Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 1 (What are the 4 Ds?)

My life has a 4D quality:

Dissociative Disorder – Depersonalization and Derealization.

This is a tricky bunch, because I gather from reading about them that there are some standard definitions but a certain amount of leeway has to be granted. Not everyone has exactly the same experience or symptomology.

I understand that the DSM exists to standardize psychological symptoms into categories for ease of treatment (and probably insurance coverage. But I digress.). But often it seems to try and pigeonhole folks into vague or general categories without being able to properly account for the colors and textures that vary from one patient to the next.

So I will do my best and explain my flavor of this package disorder. When I say it’s a package, it is for me. I can’t comment on what other folks experience.

Here is the basic issue: sometimes I feel like an alien only roughly related to humanity, and other times I feel normal but I perceive the world around me as kind of unreal.

I’m not saying I’m ET, nor am I suggesting that I’m trying to escape the Matrix. Just that I have episodes where reality… well, ain’t quite real.

Most of the stress and anxiety from a dissociative episode stems from a few things: it’s jarring, it’s unpredictable, and it hijacks your conscious awareness. But most of all, for me, it’s because of my instant judgment of the episode: it’s a Bad Thing.

Anxiety ramps up when we stop seeing certain events of our lives as Things that are happening and start seeing them as Bad Things that are happening. If they make us uncomfortable, or aren’t what we want, we’re quick to slap a judgment label on them. Once we focus on how Bad these events are our Contentment Tank gets a huge leak and will run dry if we don’t get in there and do something about it.

I start making a huge deal about it in my mind using circular logic and assertions of how things ought to be.

Obsessive Self: “This shouldn’t be happening.”

Mindful Self: “But it is.”

“Yeah, but it shouldn’t be! Don’t you get it?”

“Yes, I get it. Regardless, it’s happening.”

“Yeah but it shouldn’t be! It’s really wrong!”

“It isn’t wrong, it is what it is. It is, however, hijacking your awareness.”

“I know! And that’s BAD!”

It sounds funny in writing, but trust me, that’s pretty much how the process snowballs in my mind within seconds.

Since it’s perceptions that are impacted, that’s where I concentrate my efforts to deal with depersonalization and derealization episodes.

If I had to choose, I’d rather experience derealization over depersonalization.  Going to sleep can remove you from the universe in a way, so it doesn’t matter if the world seems off at that point: you’re leaving it anyway. But if I feel off, it intrudes on my very sense of self, and I’m not comfortable or at ease anywhere doing anything.

Now this has nothing to do with brain-altering substances; I don’t drink alcohol or partake of anything more than temazepam certain nights. No, this was probably brought on by a number of issues growing up, which I won’t bore anyone with here, although I’ll bet I do before this series is over.

Suffice it to say, my sense of identity and place in the universe is a little odd at times.

I’ve often spoke of myself as an alien, as if I wasn’t human. I based that on how I perceived “normal people” behaved, and realized how WAY DIFFERENT I was. This got worse in time, simply because I found myself meeting lots of folks from many different walks of life, and I still never felt that I was quite like them. I felt like I was Different.

Eventually this was joined with a sense at times that what I was experiencing around me wasn’t quite real. I’ve read that some compare it to the sensation of watching the world around them as if it were a movie or a television program. Some describe it as a hazy, gauzy, dreamlike state. For me it was not really like that. I won’t say it was more profoundly disturbing than how other people perceive it, because everyone’s experience disturbs them. But I will say that, to me, my experience is supremely freaky.

Let’s look a little deeper, shall we?