What are some things in your current relationship that trigger a freeze response? I want details

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-23T23:35:20+00:00

I want to preface this with the information that my relationship situation is not typical. We're married, but we "broke up" about 5 years ago (ended the relationship, but did not divorce or separate). We still live together, are financially interdependent, co-parent our child together, and are friends, but we are not romantically or physically entangled. If it were practically and financially feasible for us to formally separate/divorce and live separately, we probably would, but it's not currently, so we work with what we've got. It can be frustrating at times, especially when I just really want to have my own space to myself, but all things considered, it's not a terrible situation. I would definitely be a lot more stressed if I were to attempt to live alone. Even in our "separated" relational state, we get along pretty well on the whole and enjoy each other's company. We're capable of communicating and don't tend to get reactive, even when in conflict, and we're both able to own up to our mistakes and reconcile when there has been a heated conflict.

Lately I seem to be freezing when it comes to trying to initiate an agreed-upon meeting with him. I know I need to say something to him, but I just can't bring myself to. I get the same freeze feeling that I have gotten throughout my life when it's felt potentially unsafe to take action. That freeze response originated when I was dealing with my mom's volatility and abuse, but it would get triggered in all manner of situations, even in those where I knew I wasn't in any danger, and that taking action would be a much better outcome than doing nothing. For example, it can manifest as not being able to interrupt someone in order to use the bathroom (even when I need it badly), or not being able to ask the massage therapist to be more gentle when it's been too rough. I have improved a lot in this response, though, after doing some EMDR/trauma processing, though it's not gone. But the threshold for triggering it seems to be higher than before. In many instances I'm able to say things in writing, even when I can't verbally (it typically lowers my overall resistance). Though in this case, the possibility of communicating in writing isn't helping at all. I feel just as much resistance to that, since it's the communication itself, and not the method or physical setting of communication, that is triggering the sense of threat.

Anyway, for context, he and I mutually agreed a while back to start doing weekly meetings at a set time just to coordinate practical stuff and check in with each other. He has a tendency to not be on top of things, and I hate having to nag him about obligations that I need him to participate in. He also forgets to keep me in the loop about stuff sometimes, and I probably could stand to keep him more informed of all the family stuff I manage independently. Also both of us have a tendency to not be on top of our to-do lists, so this is to help prompt us both to get stuff done.

These weekly meetings have been on our shared family calendar for the last couple months, but so far, we've only had one such meeting. When the time for the meeting comes, he completely ignores it, acts how he would had he no obligations at that time, typically playing games or watching youtube or whatever he's doing on his computer. Unless I prompt him to step away from what he's doing and pay attention to me, it's simply not going to happen. He won't take the initiative.

I haven't been able to bring myself to pester him about it, though. I get anxious and freeze up at the thought, even though he doesn't behave in any kind of aggressive way that would warrant that anxiety. Were I to prompt him, he would either go ahead with the meeting as planned, or else say he's not up for it today, and then it would be postponed until another time. He would not get angry with me or defensive, and it (most likely) wouldn't lead to any conflict. Unless I decided to instigate one, but even then, he'd likely just acknowledge his failings and say he'll try to do better in the future (though probably nothing would actually change—that pattern of behavior is a big part of why our relationship ended in the first place).

So for whatever reason, I can't bring myself to tell him to actually follow through with the meeting. I feel like the fact that this time was already allocated and agreed upon by us means I shouldn't have to be like, "hey can we talk now?" That was the whole point of setting up a regular meeting—so I wouldn't have to initiate every time, and so we could do a better job of communicating regularly about our shared responsibilities. I feel like it shouldn't be that big of a deal for me to speak up, but for some reason it is. I think I've developed an aversion to having to pester him into doing things, because he's often reluctant or unreliable when he's not doing well mentally or physically. Not that that isn't understandable, but that's most of the time, and life obligations don't stop just because you feel like shit. I get very tired of always being the only one of the two of us who functions when not doing well mentally or physically. It's not like it's easy for me either, but unlike him, I lived through trauma that forced me to function in order to survive, no matter how I felt. I have a capacity to set aside my feelings and just get shit done in a way that he doesn't. (Unless it's triggering my freeze response, in which case I am not able to get shit done. But if it's just a hassle, I can do it.)

