03 March, 2010

I wanted to tell you this

I am going to counseling on Friday but I've basically thought that there's something wrong with me because I'm experiencing constant derealization and frequently I have to concentrate to keep from screaming/crying about something that ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal (waiting for a sandwich, waiting in line, waiting for a class to end). This started a week ago. Well, maybe it happened before, but I noticed the day I shaved my eyebrows. For periods I have thought "oh, it's getting better" but they're only periods. It's not permanent. I can hardly understand what people are saying sometimes, it just looks like a bunch of colors.

I got scared that I was going to be a person who loses skills.

Fortunately I saw Noah who is going to be a psychologist and is basically a joy, and I told him and showed him how much I have to press on my hands with my fingers all the time in an attempt to keep myself inside, and how I feel like I'm constantly in a state of yammering "I can't believe I'm alive, I can't believe I'm alive right here, right now" (this sounds nice but it's not, not all the time--derealization starts out seeming really fucking spiritual or something, but then you're like, shit--I can't do anything when my brain won't stop telling me I'm alive, I can't even feel God because I'm stuck in a creepy spaced-out box of my distinct moment and place).

Anyway, I was talking about how scary and weird it is to find out that something's been wrong with me ever since I came back from the UK--I mean, that must be it, because I'm taking like no classes, two of the four only meet once a week, and Noah was like, "what about your workload?" and I told Noah my workload and Noah was like, "That's a ton of work."

And I was kind of shocked. But like, I think it might just be a ton of work. Maybe I can't get anything done because there's so much to do.

In other news: I think everyone thinks that they like sex too much. Well, I mean, obviously some people are asexual. But I think you can even be asexual and think that you like sex too much. Or think that you want a girlfriend or boyfriend too much. Or that no one eats as much junk food as you do or does as little homework as you do or is as ugly as you or smells as bad as you're afraid you smell. And I think this is especially true for ASD people because we are trained to think of ourselves as deviant and overly intense--but it probably is the case for a lot of other people, too. I just wanted to tell you this because I thought of it later.

4 comments:

  1. This is a really good explanation and expression of the depersonalisation/derealisation phenomenon.

    (Depersonalisation is the third most common symptom, right after anxiety and depression).

    Someone named Janine Burke created a Web community which I started visiting around the end of 2004-beginning of 2005.

    We would call it displacement and the compression effect.

    Here is the DP Self-Help forum

    My main memory of the forum is this guy named Matthew being ticked off for "black and white thinking".

    Depersonalisation Info

    Dreamchild.net: I think I linked to this long ago (circa 2006)

    The last paragraph is terrific.

    Noah saw the workload, and then the hidden workload.

    Watch that cortisol!

    Those were some of the things which put me into the mood/psychotic spectrum some four years ago now.

    There's a suggestion in Wikipedia about hypo-emotionality in the visual sense. The perception of how emotions become coloured.

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  2. I just wanted to let you know I love reading your blog. I have major depressive disorder and I have had weird feelings like this sometimes. You express yourself in writing so beautifully. Take care of yourself!!! =)

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  3. This sounds like nothing I understand. For that reason, I'm so glad you wrote about it.

    I really enjoy reading you blog. Thanks.

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  4. is it different from anxiety attacks? When I was in college I went through a period where I was very alone & stressed out and I would have anxiety attacks where my vision would get "funny" and I would have to poke myself or say multiplication tables to try to stop feeling depersonalized(I have ASD, btw). Hope you feel better--depression is hard to deal with.

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