Member-only story
Dissociation is something everyone goes through at some point in their life. When describing it in a laymen’s way, many people will state something along the lines of “I don’t quite feel connected to myself as I should”. There are many types of dissociative family disorders (dissociative identity disorder, derealization, depersonalization, among others), many people have some combination of the dissociative disorders formally recognized by the APA (American Psychiatric Association, the “Bible” of mental health diagnosis when it comes to the professional world).
Since my teen years, I have realized that mental health-wise, something has been ‘off’ with me. As I put the pieces together, I slowly started to realize different things about myself. Being adopted, I was well aware that my demographic, I am much more likely than the non-adopted (while ignoring all other traits when it comes to identity) people to have some kind of mental health issue. For me, part of it has manifested into dissociative issues.
A lot of my mental health issues overlap with each other. It’s just the nature of mental health symptoms, unfortunately. My dissociation has been going on a long time and I honestly can not pinpoint an exact time it started. I know it became more frequent after abuse that I endured from a series of ex-boyfriends while I was in high school.
