Does/Did anyone here suffer from dissociation?

Aerose91 said...
This has been my worst and first symptom. 12 years running now. I've heard it associated with bartonella and biotoxins (both im confirmed to have) but I have not seen improvement in it yet. I am currently undergoing a CIRS protocol so I'll see where that takes me but would love to hear if anyone else has this chronically. Or better yet, has recovered from it!

I think I had it early on.
I keep saying to my husband
“ I don’t know who I am anymore”
It was a really weird state

I echo everything Emma said (except that I have not tried psilocybin yet). IFS is fantastic, especially for somatic symptoms.

I don't doubt that infections themselves (or mold) can predispose some individuals to neuro/psych symptoms like dissociation, but trauma and chronic stress (from illness or from before illness) can cause neuro/psych symptoms as well, and can also predispose people to chronic illness and make them more susceptible to chronic infections. It can be complicated to untangle. For me, I know that my system was probably prone to overreact to stimuli and develop chronic infections and dysfunction due to a difficult childhood and lack of healthy coping skills. I have experienced dissociation since I was a child (thankfully usually only briefly) and didn't contract tick-borne infections until I was 22.

Doing rape crisis work for years, I can tell you that loads of our patients had the same symptoms folks here do - dissociation, derealization, anxiety, depression, PTSD, OCD, insomnia, fibromyalgia, tremors, twitches, neuropathy, migrating joint and muscle pain, buzzing sensations, crawling sensations, hair loss, hyperacusis, tinnitus, dizziness, weight gain, POTS and other dysautonomia, hormonal imbalances, food sensitivities and allergies, all kinds of digestive dysfunction and dysbiosis, etc. - and recovered fully using exclusively mental health tools and therapy.

I recovered from my initial two years of tick-borne disease disability (undiagnosed at the time) using only mind-body medicine techniques. I was entirely healthy for seven years after that until a combination of major life stressors and viruses wore me down and allowed the infections (or just the dysfunction?) to take over again. (I'm not really sure how big a role infections played for me because I never seem to benefit from antimicrobial treatment, though I've had many positive tests....)

I'm not saying that infections and mold don't play a role. They certainly can and do! Just that chronic stress, adverse childhood experiences, and traumas of all kinds can be enough to cause these symptoms all on their own, so it's important to make sure that angle is at least considered if you don't make progress through treating the infections and mycotoxins.

Girlie said...

Aerose91 said...
This has been my worst and first symptom. 12 years running now. I've heard it associated with bartonella and biotoxins (both im confirmed to have) but I have not seen improvement in it yet. I am currently undergoing a CIRS protocol so I'll see where that takes me but would love to hear if anyone else has this chronically. Or better yet, has recovered from it!

I think I had it early on.
I keep saying to my husband
“ I don’t know who I am anymore”
It was a really weird state

Damn. Yes, this is verbatim it. I feel like I'm hollow and empty inside and have no soul. Did yours go away on its own?

The IFS is really interesting. I actually worked with a psychotherapist for a time and her work was pretty much identical. Unfortunately, I got no help with the dp/Dr because I feel so little, I couldn't do any inner work. I'm still in that state.

Arerose:
“Damn. Yes, this is verbatim it. I feel like I'm hollow and empty inside and have no soul. Did yours go away on its own?”

With treatment - yes. Completely gone

Girlie said...
Arerose:
“Damn. Yes, this is verbatim it. I feel like I'm hollow and empty inside and have no soul. Did yours go away on its own?”

With treatment - yes. Completely gone

God, I want to experience that so bad. It's been 12 years now. Do you think you have an idea which infection it was? Or maybe a more general inflammation?

I was just reading that rifampicin (which many take for Bartonella) speeds up the processing of many drugs and other substances, including steroids and the natural steroids your body makes, such as cortisol. Reducing the length of time cortisol is active in your body reduces cortisol-related symptoms, like dissociation and anxiety. I assume that folks who are treating Bartonella with rifampicin and related drugs might also benefit from this reduction in cortisol-related symptoms, in addition to its antimicrobial properties.

It's always so interesting to me to learn that a drug we think of as doing one specific thing (e.g. killing a particular microbe) also has other, distinct uses.

(I was reading about ways to manage a cortisol-related vascular eye condition, and rifampicin is one of the drugs people use because it reduces the effects cortisol has on your system, especially elevated cortisol levels.)

I once Had a Feeling that my Leg does Not belong to my Body anymore as I was in hospital diagnosed with lyme.

I have positive Tests on Chl. Pneumonae and Chl. Trachomatis aswell.

I am Sure its related...

Gfields. I'm glad you were able to get rid of it. We're you doing treatment for any particular infection when it dissipated? And worth asking- did the anxiety dissipate, too?

Aerose91 said...
Saraeli- when I treated bartonella with Dr M in Bethesda, he had me on hydrocortisone for exactly that reason. He definitely knows his way around that infection.

Girlie. That almost frustrates me so much because Bart was my big one but treating it ( Dr M and Buhner) brought no results.

What antibiotics were you taking?
Dr J isn’t “shy” with them.
The Bartonella/Persisters protocol was really hard.
Dapsone/daraprin/rifabutin/minocycline/Ceftin/
and a few more that I can’t recall now.
Thankfully it was a pulsed protocol, so there was recovery time.

That’s too bad Aerose!

You’ve had a tough time!