Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 7 (Time to get help?)

Should I get help?

The real problems come when the episodes go beyond Acute or Chronic to being Severe or Non-stop. At that point, the human mind will often have that Fight or Flight response kick in.

In Flight, the person may try to run from the experience. Maybe they stay away from all people for unreasonable lengths of time. Perhaps their moods just drop into the darkest regions and refuse to budge. They may try alcohol, drugs, anything to distract themselves from the sudden feelings of isolation, fear, unrealness, disconnection, hopelessness, emptiness.

In Fight, the person may take it upon themselves to force a connection. Violent outbursts to provoke reactions from others might prove the connection is still there because "I did something that had a demonstrable effect on the people or world around me." Violence against myself might be an effort to seek connection through pain.

Or in the ultimate Fight AND Flight reaction, a person might decide to choose the Great Beyond as their new environment. If my reaction to the episode is so titanic, I might become the Titanic and slip permanently under the waves of hopelessness.

If you start having episodes like these, where you find yourself losing that connection to yourself or the rest of creation, a professional evaluation might be the ticket you need to come to grips with them. I shy away from simple on-line questionnaires because they are often skewed towards one interpretation of symptoms or another. A trained person can include more data than what you click Yes or No for.

If your episodes are getting debilitating, or your reactions are getting more extreme, I beg you to seek help. In many parts of the USA (especially my region of the Midwest), there is huge cultural resistance to getting psychological help. It is met with derision and negativity, as is the person seeking the help. Shoot, folks have been known to suffer alone simply because the pain and fear of being stigmatized as “crazy” is too much for them.

What you decide is your business, of course. But let me say in conclusion how I feel about it:

I’ve been called many things in my life designed to hurt me. People have formed opinions about me that were not based on how I really am. I have been threatened and bullied, emotionally abused and mentally manipulated. Screw ‘em.

My brain, my life. I don’t care whether others like it or not, I’ve got some issues and I’m going to get better. I’m not going to hide them under a rug or in a back room behind a locked door. I’m going to be better. I’m going to be okay. They won’t, because they enjoy judging and ridiculing others. I’m going to be the master of my issues; those folks who choose to ostracize me will remain the slaves of theirs.

Conclusion

I hope this helps folks understand my battle with the 4 Ds. No doubt other folks have different experiences with these mental and emotional nuisances.

If you know someone who struggles with these things, don’t worry. They aren’t contagious, and there’s no need to avoid them during their struggles. Maybe by reaching out to them you can help them retain a sense of connection. No need to remind them simply that they are merely having a Perception issue; that probably wouldn’t help. Dismissing what another person is experiencing may help you feel less uncomfortable but it doesn’t do a thing for them.

If you’re struggling with these things, please be honest about it. Just as with other folks dismissing your struggle, your dismissal won’t really help you find resolution. If it gets bad enough, consider a course of therapy (whether guided or on your own). If reaching out to a professional is the best course, whatever embarrassment you feel about it will soon be overshadowed by the pride you have in advocating for your own peace, your own wellness.

And try to remember that episodes come and go. Just when you think it’s all gone and will never come back, something might happen and it comes knocking on your door. But that’s okay. It’s just another life cycle, even as it’s frustrating and scary. As it starts, it will stop. As it stops, it will start. But in time, you too might get to that glorious point where you feel a sudden disconnection, shrug your shoulders, and go watch TV or go hang out with friends anyway. You’re going to be okay.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 6 (Gauging an episode)

How to gauge the phenomenon

I am overcoming this stuff gradually.

First, it helped that I got properly diagnosed. My psychologist listened to me explain the symptoms (not as symptoms, but as just a stream of feelings and thoughts about them), then began to rule things out. My family has a notable incidence of schizophrenia and dementia, so let’s just say that anytime I started feeling the connection slip I was 100 times worse off because I feared I was on a one-way trip down a long and unhappy slope.

Second, I am a Virgo. That means I need to understand the crap out of things. So I spent awhile researching these issues. Of course, since the primary issue I was fighting was anxiety-induced depression, these little disorders got put on the backburner for awhile. Not to mention that I had trouble keeping the differences between all the Ds straight for a long time.

