Speech is over-rated… But body language can be confusing too…
From: http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dissociation-and-dissociative-disorders.html
"Dissociative amnesia is a disorder in which the distinctive feature is the patient's inability to remember important personal information to a degree that cannot be explained by normal forgetfulness. In many cases, it is a reaction to a traumatic accident or witnessing a violent crime. Patients with dissociative amnesia may develop depersonalization or trance states as part of the disorder, but they do not experience a change in identity."
From: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pathological-relationships/201211/dissociation-isnt-life-skill
"Dissociation can become a primary defense mechanism if you grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive, addictive, or violent home. That's because children can easily get overwhelmed and check out—or dissociate—because they can't handle whats going on. If you never learned adult coping skills then it's likely you use the ones you do know: which are from childhood. And if your primary ones were dissociation, then you're probably using that now, and it probably has gotten you into a lot of trouble in your patterns of relationship selection…."
"You can also seperate out other parts of the memory like: sensations, words or phrases, physical or sexual pain inherent in the memory, things you tasted/smelled/saw, and various emotions that were prevalent in the relationship."
I'm not exactly sure why, but early on I learned to dissociate. Today I struggle with any face-to-face interaction because it is probable that I will dissociate from any memory of the other person's face. It is also highly probable that I will dissociate from entire sections of conversation.
I have improved with this alot in the last year…but it is still a very disabiling brain-glitch. At 50, I doubt I'll see things much differently before I die. It's another communication breakdown for me, just one of my filters. This one affects the way I hear body language and facial expression. It also affects how I hear speech (memory).
I just want to say that any improvement I've had in this area is directly connected to the smiling, friendly people I meet in my community.
To my knowledge, Omni, I only have dissociative amnesia… but that is bad enough. I have discussed it with therapists. To my knowledge, I don't switch identities…but I am good at compartmentalizing.
Therapy has helped me with this as much as it can…as I said, I really feel the best help I get now comes simply from the warm smiling people that I do not have a dissociative experience with.
I may make a future blog about the ptsd part, and how dissociative episodes lead to flashbacks for me.