Loss Of Self: Dissociation & Depersonalization episodes

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Well... The psychologist that diagnosed me said I didn't need any treatment. He said that I could cure it myself by doing relaxation exercises at home. He was dead wrong. He didn't offer me any medication or any course of treatment for my DPD. All he offered was a crappy counselor. This psychologist said that I wasn't on the autistic spectrum even though I was diagnosed autistic as a toddler, and I flap my hands, have noise sensitivities, etc. I'm still pretty pissed about all that. I guess it's what I get for going to a clinic that gives me free service if I don't make enough money.

On the job subject.... I have troubles with keeping jobs. I am not sure if my DPD, an anxiety disorder, or my aspie-ness is to blame. I know that never having any good feelings leads to me having depression and that interferes with my job. I usually can only work a job for six months before the depression gets to me and I quit. At other times, things that would normally bug me don't because I avoid them by depersonalizing. All in all, DPD creates more problems than it helps.

When my episode is bad, I really sink inside myself. It may be different for other people, but I dissociate by daydreaming. When I am having a very bad episode, my attention span is shot. So much so that I have trouble following a sentence much less a conversation. It becomes dangerous for me to drive.


If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.

Last edited by Isthisreal on 23 Dec 2008, 12:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Is is like when you feel like you are observing everything from inside , but not experiencing it. Kind of like you are seeing it out of your eyes, but not connected with anything else,such as feelings? You exisist, but you are a shell with nothing inside it.

I have serious problems with perceiving reality and processing sensory informations. I feel unreal. And my life feel like some sort of bad movie... Recorded by my eyes onto my brain. And it feels like I can delete evry part of my life and every experiance I have without the chance of getting it back... And it feels like it is uncontrollable and like I have got no control on my brain and my body. I have memory problems; f*****g serious memory problems and therefore problems with distinguishing reality from my thoughts, fantasies and dreams...

That is how I feel when it comes to leaving my home and going out into the NT world. I hate working... like what you describe. I get great jobs and then quit them. Only I quit after about 3 months. I have been this way since my second traumatic experience. I am much happier at home where I don't have to have relationships with others. I think that is a kind of phobia I've developed against harassers and bullies, that I might run into another sociopath. I don't want to know what any other NTs has in their mind. What I feel is a kind of sense of alienation that is not DPD but not inconsistent with the depersonalization feelings I had after my second trauma.

I had 3 dissociative episodes in college. The first one was for 2 weeks, the next 2 lasted only a few days each. I have not experienced it since. I can only assume it was stress-related.

It is probably not a good idea for anyone that can't compartmentalize very well to dwell too deeply on such matters. I highly suspect police officers are typically like they are for this reason. The psychs that screen for police recruiting or counsel them could get into much more detail but when your everyday job is trying to pry open the minds and predict the actions and behaviors of some of the most twisted people in our society you are going to need some really strong walls to be able to put everything back into a box at night [without resorting to "self medication"]. Even then there is going to be leaks and contamination that they are going to have to be guarding against.

If I grok your description of what you do, basically what you did was create a "stim" that was "thinking like the sociopath". So you were creating a situation of tension between feeling compelled to do it and repulsed by the horror of it? Yes, that sounds very dangerous.


P.S. I find the topic of "synesthetic somatic systemizer" interesting. I tried I tried using Search to locate those other posts but no dice (your name against "somatic" turned up no hits). I don't want to derail this thread though, can you give any link help?

I can identify with that. If some event happens and a couple hours go by, sometimes I can't remember if that event happened today. yesterday, a few days ago, or last week.

My worst depersonalization episodes happen while I am working. I really hate working a job. I think it is because I have to be around people and that makes my anxiety act up. Or maybe it is because doing the same pointless crap over and over again each day makes me depressed( I mainly work in factories). I don't know. I had a part time teaching job once, and I loved that though(I taught A+ and Net+ classes).