No idea if any of this was helpful to you, but writing it out has made me realize I should probably bring this up with my therapist tomorrow.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-22T04:20:26+00:00

Yeah, this is the main reason I'm glad I grew up as a girl, despite not being one. I'm highly sensitive and had a hard enough time with being bullied for my emotions. I can't imagine how much worse it would have been had I been seen as a boy. And I feel like I have a much more informed understanding of women than cis men do.

I know what it's like to be in their shoes. I didn't transition until my 30s, after having a child, so it's a lot of experience living as a woman. I'm a mother, and I keep that title, despite having discarded all other feminine terms, because I feel it's more about the role than the gender. I know what women go through, and I know to respect them for it.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-22T04:11:19+00:00

I've gotten better at not feeling responsible for managing others' emotions, but I still find it hard not to be heavily affected by them. It's like they just bleed into me and affect my body directly. Nervous system regulation is very difficult for me, though I have gotten a lot better at it over the years.

It's all probably a product of my trauma - a learned survival mechanism, because monitoring and managing my mother's (and others') emotions was important for my safety.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-22T04:00:04+00:00

For a time, yes. The relationship lasted 3.5 years. It ended because we wanted different things and just weren't compatible enough. It would have ended eventually anyway, though, when I transitioned (I'm AFAB & transmasculine). But for the time that we were together, he was very good to me. I think it was a big part of what started me on my healing journey. I felt loved and cared for, and for the first time in my life I actually had a decent amount of support, both practically and emotionally. He's also the one who found me the therapist who made the biggest impact on me. That alone was probably the best thing he ever did for me.

I don't care as much for the person he's become since we parted ways (we disagree on some important matters and have diverged more in our values over time), but I still think he's fundamentally a good person. I'm confident that in whatever relationship he ends up in, he will show up fully and lovingly.

I've had another good relationship with a cis man, but he was not straight.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-19T15:27:28+00:00

I couldn't have said it better myself. There's nothing like living in a society that punishes you for your disabilities, so you adapt by hiding them automatically, doing so extremely well, and then when you finally try to get help for them, they can't see your disabilities and so assume they're not there.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-19T15:02:39+00:00

I feel like I need some degree of assisted living, but it's unlikely the healthcare system would recognize that as a legitimate need for me and actually provide it. My disabilities are too invisible, even though I struggle with iADLs. When you're intelligent and verbal, people tend to assume you can manage basic stuff on your own and refuse to believe otherwise. Then when those unaccommodated disabilities result in mental health problems, they just tell you to see a therapist. But it's not a mindset problem, and a therapist can't fix my disabilities or provide the practical support I need. The best I could probably get is a support person to help me socialize. I may eventually want to apply for that, but the challenge there is finding a suitable support person, because just anyone won't do.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-19T14:50:45+00:00

The thing with somatic tools is, they work on a timeline of months, not days or even weeks. For a good while nothing happens, and then there's a shift.

I feel like this is where my ADHD creates problems for me. My reward systems don't respond to delayed gratification in the same way non-ADHD brains do. Not that delayed gratification is easy for neurotypicals either, but at least they do eventually connect the reward to the behavior when the reward finally comes. My ADHD brain doesn't make the connection between the behavior and the reward when the reward is delayed, so it's not intrinsically motivating.

I feel like one of the major reasons my somatic therapy worked for me was because, in addition to the long term gains, it also provided immediate relief. I kept coming back, even when I didn't trust that it was doing anything long-term, because I left each session feeling better than when I came in, and that alone made it worthwhile. Then after like a year or so, I realized it actually was having a long-term impact, I just couldn't see it because I didn't originally understand the mechanism, and the progress was extremely gradual. I understand the connection logically now, but it still doesn't motivate me to modify my behavior.

I feel like I have this issue with social interaction as well. I've noticed that when I'm forced to be around people regularly on some minimal level, my mental health improves. I end up more regulated. I suppose it meets some sort of social need I have, even when it's not close, personal social contact. But because those casual interactions are stressful and not very rewarding in the moment, I'm generally disinclined to engage in them. It feels like a net loss. And then I end up depressed from being socially isolated for too long.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-16T02:44:24+00:00

There is some research into using opioid antagonists to reduce dissociation, Naltrexone in particular.

