The Man in the Moon
Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 12:08 pmWell, the panicky delusions seem to have petered out. I’m no longer convinced that there are surveillance cameras in the apartment, or that I’m going to be arrested for some innocuous thing I wrote on this blog, or that my soul belongs to Satan.
But I have to admit, the experience shook me up, and I still don’t really know why it happened. Was it just one of the SFX of a nasty virus? A consequence of stress (largely self-imposed) and chronic insomnia, with the virus as the last straw? While I was in Australia I found out about a few things that run in my family, on both sides. Knowing what I know now, I think I’m lucky to be as hale in mind as I am.
A lot went on in my head. Went on intensely and mostly yuckily. I fell down a well. I thought about dying. Not with any real practical intent, but I found myself wishing that I didn’t have any loved ones so that I could do away with myself without upsetting anybody.
This was maybe the third time I’ve been down the well, although it was the first time the trip started with anxiety. Anyway, it was familiar enough that it was a bit like Groundhog Day. I recognised the bottom of the well, which actually isn’t a terribly bad place. It’s just a terminus. There’s a loss of personality. “Kirsten” fizzles out. The name is a luggage tag without a suitcase. Awareness remains, some habits stick around, but whatever is operating the organism feels like it’s accessing a backup copy of the personality over a lousy connection. Then “I” get very dopey, as if my skull were full of mud.
Then “I” fizzle back in. Same-same but different, as they say in Thailand. The differences might not be visible from the outside, but I can feel them. Some things carry on just as before, but other patterns of behaviour no longer feel natural, and I either have to act them out for continuity’s sake or drop them. It’s like a Windows upgrade. Some bugs will be fixed, but there’ll be new ones, and at least one silly new toolbar that only gets on the way.
I rarely dream that I’m someone else, but lately I’ve had a few dreams where I’m Dr Who and I’m fighting the Master. I figure it must be my brain trying to process the sense of being a contingent, flickering personality. I can’t work out what the Master represents. My dreaming brain likes to pun, so maybe he’s the “master” tape, something solid and permanent, which for some reason I feel threatened by.
Anyway, yes, sane. Coming off the boat, luggage in hand. Someone’s luggage, at any rate. Standing on dry land, my legs can still feel the motion of the water.
Presumably this sort of thing happens to other people too. So go on, tell me if this all sounds familiar. I like to know that my friends are all as sane as me!
May 29th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I’ve never experienced anything like that.
Sometimes I feel that I’ve got more than one… hmm, ‘personality’ is the best word, but not that there’re multiple people inside me. More that there’re slightly different offshoots of Alex, and they can be doing stuff in my head at the same time. It’s mostly noticeable when I’m feeling emo; another part of my head is probably mocking the emo-me. I suspect this is something many people do, feeling one emotion but meta-critical of that emotion at the same time, but at least for me it feels almost like two… things… in sort-of-dialogue. Sort of. It makes dealing with emo easier, normally, because the emo is only one discrete part of me.
(I reasonably often dream I’m Fox McCloud from the Nintendo game Starfox 64, so. >.> I think what that represents is me being a very impressionable 11-year-old when the game came out.)
May 30th, 2009 at 5:43 am
Do the different parts seem to have different “voices” — slightly different accents, or anything like that? (That’s how I tend to experience my inner selves, and I’ve always assumed it was something like that for everyone.)
Would the mocking part be something like the Freudian superego, I wonder?
May 30th, 2009 at 8:33 am
I disassociate with Tessa all the time. Sometimes actively, sometimes accidentally. Sometimes to the point where I don’t feel like I’ve entirely filled my physical body. But yes, when you’re that far down the rabbit hole, all signatures of your identity, such as it is, seem to fall off. And when you come back out, you don’t necessarily pick them back up again. There doesn’t seem to be a point.
I like being unfinished and unsettled. I like not knowing who I am. It’s not always easy, but at least it’s interesting.
