Too much detachment.
Psychologists throw around the word "detachment" like it's going out of style. Slip that particular buzzword in with your therapist, and all of a sudden they're all ears because it evokes the terms of a vernacular they enjoy playing in.
For me, detachment is a coping mechanism. Pushing it too far makes me an observer in my own body while my responses to the external world start running on auto-pilot; always present, never interacting on a level that can hurt.
I don't know when it started. Probably early childhood, when stoicism in the face of punishment was, if not rewarded, approved. It became habit. Throw in what those nosy bastards would call an Oedipus complex, and all of a sudden they're happy as clams because they think that those two facets of my psyche, in tandem, will reveal the keys to every sequence of emotional baggage that I currently lug around.
Maybe they do. I have until July to provide the powers that be with something remotely resembling an answer. I suppose, if my emotions were engaged, I would resent having to explain myself a year after I was medically separated from the Army.
But since I know for a fact that my medical board was not sufficiently thorough; that no so-called treatment had ever succeeded, during the year after I was involuntarily redeployed, in making matters in my head anything but worse; that I myself doubt my perceptions of sequences of events.... I suppose it's okay.
Or is it? I can't even tell what I'm feeling anymore. It's gone past a subconscious need to protect myself. I have no idea what I might be protecting myself from. Sure, I could rattle off what I believe are the facts that contributed to my breakdown and subsequent panic attacks. But I don't believe them. They're just collections of events. I can't make anything make sense.
My first appointment with a new therapist (VA, not our local overburdened active duty behavioral health clinic) is on the eighth. I will be summarizing the events after the fact.
Anyone reading this, take a second to wish me luck... or at least answers.