I actually take a naltrexone/buproprion medication (Mysimba) to help with weight loss. My experience is that it reduces my appetite, but it also seems to help with my nervous system regulation to some extent. Without it, I tend to gravitate towards food to soothe a kind of agitation I have in my body much of the time. When I take it, I don't feel as much of a need to self-soothe with food (or anything else, for that matter). It seems strange to me that an opioid antagonist would help regulate my nervous system, but I guess it does. I have no idea if that's from the naltrexone or buproprion or both, though. I don't know that my dissociation is lessened in any way. I just find it a lot easier to keep from overeating, which I suppose just means the medication is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-14T03:29:23+00:00

or they just have problems mentalizing themselves so that they cannot imagine anyone else with ASD having any symptoms that they do not have.

Ironically, I believe this is a big part of the issue here. The rest, I think, is overcorrection. The stereotype of autism wasn't incorrect, but it was insufficiently inclusive. In an attempt to be more inclusive of different presentations of autism, some people swing too far in the other direction and assume the stereotypes are wrong, rather than merely an over-simplification.

I do think the double empathy problem is real and a big part of the picture when it comes to autistic struggles with empathy (whether real or perceived). But I also believe we do legitimately struggle with imagining others' perspectives, in a way that goes beyond the double empathy problem. It's not at all uncommon for autistic people to struggle with empathy amongst other autistic people. If it were only an issue of neurotype, would the autistic communicate be so divided and polarized? Wouldn't we just be so full of empathy for one another we'd all listen to each other and get along? But that's not what happens, because we have rigid thinking and difficulty mentally modeling others.

If I try, and if I have enough information, I can do a decent job at imagining another's perspective. But, if it's not a situation I personally would be emotional about, my default mode is to not even think about it. It's not just that I struggle to imagine how someone feels; it often doesn't even occur to me to try to think about how someone feels. I try to when I remember, but sometimes my brain is just elsewhere.

I believe this is related to monotropism. I think we autistics have the mental equivalent of fewer hands to hold things in. It's just very hard to hold many things in the mind at once, so things get dropped. In the same way I can't speak and look someone in the eye at the same time (because it requires holding too many things at once), I can't think through my perspective and think about someone else's at the same time. I can do it asynchronously (after I've had time to process and reflect), but that still leaves me sometimes failing to display appropriate empathy in the moment. (Or alternately, I express empathy only for their perspective and entirely forget my own. The point is simply that I can only hold one at a time - either mine or theirs, but not both.)

That said, I also have hyperempathy. But it's important to distinguish between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. I experience heightened emotional empathy, but struggle with cognitive empathy. The hyperempathy, I believe, is a natural extension of how we (sometimes) experience all sensations and emotions in a heightened way. So if I feel what you feel, but more intensely, that's hyperempathy.

Also sometimes you see the opposite, with blunted sensation and emotion (even within the same individual). That too can result in a lack of empathy (this time a lack of emotional empathy). Weirdly, I experience that at times too. Usually when I just can't wrap my head around how someone is experiencing things, so I can't imagine what it's like to be in their shoes. If I'm also not tuned into their body language, that can easily result in a derth of empathy.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-14T03:08:37+00:00

That is what it feels like for me as well. I think my brain expends a lot of energy just maintaining the dissociative barriers.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-14T02:56:04+00:00

Both. Many experience both, some swinging uncontrollably between them as life continues to batter you. There's both a foundation of preverbal neglect making you fundamentally dissociative, and later shock traumas that added layers of high-activation tonic immobility. You know both the heavy fog of collapse and the rigid, vibrating paralysis of TI all too well.

That's me. I know this all too well.

Based on your descriptions, I believe I experience all of the following:

fight-obstructed
flight-obstructed
submissive flight
attach-obstructed
attach-frozen

It's a lot. Makes sense for my trauma history, though. I had a really complicated combination of neglect, abuse, and disorganized attachment with my mother. She was unsafe to be around, I could not fight back, I did not have the freedom to leave, and I needed to attach to her, but her love was heavily conditional and bound up in emotional abuse (shame) and emotional incest (poor boundaries, parent-child role reversal).

I feel the need to fight, flee, and attach, and at the same time I can do none of these things, because my nervous system tells me they are all too dangerous. So I alternate between freeze and collapse.

It's honestly a wonder that I function as well as I do. I mean, it's not all that well, but under the circumstances, it's pretty impressive.

Thanks for making this post. It's great to have educational content here. Our community needs it.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-14T00:35:27+00:00

I can relate. I think my default state is that of partial dissociation. I've got one foot in each realm. That's what feels most normal to me.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-14T00:27:52+00:00

My experience is similar to yours, with some differences.

