Different types of insight

DX'd - Other
1

I wonder how many neurotypicals have ever had the notion that they are not their own mind. It seems like a lot of neurotypicals passively assume that they are their thoughts/emotions/etc. It seems like a somewhat unique experience of mental illness to experience how starkly untrue that can be. Like when your own thoughts turn against you, or you at least lose control of them.

I often feel that my mind is this thing in the same way that my body is this thing that I have. And I can interact with it, try to use it as a tool, and sometimes it does things on its own. It also sort of always begs this nagging, vague question about what exactly I am if I am not my mind, my thoughts, my emotions, etc. I think most people grasp that they are not their body, but they still seem to think they are their mind. I just can’t experience life that way anymore, haven’t been able to in years since my mind separated from me and took on a life of its own at times.

I’ve been watching and mostly enjoying my mind the past few days. The last time I took Latuda was on the 9th, and by then I think my mind was becoming hypomanic. This has continued somewhat since stopping the Latuda. My mind has been producing a lot of vivid material (internally) especially at night. The huge fantasy universe I’ve been building internally my entire life has opened back up a bit and some stuff is pouring out of it and swirling around. Listening to music really brings a lot of it out. Then I also feel periodically that I am taking little journeys inside my mind, like it’s a place.

I wouldn’t mind it being like this all the time if it wasn’t for the terrible tension/agitation that med was giving me, hypomania can actually be pretty nice. But I also know I need to get on a new med because inevitably it will turn dysphoric, and that ■■■■ just gets really messed up really fast.

But anyway I’ve been watching my mind. It feels like a separate entity that accompanies me in life, I even feel a weird fondness for it, which is generally part of this type of episode anyway. Everything gets really deep and meaningful on me.

But this also when neurotypicals start to freak me out the most. They seem really unaware and mechanical. I know that’s just a perception thing but it kind of wigs me out.

It’s like there’s this type of insight that I get a lot and very heavily, where you can step outside yourself in a way, and see all these different parts/things, thoughts/emotions/etc and see that they are all sort of like living modules and observe them, introspection of a sort maybe. This seems to be what a lot of neurotypicals seem to lack from my admittedly likely distorted perception.

And then there is insight as far as being able to tell when you are being really wonky or even psychotic, which is what I can lose completely in a really bad episode.

So it’s almost like there’s an imbalance for me where I sometimes have tons of one and sometimes a deficit of the other. It’s like I get so focused on introspection that I accidentally fall in.

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2

Man, you don’t want to get into the philosophy of the not-self then!

I think the vast majority of people (neurotypicals especially!) are far less insightful than they think they are and far more mentally ill than they’ll ever entertain the notion of.

If everyone just started off with accepting that they are likely mentally ill and worked up from there, then we’d see far less segregation and probably have very little use for such words as “neurotypical”.

3

Well to me they have this this advantage of being able to function. When my mind opens up like this, it’s extremely nice for days to weeks, and then I lose my ability to function. So it comes with a price. Neurotypicals do not pay this price. But then I also don’t think they have an entire universe inside of their heads, either. One of those bittersweet ■■■■ things in life.

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4

I’ve been gaining insight into how scary I have been when I was off my med’s and in the throes of my mental illness. It shocks me at times that I said the things I did. It’s a strong impetus to stay on my med’s and stay sober, though I’m wondering about my Seroquel because my vision has been blurry lately, and I’ve heard that Seroquel can cause cataracts.

5

Sigh. You’re right.

Right now I’m at the height of dysfunction - especially as measured by my contributions to what should be my priorities.

6

I think part of my problem is that I have like no life. I tried talking to my mother about how I have absolutely nothing to do all day once I’ve taken my dog for a walk and he’s ready for a nap. The only thing she would agree on was to fire her maid and have me clean her house instead to give me something to do, but she only has the house cleaned once every 2 weeks. I will probably clean it once per week instead, but still.

I’m not sure if there is a med that can get me excited about working at Burger King. I don’t think life works like that. I think most people find life boring and stressful. But I have a tempting alternative 24/7 inside my own head. But if I get sucked into that, it’s not long before I couldn’t even handle working at a Burger King.

7

Right now your life sounds like a dream fantasy to me. I owe so much money that being dysfunctional is not an option. However, I am, so I’m in a pickle. lol

8

Yeah I am very lucky that I have financial support, my mother is fairly wealthy and pretty much the only affection she knows how to show is by paying for my treatment stuff. If I did not have that support I would be dead by now. I wish I could feel more grateful and happy for it, but if I’m being honest I just feel dismal about trying to live normal life most of the time, reality kind of blows to me. I am sort of a brat. Not proud of it but it’s the truth.

9

Don’t be too ashamed. I’d probably be right where you are if I didn’t have the immediate issue of being in a financial ruin affecting my daily living.

Financial freedom would be amazing, sure, but spending all the money irresponsibly like my wife and I have done is merely symptomatic of the same struggle you are living with.