Third, I am becoming more and more Mindful. That’s been such a blessing, but I will not proclaim it as a perfect path for everyone. All people have their own path to walk, and when problems arise they need to find the solutions for them. Mine may not work for you, and that’s cool. Try things, get help if you actually could use it, and I wish you peace.

As I’ve been more aware and informed, I’ve realized that I hardly notice the episodes anymore. I am aware they happen, but without the cascading distress they aren’t the paralyzing, maddening events they used to be.

Sometimes my music just doesn’t sound right (yes, my headphones are on correctly – I checked!), so I stop listening to music for a little while. Maybe I have trouble focusing on reading because I am suddenly aware that they are merely patterns of black ink on white paper instead of words with meaning. That’s cool; I’ll go play a video game.

And sometimes I get overwhelmed by sadness at being the last of my alien kind on this God-forsaken ball of rock. Then I text my beloved and let her know I’m feeling totally disconnected from the world (in this case, that means the universe of humanity) and am significantly bumming, at which point she texts back a kiss or a hug or an I Love You, and soon it matters less. No matter how disconnected I feel from my fellow humans, I know they are ready to help me remember: we’re still united.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 5 (Dealing with an episode)

What to do when I drop a connection?

An important thing I do is let folks who are close to me know when I’m having an episode. It helps me not feel like I am going through the experience alone, even if it feels like it. It also alerts them to help me out if I start really suffering through one. Even if the universe seems unreal, the loving hug and kiss from my dearest can work wonders.

I have to keep in mind that all Dissociative episodes, whether they are perception problems about me or everything else, are temporary. If I was cruising along unaware of the disconnected feeling, the moment I start having one is proof that an episode has begun; therefore it will also end.

My biggest strategy is to ride it out until the episode passes. This means I need to employ many tools in my Mindfulness toolkit:

Faith – it started, and it will stop. It will start again sometime, and it will stop in that case too. I am okay regardless.

Acceptance – yeah, it’s happening. Face forward and deal. How I’m feeling about myself or my surroundings doesn’t change their reality or mine; it merely colors my own perception of my reality. If the world doesn’t seem quite right, it’s okay. If I don’t feel quite connected to humanity at the moment, it’s okay.

Be Present – especially when the universe doesn’t feel quite real. I can re-establish my connection to the universe through focus and awareness if I patiently choose to. See, my awareness has shifted without my say so: it’s up to me to get it back. If it’s an internalized thing, then I can be an alien all I need to be, but I’m Here and Now regardless of my perception of self.

Rest – man, I can’t emphasize this enough. Whatever issue a person faces, it’s a tougher slog if they’re worn out.

Take action – one common strategy for coping is to immerse oneself with sensory input that reconnects us with the world around us.  Engage the universe perceptually through the senses. When we perceive the universe it becomes real to us. The more we perceive it, the more real it becomes. Therefore as we engage the universe with our senses mindfully, consciously, reality reasserts itself in our minds.

Engage – by staying social and involved in routine and life, the episodes are likely to pass more quickly and cause less anxiety. Let the people closest to you know you’re struggling if that would help them not feel so shut out all of a sudden or distressed as you seem to be very distracted. Sure, you might need to limit your social activity at times, but make sure you are just visiting the cave and not moving into it.

Be aware – view it realistically and gauge how “bad’ the situation really is. The earliest episodes seem horrible, because you suddenly feel like everything you believed (that is, took for granted) about the real world is turned on its ear. But if you can understand just how relative the issue actually is, you can adjust your response mindfully.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 3 (Depersonalization)

Depersonalization: Who am I again?

This is generally called an identity disorder, because it plays with your sense of who you are.

Some folks say they feel unreal, or like they don’t recognize themselves.

I’ve often said I feel like an alien and not totally related to the human race.

For me it really isn’t about losing my identity, or thinking I’m not really a human being. It has to do with the perception of the Self. Instead of feeling associated – connected – to humanity, I feel set apart from the people in my life. I don’t feel like they’re odd or unreal; it’s all a perception of me.

For me that’s the difference between Depersonalization and Derealization: Depersonalization is me; Derealization is everything else.