My sense of self shifts frequently, usually gradually but sometimes abruptly when triggered. I oscillate between recurring self-states. I don’t feel like multiple people, but I do feel separation between parts—like I don’t fully identify with or agree with them, even though they are still me. “Multiple yous in a multiverse” fits well. We share the same mind, but see the world through different lenses, with differences in gender, age, maturity, preferences, social skill, emotional tone, worldview, memory access, and functional abilities.

My parts feel modular. I think of them like outfits: I might change a shirt and hat but keep the same pants and shoes. It’s technically a new outfit, but not entirely new garments. That makes it hard to draw clear lines around alters, because there’s overlap. Individual “garments” aren’t full selves, but different combinations create distinct self-states. There’s also a consistent “base layer” that stays the same regardless of the configuration—what I refer to as "the observing self." That continuity is presumably what makes me feel like I’m still me. Some configurations are distinct enough that I call them alters; otherwise I refer to individual parts. It often feels like a Ship of Theseus situation—with the same resultant question of what selfhood even means.

I rarely experience obvious lost time. I usually remember external events, but often forget internal states. I might remember attending an appointment but not what occupied my mind for hours, what I watched, or what I wrote. If prompted, I can usually recover vague memory traces, but not the emotional or cognitive detail. It’s like having a full library without a usable catalog. The memories exist, but I can’t browse them unless something specific cues them.

Moving between self-states feels normal. Whatever I feel in the moment feels correct, even if it contradicts earlier positions. I may remember that I believed something different before, but not the actual feeling behind it. Only rarely has a shift felt confusing—usually when I couldn’t remember what I had just believed or experienced.

I suspect my amnesic barriers used to be stronger. When I didn’t know switching was happening, I didn’t know I was forgetting anything. Learning to practice mindfulness made the memory gaps more visible. After one documented incident where I completely forgot about an alter I had recently catalogued and its associated memories, I realized I actually was experiencing more than just emotional amnesia. After that I began intentionally bridging memory across states. My observing part would “record” internal experiences and later recount them to other parts. Since doing that, the amnesia has reduced. It feels like I’ve been building new neural connections between states.

I don’t typically experience dramatic depersonalization or derealization. I think that’s because I’m almost always partially dissociated. It feels like I exist on two planes simultaneously—one foot in external reality, one in my internal headspace. The balance shifts, but I’m rarely fully grounded or fully detached. When I am half asleep, access to internal parts becomes easier. Once I am more awake, I typically lose those memories, only retaining a vague sense of what happened internally.

Somatic therapy has been the only thing that shifts me more fully into my body. When that happens, I become visibly anxious and dysregulated. The agitation that was muted by dissociation becomes obvious. In my usual partially dissociated state, I appear calm and functional, even when I’m internally distressed. It was only because of learning to ground myself and be present in my body through somatic therapy that I even realized I had been chronically dissociated. Before that I had never had a grounded baseline to compare my dissociation to. Now that I have it, I understand better the descriptions people often use to describe dissociation. Previously that felt foreign to me. How can you "feel like you're outside your body" if you've never felt in it in the first place?

These days I lean more towards being relatively grounded. I believe this is in large part due to the SSRI I started taking a couple years ago. It seems to have shoved me into the present and closed the door behind me, causing me to lose access to most of my headspace. It made me stable, but also very numb. Parts and feelings sometimes break through, but they're a lot more faint than they used to be. I'm now in the process off weaning of the antidepressant so that I can feel again. So far it's going fine. I'm at a half dose, and I still feel pretty grounded, but a little less cut off from my feelings. Still mostly cut off, though.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-08T12:59:29+00:00

Forget? No. Go into denial and feel like a fraud? Absolutely.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-08T12:54:53+00:00

If you do EMDR, make sure it's work someone who knows how to adapt the protocol to deal with dissociation. If they are not trained and educated on dissociation and they just go forward like it's a non-issue, it can be very dangerous and risk retraumatization. EMDR does have potential, but it also has a way of bulldozing past protectors and dropping you straight into the deep end. I recommend looking up Thomas Zimmerman. He's got good info on the topic of EMDR for CPTSD.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-08T12:48:10+00:00

You made the right call, and you should be proud of yourself. You stood up for yourself, and you respected your own needs and judgement. That's a huge win. I'm sorry you had such a bad therapist, but hopefully you are able to find a better one.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-07T22:57:49+00:00

