Tag: depersonalisation

Dissociation and Gigs

18 November 2017 /

Gigs are a confusing place to be when you experience any form of dissociation. For me, there are two likely outcomes. Sometimes I feel the barriers between me and everything else reduce, so I feel closer to seeing the world as a typical person does. But sometimes I instead feel more aware of the dissonance between what I’m perceiving and what I’m experiencing, and so I notice those barriers more acutely.

This isn’t an aspect of dissociation that I’ve talked to anyone about before, but it’s been on my mind recently while I’ve tried to figure out which elements make the good outcome more likely.

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My Diagnosis (or lack of) Experience…

12 January 2016 /

I finally got a phonecall back from the CMS, but it wasn’t the phonecall I expected.

In the last appointment, C3 seemed like she understood what I meant and was happy to talk to her team about sorting out what I can do next. But the phonecall was a lot more negative.

Firstly, she said that she didn’t want to progress further as I only met some of the criteria and not others. Considering depersonalisation disorder (the closest thing I could see to my experiences, and what I wanted to focus on) is basically defined by experiencing depersonalisation that causes negative effects and isn’t caused by anything else – in other words, exactly what I experience, and what I tried to explain to her is probably the thing underlying everything else-  I don’t really see how she could have reached that conclusion.

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My Diagnosis Experience, Part 5

16 December 2015 /

Yesterday, I finally had my appointment with C3.

Leading up to yesterday, I’ve been nervous about going back, more so than if I was seeing a stranger. The nerves are mostly from not knowing how she would interpret me, based on her unexpected assessment last time. Because all I remembered from before was the more negative parts, like the conversations I ended up confused by and L’s reaction to meeting her, I was expecting a bad experience. Instead she was friendly, and she remembered me to some extent; asking about church and uni.

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The Lion’s Den of Broadcasting

9 October 2015 /

This week has been bad in terms of anxiety and depersonalisation; simple things like a busy bus or a doubting thought, that normally I can deal with absolutely fine, have been sources of fear and thought-loops instead.

Considering this was also the week where I started the Broadcasting module, I was worried. While the course as a whole is outside of my comfort zone, a module where I’d potentially have to appear on microphone and on camera is lightyears away from comfortable.

But today, I woke up feeling calmer. Then something happened that put the last few years in perspective.

Today was the second day of our broadcasting group, and we were focusing on radio. Our first task was trying out voice recorders to interview a classmate. I returned our voice recorder to my lecturer as we were finished, only to find the next task was analysing an interview as a full group.

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