Woah, that same thing happens to me sometimes. I am so grateful for you sharing what you've learned here because I did think it was a return of psychosis or something... its so hard for me to sort out because they are so linked all of the ptsd and dissociative stuff happening at the same time as the psychosis.

I was driving to the bank one day and heard a voice in my head say "turn left!" and turned, away from the bank and was suddenly lost, even though every street in this town is familiar to me. I felt like I should know where I am, but I didn't. Nothing was recognizable.

Another time I was talking on the phone with a friend when their voice became garbly gook- I couldn't understand anything they were saying it was just like with the driving, nothing was familiar. Like it was another language it made no sense.

I don't think this means you are "regressing" but take care of yourself. For me it meant that my comfort zone had shrunk and I needed very much to get back to that safe zone to grow again.

One thing to remember is that having PTSD symptoms doesn't mean you've failed.  What I have been learning is that the goal isn't to make the symptoms all just go away, but to be able to handle them better and know what they are.  You did that, you figured it out, you got home safely, you realized the trigger.  It's like having arthritis, and when it gets damp and it hurts more, you cannot blame yourself.  You just do what you have to.

And please don't beat yourself up!  It's not your fault you have dissociation when you see lights like that sometimes.  You don't really have control over that.  It's the abusers' faults.  Try to have compassion for yourself.  I say this possibly because I am so hard on myself too.  I am sorry that happened to you.  It sounded scary.  But maybe you can take strength is that it happens a lot less than before and you can handle them much better?

My psychologist talks about how mindfulness based therapies don't try to take away the pain, they try to get you to form a new relationship with interacting with the pain.  Because the pain doesn't really go away when we try to run from it.  I am not really enjoying this for my chronic pain, but he's right, all the stuff I have done to try to avoid pain - emotional and physical - have only resulted in more pain - isolation, boyfriends, drugs, suicide attempts, eating, avoidance stuff.  When we can stop judging what is going on with us as bad or good and be with it, then supposedly we get relief.  The disscoiation wasn't your fault and you figured it out.  That is way better than I bet you were at 5 years ago or a year ago?  5 years ago I would have thought I was psychotic and taken more pills to handle it.  We cannot really control what goes on inside of us, but we can change our relationship to it, so please don't be mad at yourself for things you cannot control - and be proud of yourself for what you can control and are doing to make things better for you.

As a survivor I see how easy it is for me to take the blame for everything.  This dissociation was not your fault.  You are innocent.

"It's the end," said the caterpillar. "It's the beginning," said the butterfly.

Kaliope, when I have a period where I am doing better, and especially if I have made changes with meds so there is room for self-doubt,  I give myself a hard time when something goes wrong.  But I try to remind myself that 'better' doesn't mean perfect.  So, no matter how well a person ends up doing, there will be sometimes back sliding or difficult times.  So sleep used to be an issue for me, and I have pretty much solved that problem because it was largely a side-effect and I have reduced that med...but if I have a bad night, all this doubt rushes in, and I get so anxious about the insomnia that it just makes it worse.

That's all I can think to say right now.  There will always be times when things are worse for a bit but it doesn't negate that you have been doing better.