I’m feeling wrong

I woke up 4 hours ago and have been feeling like the body isn’t connected right I’m constantly squirming involuntarily and having a hard time focusing on anything
I have DID and this feels like the most drawn out switch ever. I don’t know what to do

Hi MultipleMes,
It is nice to "meet" you on PC. I'm sorry you're feeling disconnected. I can very much relate. Did it get any better from when you wrote this?

Are there things that have worked in the past to help you feel more grounded during times like this?

Sharing a couple of tactics I use when I am fluffy and disconnected:

I look for my feet. Literally. I will look for my left foot. Identify it, wiggle the toes. Then look for the right foot. Wiggle the right toes. Then look at both feet, left and right, at the same time. Wiggle both toes.

Take a deep breath in through the nose. Pause. Exhale making noise out of the mouth. Empty all the breath. Repeat.

Sometimes I will just need to walk around my house. Say out loud, "Ok, it's Wednesday, April 24th, it's 2PM and I don't have anywhere else to be."

Hope it passes soon...
FearLess47

I know its hard but maybe something my own treatment providers told me will help...

"thats progress"

the reason they said that to me was because I was actually feeling..........something...........

you see for dissociatives like me the symptoms are ....

numbness, (lack of feeling on an emotional level) Disconnected (on an emotional mental level, not noticing things like my body, my hands, my legs... )

give you an example when my child was in surgery, the doctors were saying something to me and I didnt hear him, I was sitting there watching the couple down the hall. my wife reached over and took my hand and gave it a squeeze and I didnt feel it, I had no idea that she was even doing that. She squeezed my hand so tightly that she accidentally bruised one of my fingers and I had no idea I had a hand let alone she was squeezing it.

I was dissociated, mentally I was numb so nothing physically was coming through to my consciousness. Finally my wife held an onion containing sandwhich up to my nose. instantly I was back connected again to where I could hear my wife say "the doctor said it was touch and go but she made it, they are taking her to the recovery room, we can see her in just a few minutes."

thats what being disconnected in the dissociative sense is for me. no mental or physical feelings at all, numbness.

So when I was actually at a point where I could say to them "I feel disconnected" for me that was progress.

in your post you recognized what you were feeling, (your body wasnt connected..) and you unconsciously did something about it (squirmed around)

thats progress. my suggestion continue the great work of noticing what is going on in your body. and squirm or what ever else you need to do to feel connected again...

another suggestion is maybe you and your treatment providers can make an emergency list of things for you to do when you are feeling this way...

unfortunately we cant tell you what you need to do, we can only tell you what we do for our selves when we are feeling our own dissociation symptoms...

when I feel my dissociation symptoms I ..

row my canoe around a lake, take a walk, play with my children, pet our dogs, ....

maybe you can find things that will help you to feel more grounded in your body.

Hi and welcome. I am learning (slowly) that whenever I feel dissociated and spacey the first and only thing I need to do is work on grounding skills. It's a bit hard to remember to do that because growing up with DID the spacey dissociated state is pretty much the norm. I have to work on reminding myself it doesn't have to be that way.
Do you have a set of grounding skills that work best for you? Sometimes having them written down can help as a reminder.

I hope you are feeling better by now.

Okay everyone thanks for the responses, I ended up doing all of my grounding exercises with no luck so I went to my psych doctor while this was going on as a walk in. She helped me pull out an alter that was having trouble and had a conversation with him about some things that had been happening in the headspace. One alter is pissed off that I’ve started therapy and is trying to stop it. There were threats to the body if I don’t quit. Looks like he doesn’t want us talking about things that happened to me.

Hi MultipleMes,
I am glad you were able to get in to see your psych during that time. Very interesting that an alter is not happy about therapy. I can very much relate. My body is pulling out all the stops (chronic UTIs, pelvic pain, lump in my breast, tinnitus, etc.) that is requiring tests and medical treatments. I have come to believe or suspect that it is a diversion tactic to keep me from looking at what feels like really scary stuff.

Let us know how you are from time to time.

FearLess47