What happens is at some point a perception shift occurs. I go from experiencing “David” as a regular Joe who I hardly notice to experiencing “David” as a being totally alone, totally removed from “his kind,” or people like him. I become hyper-aware and hyper-focused on my uniqueness, and that only amplifies my sense of detachment from humanity.

Sometimes I like the notion that I’m significantly different from what I perceive as patterns in humanity at a particular moment. But honestly, sometimes I wish I had someone just like me to talk to about how I see and feel things, someone who “really gets it.”

Since it’s a perspective thing, I feel a bit better when I really wrap my focus around a few facts that I forget in those moments:

·         We are all unique, and in that sense there is no one “like” us. Even twins and clones will have differences in time.

·         People may never totally get what it’s like in my head, but there are many folks in my life who love me unconditionally anyway. They will do their best to listen and be there for me. Just as I don’t have to totally understand everything they go through in order to be there for them, they can be there for me regardless.

·         There actually are a bunch of folks around the world who are also feeling disjointed, disconnected, alien. It turns out that I’m not as unusual as I feel.

·         A bit ago, I felt fine and connected, which means that if this thing has a start point, it will also have an end point.

A Depersonalization episode can be very distracting, not to mention scary. Few people like to focus on themselves at vulnerable moments, but suddenly you have no choice. You are grabbed by the shirt collar and forced to look at the image in the funhouse mirror. What you see is distorted and you just can’t imagine what you see is actually you.

Having a disconnection from yourself can lead to a person being so distracted by the sensation that they start removing themselves from active involvement in things, whether just at the moment or perhaps entirely. How you feel about you affects how you interact with others and the world, so by thinking there’s something so wrong with you it can’t help but filter out into everything else.

Mindfulness and My 4D Life - Part 2 (Dissociative Disorder)

Dissociative Disorder: Sorry, your connection was lost

Here is my flawed understanding of what these Dissociative Disorders are all about for me.

My more-or-less literal translation of the 4 Ds is that my Connection has been lost along with my mind’s sense of Order, whether the lost connection is with Myself or Everything Else.

Everything you think and feel is based on associations. That’s why some folks can love things you can’t stand: they have a different association with that thing. Or why you really love someone who your parents can’t stand. These associations are developed by experiencing the universe through your senses and making connections; thoughts and emotions are connected to experiences and people.

These connections – these associations – we usually take for granted; except when someone tells us they enjoy mayonnaise in their chili or having spiders crawl on their face, and then we look at them as if they’ve lost their minds for having such warped views.

Mindfulness in particular teaches us to stop hurrying from point A to point B all the time at the expense of feeling and experiencing the Here and Now of the many steps in the journey. It teaches us that we are all connected to the people and universe around us, and that it is very grounding to get consciously in touch with that connection.

Now imagine you’re talking to your best friend, and suddenly your words sound hollow in your ears. Sounds almost seem to drop from “normal” to “flat.” Or maybe I just suddenly become hyper-aware of how uniquely different I am from this friend. It’s disorienting to suddenly be so completely robbed of your connection even as the words leave your mouth, especially when the friend just converses on, oblivious that a huge shift has occurred.

Now imagine you’re in the middle of a conversation with your boss about why his new budget initiative will bankrupt the company within the hour, and BAM! Just like that you are ripped away from the Here and Now and plunged into another universe that looks and feels and sounds and tastes and smells just like the one you’re from, but you know in your bones that it isn’t the real world.

Sights and sounds seem flat, like you’re watching a closed circuit TV transmission of your interactions with the world, real-time but not really here. Now you’re in the ultimate interactive video game, one where the main character does everything you do, but it isn’t really you: it’s the character you’re controlling in the game you’re playing.

We’re talking about a sudden dissociation, the opposite of association; a loss of connection rather than the achievement or maintaining of connection. Connection to what, you ask? Oh man. Everything.

So this is a perception issue. I’m not really being yanked into a parallel earth, although that might actually make me feel better about the episode: it would at least make sense then. This sudden event makes no sense to me from the moment it happens.

My subconscious awareness of connection to the grand world around me is suddenly shaken, and all I’m left with is an overwhelming, undeniable, conscious sensation that I’ve just lost that connection.

From there, it varies based on what suddenly doesn’t seem right anymore.

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?