Category: depersonalization

Mental Illness Week

Mental illness is a serious medical condition that often disrupts a person’s thinking, feeling, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Mental illness affects an estimated one in four American families and can have a profound effect on the individual, their family and the community.

Many people affected by mental illness do not know where to turn for information, support, help and hope. NAMI is a lifesaver for tens of thousands of individuals and families, virtually and in local communities across the country. Through clear information resources, free education and support group programs, advocacy initiatives, awareness events and personal connections with volunteer leaders in every state, NAMI works every day to save every life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comparing Our Differences

“Do not insult the deaf or cause the blind to stumble. You must fear your God; I am the Lord.”

Leviticus 19:14, NLT

“I served as eyes for the blind and feet for the lame.”

Job 29:15, NLT

Our disabilities can give us a rough time of it. Being mentally ill– whether with depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, autism spectrum, etc can create many challenges. In some sense, those of us with physical or mental issues are all in the same boat. Many of us are physically, mentally, or developmentally disabled.

Or are we? I suspect that there are a million permutations (or more) of disability. One is in a wheelchair and suffers from migraines and depression. Another has severe anxiety. Others have little or no self-control and is becoming a drunkard, and yet another is just a child but diagnosed as autistic.

The fact of  labeling people often diminishes them into categories. A young child with Downs Syndrome is often labeled, and they seldom have the opportunities that ‘normal’ children receive. This is usually an unconscious reaction to their handicap.

In Nazi Germany, those with a mental or physical illness were rounded up and sterilized or euthanized (murdered) to achieve an ‘Aryan superiority.’ Systematically, untold thousands of disabled people were executed. We call this “eugenics” and it still is alive and well in the 21st century. It is rampant in a world that embraces “social darwinism” as its ideology.

We must remember these things. We also need to understand that we shouldn’t compare people with people. And we dare not pass judgement on anyone who is different. Disabled people should not wear labels, especially when ‘normal’ people slap it on us. A person’s perceived value should never, ever be part of a Christian believer’s agenda.

*

ybic, Bryan

*

Related articles

A Crash Course in Depersonalization

Depersonalization is like having amnesia.  You don’t know who you are, you’ve “lost” yourself– your identity or your personality.  You try to jump-start yourself.  You pray, make deals with God, but it doesn’t help.  You are stuck.

There is a pervading feeling, like doom.  It saturates your thinking, flavoring everything with a sense of finality.  It is as difficult as you can imagine, to lose yourself– to become unreal to yourself.

Depersonalization is a symptom of an anxiety disorder and not a stand alone condition. How do we know this? Because depersonalization cannot exist without anxiety BUT anxiety can exist without depersonalization.

Depersonalization is caused by a shift in the part of the brain that provides us with a ‘real’ awareness of our environment; this part of the brain is directly linked to the Amygdala, the organ in the brain responsible for anxiety.

Terms commonly used to describe the symptoms and sensations of Depersonalization:

  • unreal
  • disembodied
  • divorced from oneself
  • apart from everything
  • unattached
  • alone
  • strange
  • weird
  • foreign
  • unfamiliar
  • dead
  • puppet-like
  • robot-like
  • acting a part
  • like a lifeless person
  • two dimensional
  • ‘cardboard’ figure
  • made of cotton-wool
  • having mechanical actions
  • remote
  • automated, a robot
  • a spectator
  • witnessing ones own actions as if in a film or on a TV program
  • not doing one’s own thinking
  • observing the flow of ideas in the mind as independent.

Treatment is to deal with the anxiety, depersonalization, although disturbing in itself, is not harmful. [Although the experts have never had to go through it].

As a Christian believer I reach out for the presence of God in this mental state.  Even though it is hard, I reach out in faith on the basis of His word; He will never leave or forsake me, He has forgiven me and not abandoned me.  That He understands my thinking from afar off.  These truths all strengthen me.

Related articles
%d bloggers like this: