Posted by Darby on November 12, 2003, at 18:17:28
In reply to I cannot get away from myself and free my mind, posted by Stavros on November 11, 2003, at 19:18:10
That's the term I'd use to describe this state of mind. I've dealt with this since my adolescence and it can become a tormenting thing.
The best way to describe it is as a kind of involutional mind trap in which my attention is rivetted to my "self" thinking about my own mind thinking in this immediate moment. It is literally just me (my "self")and the existential moment caught together. Terror and panic creep in when I realize I could be trapped in this self-absorbed "thought moment" forever, unable to distract myself from it ever again, unable to focus my attention to the external world. Of course, eventually my attention is taken elsewhere and I'm no longer obsessively self-aware. But I'm forever wary of "it" coming back into my everyday life, worried from moment to moment that it will never leave me and will always be hanging over me, ready to trap me back into my own head.
It seems to be a kind of attentional glitch in the brain, perhaps involving the temporal lobe and my perception of time passing from second to second. Usually a person's attentional apparatus shifts freely as we live our lives and experience the world. Voluntary attention can be harnessed to tasks that don't grab our interest. In this painful situation, it's as if my attentional apparatus is not under my control and I can't shed that tormenting sense of self-awareness or can't ever be destracted from myself. There's almost a taunting quality to its presence, a sense that I'm always going to have to fight it off.
A good analogy would be a person having to deal with tinnitis. There is the horrible, "caged animal" fear that one can never escape the high-pitched sound, no matter where you go and what you do. Or, like the unpredictable intrusiveness of auditory hallucinations a schizophrenic person experiences, always there and out of one's control.
It could be epilepsy-related and there definitely seems to be an obsessional component. It breeds depression, severe panic, chronic anxiety with traumatic stress reaction and a dreary sense of dissociation.
Of all the major meds I've tried, the most effective has been a combination of an SSRI(Prozac) with the anti-convulsant (Gabitril). It's been incredibly helpful for all of my symptoms.
Hope this helps you.
Darby
poster:Darby
thread:278750
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20031111/msgs/279131.html