see in the association you'll notice that they're all very different but similar at the same time and so if you're experiencing dissociation in a certain way and someone else is experiencing it in another way just know that you're not faulty your experience is your experience and every single one of you who has bpd will experience symptoms in a different way so this actually leads me to my next point is if we're experiencing this symptom what can we do about it so how can we help with dissociation the first thing i always recommend is to practice grounding exercises using your five senses this is something that i often tell my therapy clients to do so finding based on your five senses so one thing that you can touch one thing that you can see smell taste and hear working through that cycle and as many times as you need to feel grounded something else that you can do relating to grounding exercises is cold therapy i talk about this all the time just because this really really works hopping in a freezing cold shower for 30 seconds to a minute can be enough to just shock your system to help you feel more grounded more based in reality often times also when we're dissociating we want to bring our attention to the external physical world okay especially if we're experiencing things like derealization when we're not recognizing our environment grounding yourself in the here and now which is the opposite of dissociation dissociation you're trying to escape from the here now can be really really important in helping you stop this okay something else another grounding exercise is eating a lemon okay something really sour there's really sour candies that you can eat once again shocking your system just lightly enough to bring you back to reality you may listen to this and think kayla this is stupid this is overly simplistic yes okay i hear this time and time and time again and believe me i used to share the same feelings as you before i tried those things i used to think this is never gonna work this is not for me this is stupid give it a shot this is called practice for reason you need to practice you need to try it many many many times for it to start working and for you to start integrating it more holistically and see that wow this actually does have benefits this is actually able to stop me from dissociating something else that you can do to help a dissociation is to simply have general awareness of your triggers so like i mentioned for me one of my triggers is someone raising their voice on me or yelling because i know this now in conversations with my partner if we argue he knows to kind of monitor his voice levels and we take breaks when we need to to avoid dissociation the last thing i will mention to help with dissociation is to practice acceptance so as we know dissociation is a means to escape it's a means to avoid the stressful triggering situations that we're faced with and when we start to practice radical acceptance which i've already talked about i'll just link my video up here but essentially when we start to practice this radical acceptance we can learn how to ride the wave of strong emotions and recognize and have the wisdom to know that this wave is always going to come down we're not going to keep writing it forever and sometimes when we just have this awareness this wisdom and we can accept the feelings for what they are the wave actually comes down much quicker and we can write it out and experience the full plethora of emotions even though they're painful sometimes we can derive meaning from our experiences i want to just take a moment to really highlight how difficult this is i am giving you skills and tips but i also know that it's really hard to put them into place it's really hard to know where to start when we're not properly supported so this is why i always encourage therapy although my videos are great and they're great maybe first source of information this is not individualized counseling and therapy for you and so i encourage you to seek out the help and support that you need to assist you along your recovery journey if you found this video useful or if you just found mojo adorable which he is leave me a comment down below i always read and respond to all of them and sharing information in the comments is actually really beneficial not only to me but all the other members of our community the best way to support my channel is really to like share and subscribe to my channel and the more that my videos get shared the more people get information about bpd and this is really the aim of what i'm trying to do with my channel thank you so much for taking the time to be here with me today have an amazing week and i will see you next monday for another episode of on the line

Channel: On the Line

Views: 9,191

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Id: mbpVGuR7gCU

Length: 10min 54sec (654 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2022