(Regarding your last question there, my various voices are not voices in my head. They’re the written word. They have no accent.)
May 30th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
You sound like you know the rabbit hole well enough to run tours down there… I actually wasn’t expecting anyone to know what I meant about not bringing everything back! (Why didn’t we do psychology at school instead of all that maths?)
I dissociate quite a bit too. But if we dissociate from Tessa and Kirsten, who is doing the dissociating? o__O I don’t at all mind Kirsten being unfinished — I guess all living people are unfinished — but I don’t like it when she floods or burns down. I get pissy then.
May 30th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
How severe was the insomnia? If you lose enough sleep, you can definitely start having hallucinations and delusions, especially if there’s a lot of extra stress on top of it.
I’ve never had an experience quite like that (closest I’ve come was thinking the roaches were out to get me) but I’m somewhat familiar with the feeling of loss of personality. It’s probably not the same thing, but I often feel sort of like a pod person, only with consciousness still intact – I’m in here thinking and experiencing what happens, but I have no control over my own body.
As for the internal monologue type voices – I do have the experience of them sounding slightly different from one another, but that’s probably because my own speech patterns kind of reel around like a drunken sailor.
May 30th, 2009 at 5:59 pm
Oh, and some of the “voices” aren’t voices but text.
May 30th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
Well, I tend to think identities, like Tessa, exist for the sake of other people. Tessa is a device that enables me to move through society and acts as an anchor and leverage point when interacting with other people. Tessa does not serve any sort of purpose when no one else is around.
Going down the rabbit hole generally means intense withdrawal from other people, and sinking very deep into ones self, so it follows that you don’t need your identity in such times. It becomes dead weight, a burden you do not have the mental resources to carry around, let alone for the sake of other people, and so it is jettisoned.
What is left is the waking awareness, which does not require definition (or at least, I don’t feel any need to define it), it simply is.
(I have clearly thought about this far too much.)
May 30th, 2009 at 11:05 pm
All of this is quite interesting! I tend to get more apathetic than anything else (well, apathy is what I notice/address. I quite expect everything I don’t care is wrong with me to explode into an epic mental breakdown one day). It means I fade away from my social groups, don’t do work and then don’t care about the consequences (I got an average of 8% or so one semester filled with apathy, but after that I picked interesting units or ones my friends were taking so I’d hate to not attend classes if it ever happened again), take even worse care of myself, and just tend to browse the internet and not do anything.
I never don’t feel like myself or don’t feel like my whole self – rather, I feel like my self has changed, but it’s still me. However, as I can remember changing (mostly?) back from apathy-me after the apathy’s gone, this can lead to a thought-duality I haven’t managed to get a grip on yet; I’ve only noticed it so far with my thoughts about my writing. I will currently feel X, and recognise that in the future I probably will feel differently about X, but I hope that I don’t even though I recognise that in the future I will probably regret hoping that. And then there’s when I start coming out of the funk, and realise I miss the certainty of my feelings on X that came with it.
(Maybe the Master represents turkey baster?)
May 31st, 2009 at 3:02 am
The voices have the same sound; they’re all my voice.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:25 pm
Laurie – not that severe, just long term; I don’t know if that could cause delusions like real sleep dep does.
“..some of the voices are text”: as in, they scroll in front of your eyes? o__O
Tessa – I get pleasure out of performing an identity, but there’s also an identity that isn’t performing (it’s typing now, although I guess in writing there’s always some kind of performance). It’s the thing that wants and doesn’t want and doesn’t like, and that’s “Kirsten”. Although I can dissociate from her I can’t completely ditch her. It’s her habits that stick around at the bottom of the rabbit hole, like onion burnt onto the bottom of a pan. Then there’s the cruise-control awareness that kicks in when I’m drawing, which is very pleasant. I’m sure a lot of people have the same experience of ego shutting up and something more easily soothed and amused taking over when they do creative work. (I dunno about writing, though…)
Penny – At least you haven’t dissociated from your apathetic self, which sounds like a, ah, healthy ownership of your whatchamacallit, your stuff… I’m not actually sure as to what is the difference between apathy and an enlightened state of non-attachment. Maybe you have a kind of chronic recurring Buddhahood?
