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Ever since I developed this disorder I've always been relentlessly attempting to articulate any new symptom or feeling that came to my attention. The nature of my dissociation was always so complex and overwhelming to me I felt that if I could put it into words I would be "above" it. These past few weeks I have pretty much given up on trying to understand it. Instead I have just been constantly distracting myself. The amount of my day spent ruminating about my disorder is at an all time low now, and it's certainly helped, but admittedly not as much as I thought it would.
With all that said, a phrase popped up in my mind today that I felt was the perfect way to summarize how I experience DPDR, and that's "emotional amnesia"
When my symptoms become particularly apparent, I think to myself, "I have completely forgotten who I am," "I don't know who my family is," "I don't know what my life is" But its like, of course I know who I am. I know my name, I know how old I am, I know where I was born and raised, and I know what my current situation is. I haven't forgotten anything. But, the emotional part of me has. I no longer feel an enriching connection to my own life. I know my name, but hearing someone say it no longer carries that familiar essence that it used to. I realized that the "veil" is only blocking my emotions, not my ability to intellectually understand and process the world.
In a lot of ways brains are analogous to computers. I fear that perhaps the dissociation is overwriting the data of my previous life, thus it is eternally irretrievable; I have permanently lost my connection to life. Although the fact that so many people have recovered from this should be proof that isn't true, but I don't know.
With all that said, a phrase popped up in my mind today that I felt was the perfect way to summarize how I experience DPDR, and that's "emotional amnesia"
When my symptoms become particularly apparent, I think to myself, "I have completely forgotten who I am," "I don't know who my family is," "I don't know what my life is" But its like, of course I know who I am. I know my name, I know how old I am, I know where I was born and raised, and I know what my current situation is. I haven't forgotten anything. But, the emotional part of me has. I no longer feel an enriching connection to my own life. I know my name, but hearing someone say it no longer carries that familiar essence that it used to. I realized that the "veil" is only blocking my emotions, not my ability to intellectually understand and process the world.
In a lot of ways brains are analogous to computers. I fear that perhaps the dissociation is overwriting the data of my previous life, thus it is eternally irretrievable; I have permanently lost my connection to life. Although the fact that so many people have recovered from this should be proof that isn't true, but I don't know.