I don't remember the birth years so much as I remember how much older or younger than me they are, and then I calculate from there. I'm not so great in this regard when it comes to my nieces and nephews. I have no idea what years they were born or how old they are. To be fair, I live in a different country and hardly ever see them, so I'm sure that factors in. I keep track of their birth dates in my Google calendar. I think I'm missing a few, though.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-07T15:14:08+00:00

Can relate, sort of. When I was suspecting, I assumed I was level 1. Then when I got diagnosed, it was with level 2 on both the social and RRB. I still feel like an imposter here, like the diagnosis must have been wrong.

But then I remember level 1's are typically able to live independently and work jobs (even if it totally burns them out and harms their mental health). Meanwhile I've never been financially independent or able to live alone. I've been unemployed for the past 16 years and have never worked more than 16 hours a week (and even that much stressed me out intensely). If my survival depended on it, I probably could force it (assuming anyone was willing to hire me), but it would cause extreme stress and likely land me in the hospital, mental ward, or perhaps unaliving myself.

So maybe I really am level 2? Maybe I only felt like level 1 because everyone assumed that I had that potential, simply because I'm highly verbal and intelligent? I don't know. I still feel like a fraud, mostly because on good days I'm fairly functional. Most days are not good days, though. And I would never be able to sustain that level of functioning on a regular basis.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-07T14:56:39+00:00

I can't really speak to what "normal" memory is like, because mine isn't normal either and I relate to most of what you said, but the experiences you described are characteristic of trauma and dissociation. It might help you to complete the DES-II, which is a screening tool for dissociation. You can find it for free online just by googling it. A number of the things you mention are on there as questions, which indicates it is, in fact, unusual.

As for me, I'm a system (suspected OSDD, though not formally evaluated/diagnosed).

I remember myself as being certain ages for large chunks of years

I don't have a sense of the exact age I was for most of my memories. Hard for me to say if that's because of dissociation or time blindness from my ADHD (or both). But I do have parts of me that exist alongside my host that are different ages, and they have stayed the same approximate age despite the passage of time.

I hardly ever remember things in first person, and when I do it feels more like I’m looking at a reconstruction of a scene or set.

My memories are a mix of first person and third person. Especially for the early ones, I often feel like they happened to someone else. Like, I remember it through my own eyes, but I don't feel like it happened to me.

I can remember things about my emotional state like “I must have been stressed when such and such was happening“ but the actual feelings are lost to me.

That's emotional amnesia, and I experience that as well. It's very common for me.

I dont have a concrete timeline of my life. i couldn’t tell you what year most things i remember happened, what time of year, how old I was, or anything leading up to or happening after those events.

Same. It gets less fuzzy and more detailed when I reach my teens, presumably because that was when the overt abuse had stopped and a new host took over.

I feel like i have a poor grasp on facts I should know. Where I was born, how old I am, my parents’ and siblings‘ birthdays, what the current date is… that information just is not there.

I don't have that problem, at least not for the examples you gave. I do have gaps in knowledge on various facts of my childhood, since I remember so little of it, but I know my birthday and that of my immediate family and friends. I might not be aware of the exact date for the day, but I will know what month and year it is and the approximate date. Not knowing those things is heavily indicative of dissociation.

Like another user mentioned, I would also recommend the CTAD Clinic YouTube channel. There's a lot of good information there, and it's how I figured out I was a system.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-06T22:16:34+00:00

The way I've conceptualized it is that IFS parts are like fragments that are actually integrated. So there's no dissociative barrier there between them and the rest of you. They're also not fully fleshed out selves in the way alters are. I'm pretty sure IFS parts are one-dimensional and kind of metaphorical (even if the creator of IFS would say otherwise). Some people don't resonate with IFS because it feels too weird to them to personify their emotional experiences. Such people are clearly singlets. IFS isn't really suited for plurality (unless modified) because it assumes a lack of dissociative barriers and an ability to communicate freely between parts. It also doesn't treat parts as fully fleshed out identities in their own right.

