So, I sent this in a text to my mother a few minutes ago, and it occurred to me that someone here might be able to give me some advice, or at least tell me if there's a name for it. Do you ever get the feeling that everything you're perceiving is just a collection of disjointed sensory input, and it's not quite coalescing into "this is me, this is where I am"? Like you can't quite tell where your body is or even if "where" is a word that means anything, or if anything outside your mind has any existence separate from sensory impressions? Because it feels unpleasant and kind of disturbing, and I wish it would stop coming back every time I think about it too much, because it makes it hard to get work done. Mom's advice was "try eating something" which helped a little, but this has been happening every few days for at least a couple months, and I really wish it would stop. Does not help that I have an essay midterm on Friday which I cannot afford to fail, which I still need to prep for. (Cannot as in might lose my internship if I bomb it like the last one, not cannot as in regular stress over grades.) I know I am fully capable of getting a good mark if I do the prep, which I still have time to do, but this is making it even harder to work on it than it normally is, and I end up just reading more fanfic. Would be helpful to know even whether this actually fits under a label, or is just regular teenage existential angst. Edit to add: I'm feeling better now (hour and a half after posting), and this is consistant with past experiences, so at least it doesn't last too long.
This sounds maybe like dissociation? It can be a stress reaction. The "eat something" advice actually isn't bad, sensory input that is pleasant and strong can help bring you back into yourself.
My normal reaction to it when it happens at home is to go hug someone, and that usually helps, so that makes sense. I did hug people and spend a while petting the cat when I got home, and I'm feeling a lot better now. The problem earlier was that it happened right before a three-hour lecture (on psychology), so I couldn't really do that. A stress reaction makes sense. I haven't been getting the grades I want or need this semester, and my counseling appointment got pushed back two weeks. Does it really sound like dissociation? The descriptions I read were more like someone feeling like they were floating above their body, not like their senses were disjointed. I've also noticed that it happens more when I think about it; sort of like when you become aware of your breathing for whatever reason and it's really distracting until you manage to forget it again. Though it's a lot harder to become distracted enough that this goes away.
Dissociation comes in a lot of different forms, so it's hard to say. The sort of floating-above thing you're talking about is more accurately termed as depersonalization, a flavor of dissociation where you don't really feel like you're there, so to speak--for me it was something like feeling like I was operating my body from a control panel rather than being inside of it, something on another plane of reality entirely, but it can range through much larger stuff. Derealization is a form of dissociation where things, well, don't seem real, experiences seem dreamlike, stuff like that. In practice, derealization and depersonalization generally happen together, and it sounds like you're experiencing a little bit of both to me--you're talking about both not feeling like you really have a self (depersonalization) and also not being sure the world outside of you exists (derealization). For me it happened more often when I thought about it, because thinking about it would kind of trigger that mindset. For stuff that you can do out in public: rubbing textured items (I had a foam squishy brain that helped for me), strong mints or chewing gum, drinking really cold water... In general, paying attention to sensory input. Also: try not to panic when it happens. For all that it's a really uncomfortable feeling and it causes issues in the moment, it's not going to last forever, and it's not going to cause any more lasting effect than anything else that could call away your attention from something. That doesn't mean you have to like it or that you shouldn't try to make it go away faster, it's that it's not something that requires you to react urgently, or something that you need to work yourself up about. Think of it as something like the psychological equivalent of a fever: it's a thing your brain is doing in response to something else, it's not a problem in itself unless it hits a massive extreme (just like a fever isn't really a huge deal in itself unless it gets really really high or lasts too long, dissociation isn't a huge deal in itself unless you're not really remembering what you're doing or it doesn't go away), you can take measures to deal with it in particular but getting the root cause to stop being an issue is a way more efficient method of problem solving.
Thank you. That does match what I've been experiencing, and I'm really glad to know that there's a name for this and that there's stuff I can do to make it better. I'm working on the stress and I'll be talking to my counselor again on Tuesday, so I'll mention it to him too.
