[Aha's Shadow]

If you have read any of my posts in the past, you may have noticed that I very much struggle with being able to tell what it is I actually believe. One of those things being the question, do I believe I am mentally ill? Which is something I wish I could answer because at least then I would be getting somewhere.

So I've been thinking, could dissociating from mental illness itself be a thing. When I think about the concept, the idea that I am mentally ill; I have no feeling towards it and no clue if it is the right answer to all of the problems I am having. I know that in the real world, mental illness can be the only possible answer...but I'm not sure I'm in the real world which makes it more difficult.

So I guess my question to you guys is. Do you think I could actually believe that I am mentally ill, just be dissociated from mental illness itself?

 

[forestx5]

A mental force applied perpendicular to your mind's original path will cause your mind to accelerate off course. If that's not where you want to go, then I think that mental force

can be seen as pathological. My perpendicular mental force came in the form of a rare epileptic syndrome, whose "worst case scenario was when the post ictal psychosis segued into an affective disorder

of major depression". Major depression combined with focal temporal lobe seizures gave me many psychiatric symptoms over the course of my adult life of 40 years.

The vast majority of those symptoms resolved with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), age, and my own resolve. I no longer experience focal temporal lobe seizures.

I have been depression, anxiety, and psychiatric medication free for almost 7 years. This, after battling major depressive episodes which were epic struggles for survival over a period of 40 years.

All I am left with is an occasional migraine aura, and an EEG which shows the wear and tear of epileptic seizures..

 

[Aha's Shadow]

So what you are saying is...that there is an answer that I haven't discovered yet? Or that whatever is happening to me is causing me to think this way?

I had to read between the lines a little so sorry if I've misinterpreted you.

 

[forestx5]

I think it is fair to say that if you have something influencing your thought processes in a way that bothers you, then you can say that is a mental illness. It might be the common cold, or it might be pneumonia.

It might be of a week's duration, or it might be chronic. It might be self resolving, or it might be fatal. Illness has a lot of variety. If suspected I was mentally ill, I would not seek a psychiatrist's opinion for a

diagnosis. Illness of the brain and its treatment is assigned to one of two branches of medicine. Neurology, and psychiatry. I like to think of psychiatry as the triage ward of neurology. Psychiatry is where you

go when there are no answers and your treatment consists of.....try this medication and see if it makes you feel better. If it does, and that medication is approved for schizophrenia, they might even give you

the diagnosis! Or, if you respond to an anti depressive medication, they might give you the diagnosis of depression. More than likely, they will give you no diagnosis at all, because it doesn't really matter

except for insurance billing purposes. From my personal experience with 5 psychiatrists, I conclude they don't care. It makes no difference to them. Psychiatry is the junk yard of medicine.

What I would do is start in neurology. If I thought my symptoms were significant enough to "bother" me, I would have an Electroencephalogram performed. That could tell me if I have any number of

neurological illnesses that could be responsible for my symptoms. If necessary, I would have an MRI also. Only then would I allow myself to be triaged to psychiatry. If you go to psychiatry first,

they may never find out that you do have a diagnose-able neurological illness. How many psychiatrists would refer you back to neurology for the EEG you never had? Not one of the 5 psychiarists

that treated me for over 25 years ever did so, and it fell to me to discover I was epileptic and an EEG could easily explain many of my symptoms that psychiatry was not adequately addressing.

And when I got the appropriate treatment that was right for me, the majority of symptoms I had experienced for 40 years disappeared. All those symptoms which made no sense, for which I could not make a

connection all went away together, which was surprising because I couldn't see the relationship between some of my symptoms. Physical and mental.

 

[Aha's Shadow]

I see what you're saying now. The problem is when I've asked for that sort of thing in the past, it has always been refused. And even if it were allowed, the crux for me is still the fact that I still think this all might not be real and some impossible dream or something. So it might not matter anyway cos I'm not sure this is mental illness, it might be something else. I don't have any connection to the idea it might be mental illness. See my conundrum?

 

[Findmywayhome]

Really told myself I would get off this forum but I have to reply. I relate a lot to the fact that you don't "feel" anything towards the idea that you have a mental illness. I think in my case, it is merely the result of severe depersonalization to the extent that I have become detached from my own thoughts. Thus when I think to myself "this is all just DPDR" that thought itself suffers from the dissociation, so I can't connect to it.

I am not a psychologist, but I am going to be honest and say you may suffer from some form of psychosis, and definitely OCD. I made this judgement from reading your other posts. I may not remember them correctly, and I am sorry but I couldn't be fucked to go re look at them before I reply as I've been on this computer for four hours now. The fact that you give in to the belief that you have suddenly been transported into some alternate reality may be a symptom of psychosis, albeit mild maybe? You describe that you do constant rigorous reality checks. But these are extremely atypical. You describe checking random number sequences for any patterns or something to make sure you are in the real world? This is full blown psychosis coupled with compulsive and obsessive behaviours. I suggest you get treated for OCD and psychosis. As I've said, im no expert, just a thought.

This is a shot in the dark, but maybe it helps to let you know that you ARE in the same reality as EVERYONE ELSE. You are merely experiencing a distorted perception of the world, nothing less, nothing more, trust me.

 

[Findmywayhome]

Oh yeah, and you also get freaked out whenever you seem to manifest things, or experience coincidences. This is all psychological selection bias my friend. Once again, this is a psychotic thought process, I mean that in the nicest and most honest way possible.