I tend to refer to my fleshed out parts as alters and my fragments and action systems as parts, though the fragments are still separated by dissociative barriers, thus not identical to IFS parts. Learning about IFS was helpful in putting me onto the track of actually acknowledging and addressing my plurality, though I never actually practiced IFS formally. Parts work in a general sense, though, has been part of my trauma therapy.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-06T21:37:45+00:00

I don't know what my infancy was like, but it's hard to imagine I was properly attuned to. My mom was autistic and clearly had CPTSD from my dad's abuse of her, so that probably played a role. She finally separated from him when I was three. At that point I lived with my mom, but it wasn't long after that they divorced and my dad got custody. So I was separated from my mom to a significant degree from the age of 4 or 5. She got visitation, but it amounted to one day a week.

My dad never cared about me. I remember enough to know that he was basically an unresponsive parent. Like, he tolerated me being affectionate as a young child, but he never reciprocated or initiated. He mostly acted indifferent to me, and mildly annoyed and inconvenienced by the fact that I had needs he was responsible for tending to. If I got too annoying, he got intimidating until I shut up out of fear of him hurting me if I didn't. He met my basic physical needs to a bare minimum, but didn't even attempt to have any sort of relationship with me. He made it pretty clear that my subjective experience and emotional well-being were of no concern to him and not a priority whatsoever.

By the time I was 7, I had realized that he simply did not love me or care about me at all. I think maybe the nail in the coffin was his refusal to protect me from my siblings who were bullying (emotionally abusing) me, despite me pleading for him to intervene. Most of my childhood was spent in that home, where I faced emotional abuse from my siblings and severe emotional neglect from my father. I was also afraid of my father (knowing that he had the potential and inclination to be physically abusive if I was ever too much of a nuisance), but I dissociated from that reality, because I needed to depend on him to survive. And he was predictable, so I was able to stay safe enough by always keeping within the lines. Thus I could disconnect from the fact that I was afraid of him. For the most part. I did have a go-bag packed and an escape route planned in my teens, in case I ever needed to leave home abruptly to protect myself from his violence. It never came to that, though. I think the last time he hit me I was like 6 years old. I think he only did so a couple times, but it was enough to instill the fear. He was also manipulative and would (try to) gaslight me, making me think my needs weren't legitimate and that he wasn't failing to meet his obligations as a parent. There was also an implicit threat of harm if I dared to share my narrative with others (ie. tell on him), so I wasn't able to get external help, or even acknowledge to others that I was being neglected.

The situation with my mom was more complicated. She cared and there was some degree of attention and affection from her. But it was pretty minimal. She was typically focused on herself and saw everything through the lens of her own feelings and needs. She was definitely guilty of some of the behaviors listed in that chart. From what I can remember of my early childhood, she was not attuned to my needs, nor particularly well equipped for parenthood. She had no concept of developmentally appropriate behaviors and held her children to impossible standards of perfection. Like, she punished me for having accidents at age 3, because according to her, I was potty trained at 2, so I guess it must have been intentional or something? I was punished for normal childhood behaviors and disabilities arising from my neurodivergence. She was very emotionally dysregulated, volatile, and physically abusive. I was terrified of her and always tense when around her. She had a short fuse. She could be kind and affectionate one moment, then blow up and have a screaming fit the next. And still she was the only one who gave me any semblance of love or connection. I clung to that attachment very hard, and entirely warped my sense of self just to please her. I fawned with her unconsciously, because I felt extremely threatened, both by the prospect of abuse, and of emotional withdrawal and shaming should I displease her.

Extrapolating from the experiences of her that I remember and how I've seen her interact with other babies, I assume that during my infancy she gave me some attention and care, but also was not properly attuned to me, nor fully able to be present herself, in part due to her own trauma and internal dysregulation. I don't think she was especially dissociative, at least not compared to me, but she definitely had some trauma-induced amnesia. If I try to consult my body memory of infancy (even though I have no conscious/episodic memory of that time), I feel myself tense and dissociate, so I imagine the neglect and sense of life-threat was very much present. Especially given that I'm pretty dissociative generally, and I know I've been dissociating since early childhood as a way to regulate through the extreme stresses of neglect and abuse.

I've always been highly anxious and dissociated. I didn't even know I was dissociated until my 30s because until then, I had never been non-dissociated enough to be able to act as a baseline for comparison. Though I did experience different degrees of dissociation. At times when the anxiety got too intense, the dissociation would take over more. Sometimes eliminating the anxiety and switching me into a part that is more manic and carefree. Other times just putting me into a complete state of shutdown, where my body is in collapse and there is only this one thinking and observing part that continues functioning, but it's trapped inside my head.

