Here's a list of traits that I'm learning are applicable to me and maybe not to the population at large. May be updated as discoveries occur. Some of these may be due to puberty. Some of these may be signs of brainweird. Some of these may be incomplete socialization. As I am unwilling to self-dx, maybe someone else can take a look. Current age: 27. Subject to change. -Trouble identifying. No strong sense of self, no strong attachment to any particular traits. Regularly forgets age, gender, ethnicity, name. Variations in dreamself. -Confusion as to point of view. Living in first person singular, especially the same first person singular, is weird and unnatural and I don't know why I keep doing it. My dreams don't do that, so why should my waking self bother? Also control of the meatsack is unexpected. -Confusion as to continuity of self. The question of what makes the past self contiguous with the present self I find always presented as an obscure philosophical question. I get to ask it every day. Similarly to previous point, dreams change pov quite often. -Bad at "reading between lines". Not always literal reading of questions, but simply bad at determining underlying assumptions. I know they exist, but don't always remember that. -Low empathy. Trouble viewing people as having emotions. See adjacent points for possible related symptoms. -Don't feel strong emotions. Mostly boredom if anything. Occasionally frustration. Is impatience an emotion? I think I might have felt disappointment a few months ago. I can feel happy, but not sharply so. I haven't felt anything I would classify as anger or sadness for several years. I decided to stop crying when I was 9, I think. So far I've been successful. I'm not sure if I've ever felt anything I would classify as offense. -Don't feel hunger. I eat when bored or desiring specific tastes or when I remember that I haven't eaten in a while and that eating is probably necessary. Last time I felt noticeable hunger I was around 10 or so. I think I may have felt hunger a few months ago, but it might have been just a stomach ache. I haven't reproduced the effect, but I have since gone days without eating so preliminary analysis points to stomach ache. I can feel nausea. -Don't feel sleepy or tired. I just pass out. -Don't notice arousal. The meatsack can get what I assume is aroused, but the thing in charge doesn't notice. Does that still count as ace? -Sometimes stop breathing for like a minute or so at a time. Not sure why, but that's supposed to be automated, right? -Delayed reaction to heat/cold/pain. Have abused for cooking purposes. Also wandering around in the snow. Used to be rather sensitive to cold, actually. Not -Sound sensitivity. Can detect quiet sounds, not great at resolution. Bothered by loud sounds. Fine with high pitches at reasonable volumes. -Synaesthesia: letter->color, flavor->color, sound->color. Associative rather than perceptual. -Can't always tell if I'm smiling. Well, I can't tell if I'm successfully smiling, or if I'm just making my default expression while tightening muscles that aren't doing anything visible. My default expression tends to look rather lost and a little perturbed, based on other people's reactions to it. -Forget that eye contact is a thing. Many of my friends in high school didn't make eye contact when talking, and one in particular was proud of being able to hold conversations with me with neither of us facing the other. -Possible stimming? I tend to play with toys and puzzles when talking on the phone or when I have nothing particular to do but aren't really free to go elsewhere. In particular, playing with Rubik's cubes or spinning drumsticks, especially on the phone. I used to just flick my fingers a lot, which has translated to the Rubik's cube. -Infodumping. Um...yeah. You've seen some evidence of this. Mostly about math, sometimes about physics. Last week I went on a long rant about crow intelligence; apparently it was the most passionate my audience had ever seen me. None of these have been disruptive enough that I feel the need to get a formal diagnosis. Some of them make me awkward, but no worse than my tendency to be a bad conversationalist for amusement.
Just the amount of dissociation you seem to be going through would warrant an evaluation of some kind (personal opinion). Especially the lacking senses regarding hunger and sleep.