 

[Emptyflask]

I think anything that causes someone stress can be a trigger for dissociation. Though i am not saying stress alone is the only trigger. I have definently had extreme bouts of depression and anxiety that werent based on any events in particular that i dissociated from (involuntarily) because the feelings were too extreme. I think the main thing that causes dissociation in my personal opinion is a fear of the uncertain or mysterious aspects of life or of a persons experiances.

 

[Aha's Shadow]

I think anything that causes someone stress can be a trigger for dissociation. Though i am not saying stress alone is the only trigger. I have definently had extreme bouts of depression and anxiety that werent based on any events in particular that i dissociated from (involuntarily) because the feelings were too extreme. I think the main thing that causes dissociation in my personal opinion is a fear of the uncertain or mysterious aspects of life or of a persons experiances.

I definitely agree that fear of uncertaint makes me freak out. If it seems like there isn't a logical explanation for something and that it's magic, I can't deal with it. This is because before all this, I was so certain of my belief that everything had a logical explanation.

For example the problem I've had with this dream premonition thing and all the details surrounding it. I had a dream, something from it then appeared the next day, next night I dream, next morning something from that dream appears. A few weeks later, I started ruminating how that was too weird to be true. Shortly after I have another dream, next morning something from that appears, then I dream the next night, next morning something from that appears.

I just can't get any rest from intricate little seemingly illogical things like this happening. I go round and round thinking how this can happen two nights in a row on two separate occasions, the second being after I've thought about it. It means that despite all the other evidence for this being the real world, I can't believe that because I can't find an answer to this one conundrum which I feel I believe. This is what I mean by saying dissociation from the belief it is mental illness etc: because I don't have a strong feeling towards the evidence being true despite it being there as proof this could be the real world.

NIGHTMARE!

 

[Emptyflask]

So is what your trying to say is you are considering the idea that it is not just mental illness? That its something more? That is more of a belief, not dissociating. Dissociating is basically the act of your brain avoiding something by making things seem not real. You are not avoiding the fact its probably mental illness, you are just considering and afraid of another idea that this isnt just mental illness and is something more. That thought is terrifying obviously but it is also not rational. Its easy to assume this isnt just mental illness because it seems waaaay too unexplainable and mysterious. I used to think all this dissociation and coincidence stuff was something more, that life was suppose to be simple and not have things in it that are unexplainable in words but that belief is not correct, even in a more logical, athiest sense. Feelings and experiances cannot be fully conveyed in words sadly. Some experiances seem way too impossible or mysterious but that is the NATURE of experiance, it is tricky and a lil mysterious. What can be explained though is WHY these things happen.
This current issue your describing is just your brain trying to desperately make sense of things. And guess what? That means your brain is working as it should! You are just doing it too much, you just need to take a step back for a second. Have you considered that life tends to repeat itself day after day? Same activities, seeing the same things in media, etc. When you think about it, life is VERY predictable. Having things predicted in dreams in a common occurance. When you go to sleep, your brain is filtering through many concepts and images and it would make perfect sense for something in your dream to show up in real life the next day if its something that is likely to happen or even unlikely to happen because the brain likes to imagine every possibilty. There are lots of things you arnt even conscious of that your subconscious will pick up on and predict an event due to the liklihood of it happening while meanwhile, you you are left completely surprised and dumbfounded that something seems predicted the night before because the subconscious cannot share all of its imformation with the conscious mind. There is also just the fact that coincidences happen. You are not manifesting reality as a whole as that would require conscious effort and will but you ARE currently manifesting your part of it because you are part of a greater system.

 

[coolwhip27]

Just like Findmyhomesaid, my relation to what you're saying is that since you feel so detached, you can actually convince yourself that nothing is real.
But when you say "in the real world", it confuses me. Are you actually comparing 2 models in your brain? Such as, the real world, and the fake world in your head? If so, there is no such thing as the latter. Our reality is the life surrounding us and our brain processing it as information. But its possible to be so OCD-like that your brain creates different models for things and believes them.

If you aren't already diagnosed with OCD, i suggest you do that. just sayin.

 

[Aha's Shadow]

By "in the real world" I mean I literally worry that I have transported to a different universe. Now I know that this is impossible, but then I see a coincidence or a weird thing happen that I can't explain and I'm suddenly convinced that the impossible is possible.

It scares me on so many levels:

Do I actually believe this? I can never really find an answer, it's like there's a block in the way of me doing so. I'm constantly second guessing myself.
I can't find a way for it possibly to be the real world when this happens. If this is the real world, that makes me delusional. But so many things that are too impossible to be true seem to happen like things I'm thinking appearing on telly etc.

To simplify, I don't know what I believe and thus I can't move on until I do.

 

[forestx5]

I'm not sure it is impossible to be transported to a different universe. I've been watching quantum mechanic videos on youtube. I can't say I actually understand all of it, but it appears that two things can be in the same place at the same time,

that events in the future can alter events in the past, and that parallel universes are a possibility and also mathematically plausible. So, don't sell yourself short.

 

[Grindelwald]

Sounds like you're going down the road of 'nothing really matters', which is depression and can be treated.

 

[Aha's Shadow]

Thanks for all the responses. Alot of it does seem to be driven by the fact I know I'm gonna wake up in this world every day, but I'm still seeing things that seem impossible and against my original belief system. So if it us somehow a different world I'm trapped. I can tell I'm fucked up, but the world around me is fucked up too and I don't know if I accept that is just because I am thinking about things wrong.