Hi DwightF, It's nice to hear your interest in my concepts. Actually, I have created my own "field of study" so to speak to describe social cognitive behaviors, which involved developing my own terminology. The techniques I use to analyze cognitive function is more based on mathematical functional analysis methods. I usually don't refer to NT world literature much, simply because my time is limited. So even if you did find the terms that I'm using, they may not match up well to anything out there in NT world. It's nice when someone expresses an interest in something I say, because I'm working all alone and never get any validation. Thank you!

You are exactly right about not being able to compartmentalize. Inability to compartmentalize was a huge factor in my distress. Sociopaths and abusively personality-disordered people are, among other things, very good at compartmentalization. That is how they are able to keep their compulsions and thought behaviors hidden and under control. This is also a feature of the NT mind that allows them to shift into different behavior models as they move from group to group, that AS lack. Some of the cognitive behaviors of sociopaths are extremely compulsive, as are most personality disordered constructs that affect identity and personality. People say that these things are incurable, but I don't think they are. IMO sociopaths and narcissists can be cured if they can be forced to give up compartmentalization long enough to establish a new identity and personalty structure independent of their disordered ones. Some cognitive behavior functions in my mind became like computer viruses and ate my operating system, because I couldn't compartmentalize and contain them. I think that I might have dissociated, or depersonalized, a bit, on account of my horror at the sociopathic crap in my head that couldn't be compartmentalized.

>>"If I grok your description of what you do, basically what you did was create a "stim" that was "thinking like the sociopath". So you were creating a situation of tension between feeling compelled to do it and repulsed by the horror of it? Yes, that sounds very dangerous."

Well, that is the general framework but the internal modeling itself wasn't a stim. But rather, I construct these internal models, representations of systems that fascinate me, and then (I have a theory) because I am synesthetic, I enjoy the abstract experiences of sensory stimulation when I am thinking about my special interest. But the system itself isn't a stim, just that I get a stimming effect from thinking about it.

Like if I were fascinated by railroads, and collected schedules and routes. I would "feel" the system, and when it got too congested in one area, I would feel that in sort of an abstract representation of my body. Like Daniel Tammet who "experiences" the colors of numbers (but doesn't really see the colors as if he thought they were in the air in front of him). He probably has a synesthetic thing where he has some kind of abstract representation of a field of vision in his mind in which he has the experience of seeing the colors. Like his visual cortex functions are used to "think" with, and his analytic functions occur in a cognitive space that is an abstract projection of his visual cortex onto a conscious analytic process space.

I'm starting to develop a sense of this depersonalization experience as occurring in an abstract sensation of Self place that was corroded by my psychological trauma systemizing the sociopath inappropriately in my AS mind. Just as we synesthetically have an experience of colors of numbers (Daniel Tammet) in a kind of abstract visual space, or sensual experience of systems (myself) in an abstract tactile space, we all of us also have an experience of Self that takes place in a kind of abstract identity place, that is analogous to our physical sense of location. So it would make sense that the brain scan study I posted earlier would show activation and also heavy chemical processes in the somatosensory cortex of the brain during depersonalization experiences.

Depersonalization is a sort of negation -- or opposite -- of synesthesia, as it occurs in the functions of the systems that support identity. It is the absence of the "sensation" of experience of Self in the abstract identity space, however the person is wired as an individual to sense their experiences of self (i.e. qualia, which are kind of like units of how we experience reality, in existential philosophy).

If I figure it out, I will have an algorithm for fixing it, at least in my own methodology.

i used to get strong depersonalization episodes where it really did feel like i was just watching a movie. it caused me a lot of anxiety, which would only make it worse. now i don't get them as often, they aren't as frequent, and they don't cause anxiety so i don't worry about it.

Wow, alot of interesting comments and questions that I would like to respond to. I have been reading over most of the comments thus far (except for Magliabechi's messages, which I merely briefly skimmed. MR and ephemerella's responses to him were more than sufficient, thanks you two.). However, I find myself becoming increasingly disenfranchised with WP and people in general, and am too afraid and too hurt to respond to your comments and questions.

