Sometimes whenever I'm extremely stressed out or triggered by something, there's a part of me called A that tries to calm me down. I end up sitting there for who knows how long trapped inside of my head and will end up having a conversation with A (I can't tell if it's just me talking to myself honestly, but I don't have any control over it), and end up being fairly dissociative afterwards (nothing feels real, I don't feel like me, I become very spacey, etc.).

Usually whenever I feel like A for longer periods of time, my memory of it is really blurry and I have to rely on my journal entries. But sometimes they only stay for a few hours and it's a lot easier to remember (though I tend to forget it even happened after a few days). When that happens, it always starts with me getting triggered, panicking, not being able to calm myself down, A talking to me and finally getting me to calm down, and sometimes taking control of my body until I'm "ready" to come back. It's so confusing because I'm not completely gone when it happens, I can still think thoughts and witness everything going on, I'm just not controlling my actions because A is. A does listen to me if I want to do something though. It's sort of like watching someone playing a video game, so while you can't directly control what they do, they can still hear you and listen to you. But instead of there being two different people, it's like the person playing the game is a ghost who can interact with objects.

I think A sometimes takes the form of a specific fictional character (I have no control over this, I'm not actively imagining them and I can't get them to go away at will), but that can sometimes cause problems because I'll feel like that character is watching me and listening to my thoughts when I don't want them to. I don't have a problem when A sees everything going on in my head though. A doesn't feel like the character, I think they're just trying to find a visual representation of themselves to try and help me calm down faster and A's personality is fairly similar to the character's (though A existed way before I knew who the character was), so it's just easier to do that most of the time. But if they see it's stressing me out, they'll stop.

When I start to come back, A doesn't fully go away and it feels like they're the one spectating me until they're sure I'm okay again. They do still sort of linger afterwards for a few hours sometimes, it just depends.