Joined
·
240 Posts
The American Psychiatric Association defines depersonalization as follows: "Periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as "unreal" (lacking in control of or "outside" self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality" - it's a dissociative disorder.
To put this into real-life terms, it's finding that your persona, the essential you, is sitting outside your body, maybe just above and behind it, watching it behave like an automaton, continuing to do what it was doing but without you inside its head to control it. You might be passing a wry commentary on how well or badly your body is doing, but you can't influence it.
Before this weekend I'd only experienced this condition just once before - I used to race UK BRISCA F2 stock cars (little single-seaters, pushing and fencing allowed, quarter-mile oval tracks), and during one night-time meeting I got a flying start in the Final and was out in front, hotly pursued by 20 other cars. Oval racing from the front is a matter of accelerate, corner, accelerate, corner - totally rhythmical, no cars to avoid, utterly fixated on not screwing up, scanning mirror, oil pressure and revs, floodlights flicking past, waiting for the first impact from the cars behind catching me up, intense concentration and stress. After about ten laps of the twenty-five I suddenly went into depersonalisation without warning, and was viewing myself driving from above and behind, criticising the puppet in the driving seat - "you're losing it, cornering's getting sloppy, you never were any good..." and so on. It ended a couple of laps later when my car got whacked from behind, the rhythm was broken and I ended up spun out in the fence - I was back in my head but out of the race.
This weekend, I was gigging with my covers band. I play several alto numbers one after another - usual pub fodder, Dock of the Bay, Never Tear Us Apart, Lily was Here, and then Baker Street, during which I suddenly found myself disassociated from the puppet that continued to finger the keys and blow the horn. Instead, I was above my head looking down and thinking about the spit leaking from my embouchure (ugh!) the imperfections in my tone, the certainty that I would never dance or anything else with that pretty young lady cavorting in front of the stage, and asking myself *** I was doing here anyway...
...and my sax played on... and fortunately the puppet didn't miss any notes - this time!
Has anyone else experienced this weirdness?
To put this into real-life terms, it's finding that your persona, the essential you, is sitting outside your body, maybe just above and behind it, watching it behave like an automaton, continuing to do what it was doing but without you inside its head to control it. You might be passing a wry commentary on how well or badly your body is doing, but you can't influence it.
Before this weekend I'd only experienced this condition just once before - I used to race UK BRISCA F2 stock cars (little single-seaters, pushing and fencing allowed, quarter-mile oval tracks), and during one night-time meeting I got a flying start in the Final and was out in front, hotly pursued by 20 other cars. Oval racing from the front is a matter of accelerate, corner, accelerate, corner - totally rhythmical, no cars to avoid, utterly fixated on not screwing up, scanning mirror, oil pressure and revs, floodlights flicking past, waiting for the first impact from the cars behind catching me up, intense concentration and stress. After about ten laps of the twenty-five I suddenly went into depersonalisation without warning, and was viewing myself driving from above and behind, criticising the puppet in the driving seat - "you're losing it, cornering's getting sloppy, you never were any good..." and so on. It ended a couple of laps later when my car got whacked from behind, the rhythm was broken and I ended up spun out in the fence - I was back in my head but out of the race.
This weekend, I was gigging with my covers band. I play several alto numbers one after another - usual pub fodder, Dock of the Bay, Never Tear Us Apart, Lily was Here, and then Baker Street, during which I suddenly found myself disassociated from the puppet that continued to finger the keys and blow the horn. Instead, I was above my head looking down and thinking about the spit leaking from my embouchure (ugh!) the imperfections in my tone, the certainty that I would never dance or anything else with that pretty young lady cavorting in front of the stage, and asking myself *** I was doing here anyway...
...and my sax played on... and fortunately the puppet didn't miss any notes - this time!
Has anyone else experienced this weirdness?