[Guest]

It has to do with involuntary "merging" of my mind/body boundaries with my environment. This is not simply a psychological concept, it is a terrifying physical sensation of disorientation wherein I feel as though I am falling into a space that has no ground or floor to land upon. I have come to believe from my personal experiences and what I have read that feelings of this sort very often correlate with disturbances that occured during the pre verbal, pre conceptual stages of "ego" structuring in early childhood. I have mentioned this in the past here on the board so this is not something new which I have just discovered, but what I have recently found significant in this regard was brought to mind by my current reading of Ken Wilbers excellent book "Integral Psychology" wherein he makes reference to the idea that according to the nature of ones pathology there are certain corresponding symptoms, and these symptoms can very often be traced to specific developmental stages. And the type of therapy to help a person who is mentally /emotionally disturbed is determined by a recognition of the developmental stage at which the pathology took root or the developmental needs were not met.

For instance in my case my problem is not do to a conflict that has been "repressed" and needs to be "uncovered", confronted and then intergrated into concious awareness, as is the psychoanalytical approach for dealing with the neurosis.

While no doubt I probably do suffer from various forms of neurosis it is not the crux of my problem or the prime motive that would drive me to seek out therapy.

Rather it is this terrifying involunatry "free falling", "boundary dissolving" state that seems to descend upon me often out of the blue which I would seek to address.

According to Mr. Wilber and others I have read, when one comes to know the developmental stage at which their pathology began ( one determines this by the nature of the symptoms) one then seeks out a therpaist specializing in providing strategies to help correct difficulties correlated to that particular stage of development.

In my case what i would need to find is a therapist who works with people who have symptoms showing a developmental difficulty which at times causes me to have difficulties in "differientiating" themselves from their environment. I mean this is what DP feels like to me. This is what frightens me and sometimes leads to panic attacks. It is not that i always have this difficulty. It is intermittent and transitory. i.e. it comes and it goes. It is the fear of its coming that keeps me anxious, I think it must feel much like it does to die. The death of the "ego"

Well anyway there are specialists in the therapy field who work with people like me, they are often referred to as "Object Realtions Therapists" and they help one to develope "ego structure" and solidify ones "ego" boundaries. Of course a "good enough" therapist may have adequate knowledge and expertise to work with someone like myself and yet come from a different theoretical orientation.

I guess what i am trying to say and probably doesn't even need to be said to most of the people here, is that the more precise one can be regarding the nature of their problem the more specific one can then be in seeking a solution for it.

One may not have anything wrong with their brain simply because they suffer from DP

Regards
orlando

 

[Guest]

I would like to make one more point for the sake of clarification about exactly what I mean when I say "merging" with the environment and the loss of ego/body boundaries.

The example is given that a baby learns over some time to differentiate its own body from the things around it by various sensations it experiences.

For instance if a baby bites its blanket there is no sensation of pain as there is when he/she bites his thumb. Through this experiencing of various bodily sensations the baby learns to distinguish or differentiate its body from the environment around it. This is the very beginning early stages of "ego formation" and differientaion of the self from the environment. At least that is my understanding.

My fear comes about when I begin to feel that the "locus" or center of my self is being subsumed and vanishing into my immediate environment. I become confused about my location in a spatial sense in relation to the world around me. This creates feelings of panic as i feel as though I am becoming completely defenseless in relation to the world around me. As not feeling as though I have a differientiated self I don't know when or where to make a stand for my own best interest.This is partuiculary the case when i feel my body boundaries are melting into the seat I am sitting on or the sidewalk I am walking on.

This is what I mean when I refer to depersonalization. Fortunately as i said before these states are not constant anymore but seem to come when I feel like my nervous system is being over loaded by too much "complex stimulation" internal or most often from an over load from the outer world like traffic in the city I tend to loose myself.

Is this anything like what you mean when you say you are having feelings of depersonalization or is what I experience something different than DP?

Again with regards
orlando

I May Have Pin Pointed My Fear

 

[Guest]

I forgot that you, John, had changed your screen name to Orlando...so I am reading through your post, thinking this is some new fellow, and I'm thinking WHO IS THIS person??? LOL...he's utterly brilliant!!!

it's you! lol...

All I can say is that you have an INCREDIBLE comprehension of these very difficult concepts. You're spot on, as they say in old England. If this was a paper for an advanced class in psychoanalytic theory, I'd give you an A+. You're amazing.