I will say this. Although I am not a psychologist, I am a scientist and philosopher trained to be able to enter disciplines beyond my specialties. Thus far I have found only one vague research paper on the connection between DPD and autism. There is plenty of work on the connection of DD and DPD to schizophrenia and OCD, but not ASD. But just consider how important such a connection might be. For those of you who have experiences a depersonalization episode, imagine that episode was much much more intense and was ongoing and started at infancy. How might such a child grow up, developmentally? I highly suspect they would appear as low functioning autistics. Note, that was all conjecture on my part. I suspect most of the people you meet with an ASD and DPD developed DPD later in life (like during adolescance), thus allowing them to have some capacity towards normal functioning.
Then there are others, such as myself who experienced DPD episodes as long as I can remember (at least 5 years old), but with frequent short durations.

Anyone interested in doing some pscyhology research that will lead to some publications? hehehe.

For now I just want to help others who may suffer unknowingly from DPD so that they can recieve proper treatment, and in particular for a friend whom I suspect has severe DPD and is on the spectrum.

If I am around and feeling well enough to respond, I will post more info, answer questions, and give some support for others out there.

Sincerely,
"What's his name" aka "the miserable sob"

PS: you know about "qualia" ephemerella? Epistemology is one of my philosphical specialties.

^Very interested. But I have to go now. Too many long posts today. We are going to Cape Cod for a while. So I will be checking out for a period of maybe weeks after this post.

I think that there are lots of interesting, very smart people (along with the interesting, very smart people who are already here) who check in and out of WP but don't really say much unless they see something compelling. You could maybe create a corner of WP that suits you well, as you have been trying to do? "Build it and they will come" sort of thing?

I never saw anything about DPD before, and was surprised when you posted your thread. It is very interesting.

Gotta go now...



Edited to add: No, it would not be that hard to write some papers in this area at all given the place we are at right now with neuroscience & brain imaging & AS research all developing at once. AS are uniquely equipped to give algorithmic answers to what NTs think are subjective experiences.

Just checked back in before leaving again. You should stay. I'm sorry if my aggressive verbal style has been too much sometimes.

I'll bookmark the thread.

I'm still reading about some of these things philosophy topics now. In college I took classical and modern philosophy classes, but the modern was more with emphasis on John Stuart Mill and rights-minded issues.

I'm really glad I found this thread. I was going to post exactly the same thing to find out if there was any sort of connection between AS and DPD. So instead of starting a new thread now I'm just going to revive this one in case I'm not the only one who has joined WP since this thread died and might be interested in it... You just never know

yes. i experience derealization almost every time the weather changes. it's weird, and i didn't know that it was called this until just a week ago, and it has fascinated and disturbed me. i don't like the idea of being associated with anything other than autism, because people sometimes think i'm crazy because i have language processing issues. it is really refreshing to know that i am not the only one who experiences things like this, because i thought i was crazy the first time it happened (in college) and freaked out, but my doc says it is mostly normal for autism and anxiety, which made me feel much better.

i used to have DP/DR. It was a scary and annoying experience. It was aggravated by loud noise, light, especially fluorescent lights. I sleep more, eat healthier, and removed stressors from my life and it seems to be happening less frequently.

I selected "I don't think anything is real (I have derealization)" although the description is a bit odd, I know everything is real but I feel like I am in a dream. I don't have it all the time but I do have it ever such a lot and it can last for days. I would say I have it somewhere between 50-85% of the time and I really hate it. Both my daughters who are on the spectrum have it too, so there is definitely some correlation with autism, or at least with the autism us three have that is genetically caused.

Having said the above, someone posted a thread about DID the other day and I took the test and scored for having DID (and other thread I scored for alexithymia) so I don't know if I should have selected the other option on your poll saying I strongly suspect I have it, I mean an online test is not diagnostic so it's hard to say.