I spent a lot of my life numbing out in different ways for different reasons. I still do it sometimes - mostly with binge TV and repetitive phone games, mostly aware that I'm doing it and choosing it because I need that for a time, but not always consciously and not always in these less-damaging ways.
A couple of years ago I had a strange experience during a traumatic time ... despite all of the therapy and being aware of what was happening ... I was at my parents' house trying to deal with big family stuff and I became practically narcoleptic. Like I literally could not stay awake. I also became completely unable to make decisions of any kind including what to eat. It was this bizarre, intensified sort of numbing/freeze that just happened. It wasn't a response to physical threat and it wasn't a PTSD reaction, it was an in the moment bodily reaction to emotional stress that was traumatic but not life-threateningly so, which is, I suppose what made it odd.
I do a lot of numbing out and disassociating myself with online Boggle, reruns and social media scrolling. I'm sorry to hear about your traumatic times, though it's a bit intriguing to me, because, when I'm traumatized, I have the opposite effect of not sleeping. But near narcolepsy sounds dreadful and scary like sleep paralysis. Very true--our bodies and brains are so complex. It's intriguing the ways in which our minds try to keep us safe from trauma in their physiological and visceral responses.
I have definitely had insomnia related to a ruminating mind throughout much of my life, which is really probably how I came to use tv and phone games for numbing in the first place, just trying to get through the nights.
In terms of trauma responses, this was like an exaggerated version of "freeze" with a little bit of "flop" and "fawn" in there. In retrospect it is pretty fascinating. Shortly after it happened, it was pretty terrifying (while in the moment it wasn't much of anything since it was by nature numb).
I spent a lot of my life numbing out in different ways for different reasons. I still do it sometimes - mostly with binge TV and repetitive phone games, mostly aware that I'm doing it and choosing it because I need that for a time, but not always consciously and not always in these less-damaging ways.
A couple of years ago I had a strange experience during a traumatic time ... despite all of the therapy and being aware of what was happening ... I was at my parents' house trying to deal with big family stuff and I became practically narcoleptic. Like I literally could not stay awake. I also became completely unable to make decisions of any kind including what to eat. It was this bizarre, intensified sort of numbing/freeze that just happened. It wasn't a response to physical threat and it wasn't a PTSD reaction, it was an in the moment bodily reaction to emotional stress that was traumatic but not life-threateningly so, which is, I suppose what made it odd.
Bodies and brains are such complex things.
I do a lot of numbing out and disassociating myself with online Boggle, reruns and social media scrolling. I'm sorry to hear about your traumatic times, though it's a bit intriguing to me, because, when I'm traumatized, I have the opposite effect of not sleeping. But near narcolepsy sounds dreadful and scary like sleep paralysis. Very true--our bodies and brains are so complex. It's intriguing the ways in which our minds try to keep us safe from trauma in their physiological and visceral responses.
I have definitely had insomnia related to a ruminating mind throughout much of my life, which is really probably how I came to use tv and phone games for numbing in the first place, just trying to get through the nights.
In terms of trauma responses, this was like an exaggerated version of "freeze" with a little bit of "flop" and "fawn" in there. In retrospect it is pretty fascinating. Shortly after it happened, it was pretty terrifying (while in the moment it wasn't much of anything since it was by nature numb).
That does sound like a definite trauma response. The fawn and flop does make sense. <3 Solidarity in trauma survival.
<3 Absolutely <3