This entry may not make any sense but I needed to write it down anyway.
I rub my cheek usually on the right side with the back of my left or right hand. I rock back and forth but try to catch myself and stop. I know when I sway it makes me look strange so I try not to. When nervous I tend to put one hand very close to my neck, laying on my chest. As a kid I use to sleep with my arms bent at the elbow in the air. It seemed to calm me and I could go to sleep. I hate to admit it but I catch myself shaking my head back and forth rhythmically. I feel so stupid when I do that. I count. I don’t leave the house without a gel pen and paper because if I get anxious I’ll need to doodle my way back to a manageable stress level. A pen and pad are very much like my security blanket. When extremely anxious and obsessing over something, refusing to sleep for fear of nightmares, etc sometimes my body will jerk really hard.
I think to myself sometimes, why can’t you just go lay down? I can feel how tired I am but I fight it and fight it, tooth and nail. Sometimes it feels like I’m going to lose my mind because I’m so tired. When I’m sleep deprived or heck even maxed from stress I think I see stuff out of the corner of my eye. It’s as if something, a shadow or whatever, is caught in my peripheral vision. I turn to look and its not there. That can really become annoying. I want to yell at these stupid movements to stop but it’s not as if they’re there still I want to yell STOP IT! It’s my overly stressed brain misfiring but man it drives me crazy when that happens.
I don’t like it when I automatically bend to put my hands in my head when I’m tired but I’m caught off guard by the sight of my hands. It’s almost as if they belong to someone else. I don’t recognize them or my legs or other limbs. I can’t remember what that’s called, when you don’t feel like your body is your own and everything seems foreign. That reminds me too of how I have to ask myself before I leave the house if I’m wearing clothes. I greatly fear walking out of the house naked or walking into the kitchen naked. I look up and oh no, I forgot to put clothes on to get a glass of ice. I worry about that….that and a host of other things.
I’m going to drop some clonapin and try to get some sleep. I have therapy tomorrow/today. I still have to schedule my cab ride when I wake up. In addition to therapy I have to go to the doctor again. I can look forward to seeing my ill-tempered cab driver three days in a row this week. Oy!
Ariel Big
Zombie-Monday, June 09, 2008-2:04AM EST
“I can’t remember what that’s called, when you don’t feel like your body is your own and everything seems foreign.”
It’s called depersonalisation – that’s when you feel detached from your own experience of self/body and mind. It’s disconcerting at best, really distressing for the most part. I get it fairly frequently too, esp. with my hands: maybe because we focus on them if we focus on the body at all since we do everything with them?
When it’s the world or bits of it that seem foreign or strange/altered, it’s called derealisation.
They’re not usually experienced that clearly separately though – I mean not for folks within the dissociative disorder spectrum. Though for people who experience, say, sudden onset shock it’s common to just get the derealisation part.
Hope you get some rest.
I didn’t know there were words for that either – depersonalisation and derealisation. I just call it “zoning.”
I feel safest sleeping on my stomach, one hand holding onto the headboard, head tilted to the left, left leg crooked out, left thumb in my mouth (I try not to do that anymore because of jaw issues), hair off neck so as not to tickle it. I can’t sleep that way now because of being pregnant and it just irks me.
I also have a lot of body quirky habits. I’ve also experienced a large amount of depersonalization and derealization. BTW, Marlene Steinberg, M.D., has a good description of both of these in her book, “The Stranger in the Mirror: Dissociation–The Hidden Epidemic. I’ve been able to let go of some of my habits, through therapy I guess, but some still hang on. For one, I have to sleep on my stomach, like a turtle in my safe shell with my hair over my ear. When I had this recent surgery and couldn’t sleep this way, it drove me CRAZY!
I’m wishing you much strenth and healing blessings in your therapy.