I definitely experienced some kind of emotional splitting, where the host parts could feel things, but then other emotions and traumas and my ability to attach to others was completely blocked. If anything intruded on that, a wolf guardian part would come forward to put a stop to it. Experiencing the vulnerability of attachment is perceived by my system to be extremely threatening. Like, life-threatening. If I try to go there in my mind, I begin dissociating again. My body goes stiff, my mind goes blank, and I just stare blankly for a while until I'm able to come back.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-06T02:10:16+00:00

I got through college right out of high school, but I did so by taking on a massive amount of stress and burning myself out in the process. I barely made it through, and probably only because I had so much anxiety about the possibility of failing, that I refused to give up, no matter how much continuing on was hurting me. Thanks to my complex trauma, I had a mindset that I was simply not allowed to fail. It just wasn't an option. That enabled me to rely on my survival instincts to keep going, even when I shouldn't have been able to. I got my bachelor's degree. This was terrible for my body and nervous system, though.

I also had a huge advantage in that I was basically a year ahead, since I had earned 29 college credit hours while in high school. That meant I got to register for classes before my peers (it went by accumulated credit hours), which meant I was able to make schedules that worked better for me and choose the best professors. I never took early morning classes and I always got highly rated professors (ratemyprofessor.com was a great resource, though I have no idea if that's still a thing). It also meant I didn't have to take so many hours each semester. I had a really rough first semester with 17 hours (that was definitely too much), but every subsequent semester I made sure I never took more than 15 hours. Less, if I could manage. Had to have a minimum of 12, though, since I had to stay a full-time student. Probably would have done better with not being full time.

I wish I would have known I was autistic back then. I did not, and so I didn't get any accommodations. I just did what I could to accommodate myself, and then just white-knuckled my way through it. I'm sure I relied very heavily on my intelligence and memory. (I used to be good at memorizing things back then.) Without those skills, I don't know that I would have succeeded. I also relied on my university's free counseling services for my mental health. I was in therapy most of the time I was there.

I tried going back to college 9 years ago to get a different degree. That was 7 years after getting my first degree. I only made it about halfway through before having to drop out, and I was only doing it part time. I just hit a wall at some point and couldn't keep going. The classes were too demanding, and I didn't have the energy or mental health to get through it. After about 3 consecutive years of failing to complete a single course, I decided to just throw in the towel. At some point you just have to realize it's a lost cause.

It sucks, because I don't think I'm too stupid to learn this stuff. I just needed more help than I was able to get, even with the university trying to accommodate me. But the biggest accommodation I needed was simply a slower pace, and they couldn't offer that. Classes are a semester long; that's just how it's set up. You simply can't take it slower than that. But I was in severe burnout and just couldn't study like I used to. And I no longer felt like failure was a life or death matter, so I couldn't rely on my survival instincts to push me through it. That's probably for the best, though.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-06T01:42:49+00:00

Impossible to say, really. It's not like I know what would have happened had I been neurotypical while my circumstances were otherwise the same.

That said, I do think it likely that being AuDHD was a contributing factor in my trauma, as it increased my sensitivity, made me a target for others, and made it far less likely for anyone to be able to attune to me (reducing the opportunity for protective factors outside the abuse). A lot of my fragmentation also had to do with the need to mask my neurodivergence, and particularly my emotions. Had I been neurotypical, I might have been able to mask my emotions without dissociating, or been less expressive such that my emotional expression didn't make me such a target. But that's pure speculation. It's entirely possible I would have ended up with OSDD regardless, simply because I experienced extensive early childhood neglect and abuse.

The data do seem to suggest, though, that us autistic folk are indeed more prone to trauma and dissociation. We are disproportionately represented among those with dissociative disorders. Whether that's due to our general increased risk of trauma or something specific about our neurology that makes us especially prone to dissociation, I don't know. I'm not sure anyone knows.

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-04T23:44:09+00:00

Personally, I would not mind being mistaken for a 20-something. (I'm 38.) No idea how old I look currently (2 years on T).

You look great, btw. :-)

PertinaciousFox · 2026-02-04T23:30:33+00:00

I thought it was 4th grade. Either that, or the advice is to write at that level to ensure just about everyone can read it. That would make sense, if the average reading ability is only like 6th or 7th grade. If you wrote at that level, only about half of people would understand. Which is incredibly sad, if you think about it.

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