Skills for People with a Dissociative Disorder - lyricalAngel70

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Today, I have the opportunity to share an amazing post that contains a lot of skills for people with a dissociative disorder, written by @lyricalAngel70. I'm sure that this post can be helpful to a lot of us. Please share your thoughts and appreciation for Angel in the comments.

Skills for People with a Dissociative Disorder - lyricalAngel70

This post offers practical recommendations and tips for helping you, your family and friends cope with dissociation.

Journaling

Writing a journal during dissociative episodes is extremely helpful for an individual to understand and remember various aspects of their life experiences.

For instance:

Writing about their routine or any peculiar detail, any art that they created at various phase of moments. If a person has DID, they may journal or involve in artwork with many sorts of art as they experience various identity states.

Benefits:

• This is beneficial to make them more aware of the distinct factors of their identity.

• It enables them to recall more about what has or may have happened in the gaps in their memory.

• Writing and expressing their inner turmoil in a journal helps them better deal with it without the fear of being judged.

Visualisation

Visualisation is a technique of imagining various locations and scenes. It could be with or without some in-depth details. For better experience, creative imagination is highly recommended.

Benefit:

Useful to soothe an individual's difficult emotions and thinking patterns.

For instance:

• Imagining wearing a protective clothes or shield may help a person feel more at rest and relaxed in stressful settings.

• Imagining a place that an individual personally feel safe at (park, beach, woods, home, church/temple/mosque, etc) during their various identity states can help them calm down. So, when they are anticipating a threat or feeling nervous or threatened, they can visualize going to their personal safe haven for peace and protection.

• During a different identity state, a person might find imagining a non-judgemental meet and greet place helpful where they meet and talk with other people sharing similar experiences. Although not compulsory, some people may be able to best practice it with the help of a therapist.

Grounding Approach

Grounding techniques can help a person feel and stay more connected to the present day.

Benefit:

Helpful to cope with intrusive thoughts or dealing with difficult feels, flashbacks and memories from the past.

For instance:

• Slow breathing while counting until a person feels calm.

• Tuning into and closely focusing to various sounds around them.

• Barefoot walking to notice how the ground feels — Is it clean or dirty? Rough or smooth? Does it feel cold or hot or neutral to the feet?

• Wrapping themselves in a blanket/bedsheet or any covering to notice how it feels around their body — What is the texture of the fabric? Is it smooth/rough/silky/made of cotton or nylon? What is the consistency? Is it a thick or a thin blanket? How does it feel to you? So on and so forth.

• Holding an ice cube until it melts, or as simple as softly splashing chilled water on the face.

• Touching a thing with a unique surface or inhaling a thing having some strong aroma and focusing on the sensations felt at that specific moment. A person might find it pleasing to maintain a box of items with various surfaces and scents. For instance, including a blanket and some smooth stones; having a soft pillow scented with lavender perfume.

Organising Practical Strategy

Dissociation can make daily life routine tough to follow. Some of the simple practical strategies could help a person cope well.

Benefits:

• Helpful to have an organised day.

• Beneficial to plan things beforehand.

For instance:

• Wearing a wrist-watch with the date to keep track of the time.

• Preparing a to-do-list for the day. It can be customised as per an individual's need. This helps with remembering some important task to complete.

• To keep a list of the names/location/address/details of some close family and friends. This not only helps a person to contact them in a case of emergency, but also to remember their names. Bonus point? Looking at the list would ensure them that they are not alone, and they have a whole list of people to confide in.

• Having sticky notes around the house or writing some notes on a whiteboard.

Group Discussion

Peer support and group discussion can pave the way towards dealing smoothly with dissociative disorders. Sadly, there are not enough online peer support groups specified for people with dissociative disorders except a few. Henceforth, it can be better to look for offline meeting support groups. However, there are some group discussions on dissociative disorders here on 7 Cups. You can find the schedule here.

If a person shies away from discussing or talking about their issue, then reading about people's experiences with dissociative disorders can be helpful too. Talking as well as reading about it can help a person get a brand-new perspective or healthy coping ideas through different angles that the person may not have known before.

This post was written by a member of the Trauma Sub-Community Writing Team. You can find a masterpost with all the posts of this team linked here. If you want to join the team, please apply here. Also, please comment if you want to be tagged in future posts.