I know that I dissociate, probably not to a great extent, but it happens. Last night, I had a unique experience with dissociating from my thoughts/feelings. It was really interesting. Usually, when I experience dissociation or something similar, I realise it only later. I realise it only once I’m out of that situation and look back. But yesterday, I literally felt it happening.
It was an odd experience. I was lying on my couch thinking about something, I can’t even remember what now. It must’ve been thoughts that prompted intense emotions or triggered something in me, because I literally experienced myself checking the fuck out of that thought and my own brain. It was as if the ‘me’ in my brain was taking an elevator up and away from the thought, the emotion it brought on, and the overall experience. No, that’s literally what it felt like. I felt as if my mind was a dark, tall, building and the ‘me’ that resided in there hit a button, rose through the levels of that building and just put as much distance as possible between that emotion and myself.
It’s weird because I’ve never experienced dissociation in this way before—something so viscerally mental and somehow physical too. I’ve never experienced myself literally pulling away from a thought like that. I’ve always only realised it in retrospect. This time, I felt myself leave the space in which that thought was because either it was already causing me distress that I failed to process or I anticipated the danger of distress.
The imagery of it is scary. It’s scary because I literally watched this happen in my brain, me taking the elevator up and away. The imagery is also intimidating because it adds a sense of physicality to something that I have experienced many times before. I’ve never had this imagery or this literal feeling of being distanced from a thought or emotion before. It felt somatic and scary. I don’t know.
17 February 2025
Memoirs of a Muse 