I seem to function fine, though. I wake up on time, I get my work done, I remember to feed myself regularly. In fact I eat quite a bit, and only my fantastic metabolism stops me from gaining weight. The going without eating is possibly worrisome, but it's usually on purpose and bookended by eating a lot. I do have mild insomnia, but I've dealt with it successfully before, I just like staying up late. I don't know. But you guys are the first to know about it, and I put no effort into hiding it, so I assume it doesn't affect me enough to show, because I know my irl friends are totally not too polite to comment on it. I seem to get along fine, so I'm not worried, but if other people think that I should get checked out then I might look into it.
A lot of the time when I think I'm getting along fine, I'm actually running myself into the ground and I eventually crash and burn and get confused and angry at myself for not trying harder and coping like everyone else. And I think, "I'm going to class! And going to work! And getting my assignments in on time! So I'm fine!" when in reality I've become so exhausted that I daydream about throwing myself into traffic so maybe I'll get injured and get to go to the hospital for a few weeks and rest. Which is a Not Good thing to daydream about. (I spent like all of last year surviving on coffee and spite. That is not a fun way to live.) I mean, that sounds different to what you describe, but it's still kinda concerning and I think you should at least talk to someone about it.
Hmm. Well, I haven't crashed yet, or been drained in a way that can't be attributed to things that are considered drains even on healthy people, and this has been an ongoing state for about a decade. Which is why I originally thought it was just puberty. Also why I didn't think it was dissociation at first, because what I've found seems to focus on episodic stuff, or as a change from one's usual state, rather than a constant, low-level thing. I think it's low-level.
Having this much dissociation on a constant basis is not a good thing. I'm Not A Professional, but I would suspect either sustained abuse/trauma or a neurological disorder. Quite honestly, being disconnected from your body to the extent that you don't experience hunger or tiredness and have a decreased sensitivity to heat/cold/pain is worrisome from a self-care standpoint without anything else on this list and is worth looking into. I would strongly suggest seeing a professional.
Well, it's definitely not abuse or trauma. At least, nothing either submitted to seebs or in the ITA forum rings any personal experience bells for me. The other thing is that, supposing I get diagnosed and something is done to increase my sensitivity to, say, hunger. Why would I want that? Hunger sounds bad. It sounds like the kind of error message that doesn't tell you anything useful. I mean, sure, if I get that from a self-care standpoint, hunger is good because it reminds one that one hasn't eaten in a while. I don't really need that reminder, though? I make sure to eat regularly, and indeed probably eat more than I should. A visceral reminder of needing food would only be an inconvenience. The sleep thing is kind of not great, but that's because I've got insomnia. Side note: does anyone know what exactly the Dissociative Experiences Scale measures? Is it specifically DID or is it dissociation in general? Anyway, I always thought it was just me being under the weather for years on end, having a cold that I've never really bothered to recover from.
Increased sensitivity to hunger also means that when the hunger state goes away, you know that you're not hungry anymore. It's no more perfect than hunger is as a reminder, but it does work that way. One of the reasons that people feel sleepy is that the chemicals in their bodies are prepared for sleep. Staying up beyond that point long enough, however, can convince the brain there's some crisis or event it needs to be alert for. It could be that part of your insomnia problem is that you don't know when your body is ready for sleep. I don't know to what extent you have heat/cold/pain sensitivity, but those things are pretty critical in avoiding injury and knowing something is wrong once that's happened. (Some people don't have any pain sensitivity at all. It's actually pretty dangerous; you can break bones and don't even realize it's happened.) Being able to tolerate some of these things, maybe even more tolerance than the general population, could be an advantage... but if it's too far out, it's dangerous. The Dissociative Experiences Scale is mostly for DID, I think. If you're going to look for professional help, your original post could be a useful thing to bring with you.
I'm heat sensitive, but if, say, I've got a pot that's been on the stove for a while, I sometimes pick it up or shift it over, and only after a split second do I notice that it's too hot to hold comfortably. At which point I put it down. So this could lead to problems further down the line, but if I'm on fire I'll notice that I'm on fire. The cold and pain aren't delayed, just a higher tolerance than most, I think. I'm not sure how to measure sensitivity versus tolerance.
