Derealization / Depersonalization.
I get the two of these mixed up quite often.
Derealization sounds like what depersonalization is. And depersonalization sounds like something completely different. I once told Dr. Steven Frankel in a class that I thought there ought to be more specific words for the various states of dissociation. I mean most of the various states actually don't get their own name. You just have to figure it out when they say, "He dissociated." What? He looked blank? He looked numb? He looked like another person? He had the spirit of a Loa riding him? What?
I don't think Steven agreed and he seemed a little grumpy from my question. But I was the youngest least trained person in the group and maybe he wasn't sure I knew what I was talking about yet.
When my sister was little she had the ability to stop watches. She did not mean to. They simply stopped while she was wearing them. They did this so frequently that my mother bought my sister a watch she could wear on a neck chain to see if this would alter the effect. My mother felt proud of my odd sister's ability. She had decided that the watches stopped because my sister was somehow particularly special. That she was paranormal. She was protected.
Clocks stopped ceasing to tick on my sister's wrist when she was about 16 years old. It's unclear why the "gift" simply went away at that time. We have never discussed it as a family.
I have since read somewhere that some people believe exposure to trauma can profoundly effect a person's personal electromagnetic energy. Sometimes it can so disruptive that the effect of the past trauma can even stop watches. I don't think any experiments have been done on this.
At around 16, my sister would frequently slip into these mental spaces where she felt that she was not really walking in the real world instead she was passing through "God's Doll House." Everything would feel just this side of plastic. No one existed in reality but her.
I knew what she meant. But for me, I felt as if I were witnessing a movie as it was being filmed. I suppose it was a reverse of her situation. Everything around me was real, albeit scripted, and I was the removed one. Everything felt fragile. My body felt frozen by cold. My senses felt dulled as a result. Snow. I always tend to associate the feeling of dissociation with the feel and smell of snow. Funny, since I never grew up around any.
This is derealization. The feeling like you are not really a person and this is not really a world.
When in this state, I could and I did spill a steaming hot coffee over my hands and I did not feel a thing.
I remember having a small argument with a customer at a coffee house I worked at who looked at me in horror when I did not flinch as her cappuccino ran over the back of my hand. She could not understand why I took it as a point of pride to be more concerned about her drink than my skin. I could not understand why she did not respect my desire for perfect customer service.
To me, the definition of this state sounds like the word depersonalization. You are not a person, but one looking through the skin of someone who supposes to be a person.
Depersonalization is when you feel like your hands are made of a thick rubber that will strangely blow away when the wind is too strong. This is how I feel it, anyway. Maybe you have felt it differently. It's also the name for the sensation that I have when I curl up very small in the back of my head and just observe "myself." I am myself but I am not myself and I can witness my hands perform various actions. I can feel the slightest tug that they are the same hands that hold my own body to sleep each night.
There are other kinds of dissociation that don't have specific names. There is the feeling I get when I decide I don't want to feel anymore. I flick that small internal switch and almost hear an audible click. Then my nose becomes numb and everything around me looks like I am peering through a white lace fascinator. I am existing two inches back behind my actual face. There is actually a fine line between feeling nothing and feeling bliss.
I must confess I do not have the fine control over this function that I once had in my life. I am too connected to the world these days to slip lazily between the cracks of dissociation. I would be lying if I did not admit that I deeply miss this ability. Though I would not trade my new found ability to feel everything for the world.
I used to spend so much time in a dissociated state every day that those brief periods when I was not felt like the times when a swimmer in a heavily chlorinated pool pushes their head above water, particularly when they feel like they might have been under too long and feel a hair's width panic before drowning. Their throat stings and their nasal passages burn. Every breath hurts. And then they take a deep breath and go down again.
There is a different moment of dissociation where it feels as though my body is directed by a second person who wears my skin sharper and meaner than I. When I can recognize the second director who doesn't exist, the entire cloud lifts and I can think in singular again. I can only compare it to Alice entering the house by running farther away.
Then there are fun aspects of dissociation called Micropsia. When I am very very anxious people and /or objects will shrink before me and become very tiny. Almost the size of a pin in some cases. And I feel as though I am watching them from very far away. Possibly from the other side of a long tunnel with no sides. It can happen very fast or come on quite slowly. It never lasts very long though at times it blinks in and out like an unsteady traffic light.
Macropsia is the opposite of this "eat me/drink me" phenomenon. Things become very large, suddenly and fill up the entire field of vision. I have experienced this, but only once or twice.
Wikipedia cited the psychological cause of Micropsia to be this "Micropsia may also be a symptom of psychological conditions in which patients visualize people as small objects as a way to control others in response to their insecurities and feelings of weakness."
When I experience it I, personally, feel panicked and I wish I could dig into the wall behind me to escape. I sense it like a glaze of terror when I don't know what to say but feel pinned to the spot.
I think that Wikipedia line was written by an analyst who wanted to make a cute and smart sounding observation. I don't think that line was written by anyone who had ever experienced a form of dissociation. If you ask the average person afflicted with dissociation they would tell you that most of the time they don't feel as if they are ever controlling anything. And that is the point of dissociation, is it not?
You can't fight back and you can't run away, so you freeze. It's the only thing that you can really control in the end, right? When you cannot control what happens to your own body you can try to control just what it feels. And you can try to control just how deep you breathe. Though eventually that control develops its own control and you lose that, too.
