What a jolly title that is.
Anyway, I've been reading the work of the great psychoanalytical thinker: Janine Baker lately, and have found it to be utterly enlightening.
This whole self annihilation anxiety thing is just sooo me.
From my earliest days of dp I think that all my obsessions have been concerned with self annihilation of some sort.
Yet for me they have always been of the most hideously abstract and imaginative form. The fear of going mad lost its scariness quite quickly. By going mad, I mean literally developing a psychotic mental illness, that fell within the sphere of human understanding and could be treated etc.
So ever since I've tried to explore many other slef annihilation fantasies.
I will quote Janine, as she describes the worst self annihliation fantasy best:
Then you realize the big one.
You are nothing either.
But vague dusty light rays. And as you think of that, you begin to fade.
The only way to NOT fade (you believe) is to not "know" this anymore.
So you spend the rest of your days trying to NOT know. to NOT think. Trying to not let yourself disappear into utter oblivion.
See, not only is your BODY an illusion, your Self is an illusion. There is no core. Whatever you once thought of when you said your own name is gone. There is no one in there. And never was.
Then you realize that even oblivion is a facade.
Nothing. Is.
And you spend the rest of your days in silent abject horror.
THAT, my dear, is Depersonalization. At its deepest.
That is an excellent, but terrifying, description. Such a fantasy is of course totally illogical. How can there be nothing if you yourself are terrified? Surely the terror exists in that case? Aaah, but you see there is the major problem. The very fact that it is totally irrational and illogical to fear that you are nothing, makes it all the more terrifying.
I can hardly articulate a true fantasy of self annihilation, because such a fantasy is a total paradox. One can not imagine nothingness. One can imagine madness for example. But tuly nothingness is beond imagination and beyond experience, and that is what makes it so terrifying. That is what drags me in to these fantasies. I am so utterly terrified by the possibility of nothingness, that I feel I must force myself with every ounce of strength I can muster, to imagine it. Perhaps I feel that this will help me prepare for it, when it comes eventually in death. Perhaps I am just terified od dying, and to manage this fear I feel I must try and confront the unconfontable. Another anxiety would be a different matter, arachnophobia for example.
But of course as Janine says; one can not master a fantasy of self annihlation. When one tries, one is left with a paradoxical horror that is beyond description.
Janine, if you are reading, am I on the right tracks with regards to understanding this disorder?
