something i don’t see talked about in the system community enough are the dissociative shutdowns.
when you’re in a system, you know what it feels like to not have control over your body because somebody else does. so, when you’re supposed to be controlling the body and, when life hits the fan, suddenly it won’t do anything you want it to do, it’s terrifying.
the world feels crushing yet far away at the same time. your eyes are looking around, but they’re not truly seeing. you can hear someone talking, and you can’t respond— and if you are, the words falling off your lips are foreign and feel numb on your tongue.
when you’re in that state you feel nothing. you don’t notice your own actions (if you can even muster any), you don’t register touch or pain, you don’t feel cold, you don’t feel heat.
hours pass. maybe it’s only minutes? it’s impossible to tell. you’re frozen in time and space but everything is still moving on around you.
then all the sudden it’s over. at least it seems over. something still feels… wrong. but there’s no time to address that.
as time goes on, it turns out that you never really circle back to why that happened. until it happens again. then you ignore it. the cycle continues.