10

I think about writing a topic about this lots of times… I think about it too, neurotypicals and their insight. Few of them got it, they like to be certain their minds are right, I know this because I used to be certain that my mind was right.

Anyhoo, just wanted to point out that it doesn’t really matter if they see it or not or if we see more than them. What really matters is the amount of support they’re able to give to those who have none, they can be very good at looking at themselves, but terrible at helping others and that sucks.

And normalcy is screwed up anyway, who defines it? The normal things that I see are beyond crazy, violence, guns, people not caring, hunger when others are obese, etc…

Venting here… Good morning!

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11

I just go back and forth between being jealous of them, and then terrified of the idea of being like them. Back and forth all the time.

Like I wonder if a boring existence was all I had ever known, would it still be boring?

12

Oh and today I discovered that the human genome is deteriorating. So my lifelong question of whether or not there was some purpose to my mind sometimes getting overwhelmingly flooded about all the world’s problems, has been answered, and the answer is no.

13

I accept that I’m one of them. It’s actually normal to have delusions, (religion for example), it’s normal to have hallucinations, most of my friends had them. A lot of my past friends took lsd to become schizophrenic for a few hours… well you get it.

We belong in that group of normalcy that don’t feel that we belong because of derealization and feel like we belong because “we’re human, damnit!”

I think the best we can do to fight stigma is not to put ourselves in the “inferior or superior” corner. We’re normal people with brain issues. Some have lung issues, asthma. Others have sugar issues, diabetes.

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14

Yeah I don’t feel inferior or superior. I’m just perpetually struggling between whether my mind as it is, is a curse or something worth fighting for. Whichever mode I’m in will make sense to me at the time, so I’m already well aware of all of the logical stuff about why it’s important to take meds and the right thing to do. But at the same time I spend all night listening to music, feeling it and having wonderful vivid daydreams with rich emotion and everything inside of my own mind and it’s like, wait, my goal is to recover so I can go work at Burger King instead. And I know that I need to focus really hard on actually wanting that but I don’t think I ever will. I will just have to force myself to do what I don’t want to do for no other reason than because it’s the right thing to do.

15

Recovery doens’t necessarily means working right away you know? Specially at burguer king, that’s stressful. I think it means more finding your niche, maybe going back to school.

16

It’s not the Burger King specifically hehe. It’s just when I come out of this mental state and into the real world, I feel like I died. And maybe customer service just isn’t my thing. My last job was working at a gas station and I wound up feeling disgusted and panicked every day having to face reality and humanity, but then again it wasn’t the best setting.

17

Were you medicated at the time?

In all honesty, for me, if I’m not contributing something to society my life has no meaning. Right now, my greatest contribution is to myself and to my well being, but I’m feeling something is lacking.

I could never work in dead end jobs again, done that for a long time and it really ruined by well being, sense of self, drove me to drink more, use more drugs, have more meaningless sex, etc.

I’m just saying, you’re a bright woman, you could do more of your life and give it a sense of meaning. Put that insight into use.

18

I was on Zyprexa initially and then went off of it because I couldn’t keep up at the job with all of the drowsiness and brain fog. And then I went crazy. So that was that.

I’m probably just mildly tripping balls emotionally right now since I quit Latuda cold turkey on the 10th. I’m torn on whether or not to just get back on it and suffer through the tension/agitation since it keeps me not-psychotic and still lets me be hypomanic, masturbate and have an intense imagination. That’s a pretty good deal. But that tension was horrific. If she switches me it’ll probably be to something sedating and then I’ll lose what I could have on Latuda.

Then it’s like here comes the WHY CAN’T I BE NORMAL internal scream, but then I don’t want to be normal when I really think about it. Or do I. I’m jealous of neurotypicals and disgusted by them at the same time.

See the whole BPD vs not-BPD is only the tip of the crazy indecisive iceberg lol.

19

What makes you feel disgusted by neurotypicals?

20

I could get into a long tangent with tons of examples, but to attempt to summarize it with a couple, like

The other week an Amber Alert went off on everyone’s phone. Here that’s when a child has gone missing, usually abducted, and the police send out a warning right away that hits everyone’s cell phones in the area, even if it’s 3AM, with a description of the vehicle, in case anyone can help catch the perp in time to save the child. And every time that happens most people complain about how annoying it is and want to know how to prevent their phones from getting the alerts. Because they’re focused on more important things and living their normal lives and feeling good.

Then I stay up all night having florid, rich daydreams that feel more real to me than real life does most of the time, while most of the people I encounter spend their time focused on things like cup cake recipes or Donald Trump debates. And they work boring, stressful, demeaning jobs all day so that they can enjoy their cupcakes and Trump debates at night when they get home. And that’s like, supposed to be my goal.

And my brain is just like

Although TO BE FAIR as the medication was working I was able to start getting really excited about toads of all things, so I know it’s possible, it’s possible for it to not suck.