Alankria – Mine don’t all have different accents, but the one that wants things tends to sound American and the one that tells me to pull my socks up sounds like Judi Dench.
Clearly, there’s nothing but sanity around here…
June 3rd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
““..some of the voices are text”: as in, they scroll in front of your eyes? o__O”
No, I just “see” it in the same way that I “hear” the internal voices. I get text “voices” more often after I’ve spent a long time reading.
June 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am
I like the sound of “chronic recurring Buddhahood”! I shall tell that to anyone who accuses me of inhumanity-type stuff.
June 4th, 2009 at 3:33 am
Sleep deprivation is a very interesting thing.
I spent a week with next to no sleep (thank god i didn’t own a car at the time) and i was seeing thing through the corner of my eyes mainly foxes and people in purple jump suits.
The worst event of insomnia for me was in a class where the teacher sounded like the adults in the peanuts cartoon. never a good idea to demand a teacher “speak F–king english”
As for the disassociation of identity i think is normal. or maybe i am one really messed up piece of maccaroni and only think it’s normal because i can see the sky is green with orange polka dots.
but when I think about my names they seem odd and sadly i need some sort of name to function in the world. even though i would much rather peoplr talk at me directly.
as for the voices and the mental consol text i have them but there are only 3. i like it that way.
the hardest thing that happened to the fragile lump that i call my brain was the closest thing to ego death i have ever suffered. so my natural cycles were all thrown out the window and my sense of normality was completely broken. still trying to find new cycles to move into. the only thing that has stopped me from falling into a useless heap is my 9 to 5.
June 4th, 2009 at 11:48 am
My 9 to 5 is a useless heap. My wife and kids keep me going, though they are also the reason I still have the 9 to 5 because I would have quit that long ago and lived on water soup if there weren’t three people depending on my earning a paycheck. Needless to say, that sort of pressure brings on the workplace paranoia like crazy, especially in this economy.
The only solace I can take is the idea that if I find myself at the end of the rope, rather than struggle to get back to the top, it might just be better to let go and hope the bottom isn’t too far below.
June 9th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
When I was a lot younger, there were two of ‘me’.
One was logical; one was emotional; the thing was, each of them seemed to have equal control of my body. There were a number of occasions where they’d fight and I’d loose my ability to move. I’d be walking and I’d suddenly come to a juddering, twitching halt. Usually Logical would win but occasionally Emotional would. The problem is, Emotional is an idiot arsewipe and fucked things up spectacularly.
Looking back, knowing the way my disorder runs, I suspect that Logical was the left hemisphere of my brain and Emotional was the right. Given that the major identifier of NLD is a massively dominant left brain, it stands to reason that Left usually (but not always) won. And as I said, Right is an idiot; if she argues and wins, we all end up loosing. The times that she argued, my body would twitch; jerk; shudder. As I walk my right foot would twitch just before it hit the ground. The serverity of this varied. At its worst, my left foot would twitch as well and I’d walk with a kind of controlled topple.
Both Left and Right are both me, but both of me are quite, quite different. It’s merciful that Right has settled down so much in recent years, I hardly hear from her at all. It’s a relief; she’s infinitely inferior and not very bright. It’s so much better if she just stays quiet. I remember speaking to my father about this several years ago, and he asked me specifically whether I had two voices, one illogical and one logical. In his side of the family, imbalance is the norm although it’s always weighted towards mathematical rather than my language. I would lay money on my eldest brother being a high-functioning Aspie.
I remember trying to describe the two parts of me to a teacher or two when I was younger, with utterly no success. Doesn’t it seem odd that some people are the same singular person and will stay that way all their lives? There are two halves of the human brain. Complete co-ordination should be the abnormal and not the normal, when you sit down and think about it.