Derealization sounds like what depersonalization is. And depersonalization sounds like something completely different. I once told Dr. Steven Frankel in a class that I thought there ought to be more specific words for the various states of dissociation. I mean most of the various states actually don't get their own name. You just have to figure it out when they say, "He dissociated." What? He looked blank? He looked numb? He looked like another person? He had the spirit of a Loa riding him? What?
I don't think Steven agreed and he seemed a little grumpy from my question. But I was the youngest least trained person in the group and maybe he wasn't sure I knew what I was talking about yet.
When my sister was little she had the ability to stop watches. She did not mean to. They simply stopped while she was wearing them. They did this so frequently that my mother bought my sister a watch she could wear on a neck chain to see if this would alter the effect. My mother felt proud of my odd sister's ability. She had decided that the watches stopped because my sister was somehow particularly special. That she was paranormal. She was protected.
Clocks stopped ceasing to tick on my sister's wrist when she was about 16 years old. It's unclear why the "gift" simply went away at that time. We have never discussed it as a family.
I have since read somewhere that some people believe exposure to trauma can profoundly effect a person's personal electromagnetic energy. Sometimes it can so disruptive that the effect of the past trauma can even stop watches. I don't think any experiments have been done on this.
At around 16, my sister would frequently slip into these mental spaces where she felt that she was not really walking in the real world instead she was passing through "God's Doll House." Everything would feel just this side of plastic. No one existed in reality but her.
I knew what she meant. But for me, I felt as if I were witnessing a movie as it was being filmed. I suppose it was a reverse of her situation. Everything around me was real, albeit scripted, and I was the removed one. Everything felt fragile. My body felt frozen by cold. My senses felt dulled as a result. Snow. I always tend to associate the feeling of dissociation with the feel and smell of snow. Funny, since I never grew up around any.
This is derealization. The feeling like you are not really a person and this is not really a world.
When in this state, I could and I did spill a steaming hot coffee over my hands and I did not feel a thing.
I remember having a small argument with a customer at a coffee house I worked at who looked at me in horror when I did not flinch as her cappuccino ran over the back of my hand. She could not understand why I took it as a point of pride to be more concerned about her drink than my skin. I could not understand why she did not respect my desire for perfect customer service.
To me, the definition of this state sounds like the word depersonalization. You are not a person, but one looking through the skin of someone who supposes to be a person.
Depersonalization is when you feel like your hands are made of a thick rubber that will strangely blow away when the wind is too strong. This is how I feel it, anyway. Maybe you have felt it differently. It's also the name for the sensation that I have when I curl up very small in the back of my head and just observe "myself." I am myself but I am not myself and I can witness my hands perform various actions. I can feel the slightest tug that they are the same hands that hold my own body to sleep each night.
There are other kinds of dissociation that don't have specific names. There is the feeling I get when I decide I don't want to feel anymore. I flick that small internal switch and almost hear an audible click. Then my nose becomes numb and everything around me looks like I am peering through a white lace fascinator. I am existing two inches back behind my actual face. There is actually a fine line between feeling nothing and feeling bliss.
I must confess I do not have the fine control over this function that I once had in my life. I am too connected to the world these days to slip lazily between the cracks of dissociation. I would be lying if I did not admit that I deeply miss this ability. Though I would not trade my new found ability to feel everything for the world.
I used to spend so much time in a dissociated state every day that those brief periods when I was not felt like the times when a swimmer in a heavily chlorinated pool pushes their head above water, particularly when they feel like they might have been under too long and feel a hair's width panic before drowning. Their throat stings and their nasal passages burn. Every breath hurts. And then they take a deep breath and go down again.
There is a different moment of dissociation where it feels as though my body is directed by a second person who wears my skin sharper and meaner than I. When I can recognize the second director who doesn't exist, the entire cloud lifts and I can think in singular again. I can only compare it to Alice entering the house by running farther away.
Then there are fun aspects of dissociation called Micropsia. When I am very very anxious people and /or objects will shrink before me and become very tiny. Almost the size of a pin in some cases. And I feel as though I am watching them from very far away. Possibly from the other side of a long tunnel with no sides. It can happen very fast or come on quite slowly. It never lasts very long though at times it blinks in and out like an unsteady traffic light.
Macropsia is the opposite of this "eat me/drink me" phenomenon. Things become very large, suddenly and fill up the entire field of vision. I have experienced this, but only once or twice.
Wikipedia cited the psychological cause of Micropsia to be this "Micropsia may also be a symptom of psychological conditions in which patients visualize people as small objects as a way to control others in response to their insecurities and feelings of weakness."
When I experience it I, personally, feel panicked and I wish I could dig into the wall behind me to escape. I sense it like a glaze of terror when I don't know what to say but feel pinned to the spot.
I think that Wikipedia line was written by an analyst who wanted to make a cute and smart sounding observation. I don't think that line was written by anyone who had ever experienced a form of dissociation. If you ask the average person afflicted with dissociation they would tell you that most of the time they don't feel as if they are ever controlling anything. And that is the point of dissociation, is it not?
You can't fight back and you can't run away, so you freeze. It's the only thing that you can really control in the end, right? When you cannot control what happens to your own body you can try to control just what it feels. And you can try to control just how deep you breathe. Though eventually that control develops its own control and you lose that, too.