The only point I'd add is that you're not up to date on the workings of analysis in one regard. WHile MANY neurotic problems deal with repressed content, there are just as many that deal with the annihilation terrors you're describing. Instead of repression, we dp types use a defensive structure called "disavowal" - and another called "splitting"

Repression involves, as you said, totally burying certain thoughts or feelings that were considered unacceptable or dangerous. The person goes on never the wiser, but the repressed thought Surfaces IN SYMBOLIC form as a symptom.

That's one way.

Then there's us. We split off, not the memory of a fear or dangerous thought, but the ASSOCIATION of SELF to that memory. We both know and don't know something. We are able to intellectually know things, but lack the EMotional and person integration of the EXPERIENCE of it. It's as if we live always one step removed. Then if one day we develop dp and are terrified by it, it is in reality one exaggerated step from where we have always been - but suddenly we are seeing much more than we want to - we SEE, in its living color, that we are not really ourselves...we are and have been, KNOWING something while still not being OF it.

Your example of the child biting the blanket versus biting his toe..."this is me" VERSUS 'this is NOT me..." - that's the crux of this type of pain. We are seeking ME and NOT ME, defined constantly...as if failure to define it would cause a loosening of all boundaries - and "self" would fly off into eternal black space, undifferentiated from the rest of the universe.

ALWAYS a pleasure to read your stuff, John.

Peace,
Janine

 

[Guest]

my dp is 110% exactly like yours...great description!

 

[Martinelv]

:?:

 

[g-funk]

Yep, intense dp for me is much like you describe. And I agree that the development of our sense of self was disrupted, for whatever reason, the hazy line between me and not me being an issue for us still after all this time. However, how can we go back to pinpoint the cause or specific incident? Maybe acknowledging this is enough of a starting point because we will never really know, we were too young - it may not have been anything specific, or any trauma, just the way you were brought up. I've queried Janine on this before I think, about how much we need to know or understand about our pasts before we can move on, in order to live happily in the present.

 

[Guest]

Thank you all for your replies

It is reassuring to know that I am not completely alone in confronting my challenges.

For me it seems as though I often must put forth a concious effort to retain a sense of self as there is a feeling that if I no longer put forth an effort I will slip back down into a more archaic state of conciousness. It does not seem possible to just let go completely and still retain a sense of being a self in existence. At least not a "differentiated self.

I think you, Janine, have mentioned in the past that symptoms and defence mechanisms often correspond to ones psychological developmental achievements and how successful one has been at navigating through the various challenges of early childhood and in forming a self sense or a "healthy ego."

In your reply to my post above you said:

"Then there's us. We split off, not the memory of a fear or dangerous thought, but the ASSOCIATION of SELF to that memory. We both know and don't know something. We are able to intellectually know things, but lack the EMotional and person integration of the EXPERIENCE of it. It's as if we live always one step removed. Then if one day we develop dp and are terrified by it, it is in reality one exaggerated step from where we have always been - but suddenly we are seeing much more than we want to - we SEE, in its living color, that we are not really ourselves...we are and have been, KNOWING something while still not being OF it."

I can relate very much to this description. But what accounts for the feeling of "physical fusion" with the environment? And as you said I am not really up to date in regards to psychoanalytical theory, but in a book written about 30 years ago by Harry Guntrip (*Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations And The Self*) he referred to what you described as being the "Schizoid Position." At least that it was it sounds like to me. Like i mentioned to Ninnu a while ago about being in a state of not being in nor out, but rather both or neither simultaneously. But you have in the past correlated DP with Narcissism.

Well anyway the feeling tone of your description is very familiar. Thanks for sharing it.

Once upon a time I had an Object Relations Therapist I was seeing. She was very beautiful in an exotic way. Just being in the same room with her constellated something in me that turned the sessions into the most incredible sensual/emotional experiences. Sometimes we would just sit in the silence together. She was willing and capable to just sit with me allowing me to feel what i might feel. Gender selction may be a consideration in choosing a therapist.

She was very big on the practice of the "concious witnessing" of ones awareness. A Buddhist practice Dreamer mentioned here recently.

I once asked her how she came to be interested in "object relations therapy" and working with people with Personality Disorders. She told me that she did the work she did because it helped her work on her own Narcissism.

Well actually I suppose that is neither here nor there to anyone but me. So I will run along now.

Bye for now
john