June 9th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Caitlyn I know exactly where you are coming from as i said befor my mind is in 3 aspects. Logic Emotion and for lack of a better term Dark.
Logic and Emotion just switch seamlessly
Dark just sits at the back silent most times
but when Dark wants the driver’s seat. It is very draining. like how you say you twitch mine is better discribed as a shudder.
I’ve talked to professionals about this and they have been shock when i tell them Dark isn’t very critical of me and what i do nor is the aspect directly violent toward the outside world its just a very aggressive self-presivation instinct
June 12th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Colin – I don’t know that dissociation of identity is ‘normal’, but it sure seems common. Maybe it’s the beginning of a process that could lead to something really cool…
Re names, my first name feels completely wrong to me, but my second name feels more comfortable. Too late to start using it now, though.
T’mok – Man, that’s depressing. I don’t really know what to say. If we were in another reality I could say “May Crom grant you strength.” And maybe he would. Hang in there.
Caitlyn – You’re pretty down on Right Side. Is she really such an idiot, or does she just need some extra coaching?
Call me crazy, but I’d love to get inside your head for a little while. I guess most people, even those who seem “singular”, are somewhat split between emotional and rational sides (and there’s the body, too, with its own wants and needs), but I don’t think I’ve experienced being utterly divided as you describe. For me, there’s dialogue and negotiation between mind and emotion, sometimes it’s obvious which one of them should call the shots, and sometimes they’re completely in sync. I find that at the basic of Mind’s calculations there are usually factors that concern Emotion and Body anyway — pleasure, gain, thrills: the usual selfish array.
Are you saying that with Right Side shut down, you don’t have emotional experiences..? (e.g. can you be moved by music or a story without Right Side online, or does she come back at those times…?)
Colin again – After my holiday in Cambodia I firmly believe we all (or 99.95% of us) have Dark. It might just be a little closer to the surface in you than in most people. It’s one reason I gave up martial arts — it’s quite frustrating being Dark when you’re also Puny and Incompetent, just ask Daffy Duck.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:24 am
You are probably right about Dark being closer to the surface.
But the advantage of it is a second and even a third opinion when dealing with anything more complex then day to day life.
as for you giving up martial arts for being puny and incompetent. some one forgot to tell you the basics rules of all martial arts.
rule 1 these arts are designed to kill
rule 2 the best way to fight is to put your hard bits into their soft bits
being puny means you should spend less time duffing around and more time on breaking bones.
But I think your Dark isn’t working properly.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:15 am
That isn’t quite what I meant, but it’d be a tedious explanation. My Dark works just fine, I think. Once or twice I’ve been glad that it works. But if I let it take the wheel, it broods, seethes, hisses, spits, holds grudges, chews scenery, beats up little old ladies, and generally gets in the way of smooth operations in life. On the whole, in daily living, I find Cute Mode is usually more effective than Dark Mode. (^~^)
June 20th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Sorry to hear you were feeling so unkirsten for awhile there darling. Such an interesting discussion though.
I tend to think of personality as a ‘network effect’ – something that is ‘made’ using flesh, personal histories, hormones, others, physical environments…
As each of these changes so our experience of personality changes – because it’s a different performance with different actors. I am a different me at work than at home for instance. I feel like I am a different Inger than I was five years ago, and the five years before that.
In fact I feel like there is a range of ‘me’s that are latent – some come to the surface more often or more strongly than others. I used to get a bit freaked out by this, but as I get older I get more comfortable with the multiple me’s. Being a sad academic I just wrote a paper on this topic
I have occassionally experienced hearing things and paranoia at times of stress. Lack of sleep when I first had B nearly sent me to la la land.
can I say though – I hope you never feel like you want to check out permanently because you are right, there are a lot of people who love that you are in their life – even at a distance like me
xxi