# Why do you think you lose your vision?



## never_giving_up (Jun 23, 2010)

Am interested to see what theories you guys have to explain this phenomena that we all seem to share.


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## christeltje (Oct 8, 2011)

This is what i wrote in another thread:

Until today i never knew that the visionstuff was part of the dp/dr. I always explained it to myself as. I live inside my mind allot and therefore i dont really
use my eyes. (like holding something in you hand, but not with a tight grip).
Whenever im having a bad day, and i am in my head allot with my thought and not so much with everythign around me, i have blurry vision, white spots that look like bacteria or something (which i love to watch), i sometime see things that arent there or ppl look different from what they look like. And sometimes my eyes start trembling.

I think that because i have not really used my eyes for soo long, i now need prismglasses (i dont know how its called in english), because my 2 eyes cant make 1 picture anymore.

I experience the same with all senses.

What do you think is the reason?


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## Dragonfly (Sep 16, 2010)

never_giving_up said:


> Am interested to see what theories you guys have to explain this phenomena that we all seem to share.


I think it's our mind's equivalent of putting on sunglasses on a very bright day. For some reason, we go into sensory overload or are overwhelmed in some way and our senses start to shut down. It happens to me with sound and taste also.


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## never_giving_up (Jun 23, 2010)

christeltje said:


> This is what i wrote in another thread:
> 
> Until today i never knew that the visionstuff was part of the dp/dr. I always explained it to myself as. I live inside my mind allot and therefore i dont really
> use my eyes. (like holding something in you hand, but not with a tight grip).
> ...


Well, one thing I notice when my vision goes blurry is that when I look in the mirror, my eyes are glazed over - they look dull, and dead. I think that maybe the blurring of vision is caused by some physical change in the eyes that is rooted in some psychological cause.

When I feel calm, my vision is fine. There seems to be a direct correlation between my anxiety levels and the quality of my vision.

The more dissociated I become, the worse my vision gets.

Perhaps the vision going is a reflection of diminished reality processing. Or at least, perhaps there is a block to the conscious experience of this reality processing. Not sure about that one.


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## christeltje (Oct 8, 2011)

What about your other senses? Do they change too? 
Because, when my dp gets worse every sense i have 
gets worse too.

When im not tired when i have it, i can make it less
by really using my eyes, like trying to focus on everything 
i look at.

I dont have anxiety what i know of, so i cant say 
anything about that. But does anything get the
vision better?


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

The word to describe loss of vision is blindness. An ophthomologist can see if your eyes are working properly. Your eyes are lenses. They focus an image on your retina. The retina sends the images into the brain. Then vision becomes a subject of neurology. A neuro ophthomologist can investigate neurological reasons for loss of vision. But, I don't think that is what we are talking about here. From what I think I learned reading neuro texts on google books on line, there are two channels for vision. And, vision is not just image information.
Image data from the eyes is routed through the temporal lobe where it is assigned emotional significance by something called the Amygdala. Think of it as adding "emotional content/color commentary" to the visual package.
Then the visual "package" is routed to other areas of the brain for further processing. Some of us have experienced "the FEAR" from misadventures on recreational drugs. That unique fear or euphoria comes from tinkering with your Amygdala. The amygdala is the emotional boss inside the temporal lobe of your brain. If you also acquired DP/DR as part of your misadventure, then you know you were disturbing the area of the brain that is responsible for adding the "emotional content/color commentary" to your vision. So, what would the symptoms be, if your visual package was lacking it's "emotional content/color commentary"? Would you have DR?
The temporal lobe is said to be "exquisitively sensitive to insult". If you have a soul, neurologists suggest it is a composite of the functions within your temporal lobe. I am awaiting the results of an MRI. As a teen, i had a trauma which hurt me to my soul. It is said that the eyes are the window to the soul. When I looked into the mirror, my eyes were dull. Supposedly, the ability to recognize one's image is unique to human beings. When I looked in the mirror, I did not recognize myself. I knew it was me, but it was not the me I knew. Part of me had died.
This link shows what I expect my MRI to reveal. As a teen, my brain went into hypoxia (lack of oxygen). I suffered intense focal temporal lobe seizures for about 5 minutes. They occurred every 3 or 4 seconds. The seizures are sensory and emotional in nature. I had visual hallucinaions in conjunction with the electrical shock sensations of my seizures. They were one of the keys to my being able to diagnose my condition, when medical doctors failed to do so for 39 years. Here is the link that described my hallucinations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination#Focal_epilepsy
I did not lose consciousness, though it was altered significantly. I was in an "ictal state" - the Twilight Zone. When those seizures were over, I became seriously ill. In that 5 minutes, I may have suffered the equivalence of a lifetime of seizures for the average epileptic. (my apologies to anyone who is epileptic. I just don't know how to state it otherwise). As a result, I suffered an emotional death. I lost my sense of self. I was beyond DP'd. I became agoraphobic. I developed neurological symptoms - palatal myoclonus, and also developed a head tremor. I acquired an affective disorder of recurrent clinical depression. I began to experience frequent ocular migraines. A scar on the temporal lobe is said to be able to produce every neuro-psychiatric symptom known. I experienced quite a few on the list. I knew I was sane, because i didn't have them all. (lol) I felt a vague ache/pain at the top of my neck/base of my skull that I could locate with my finger, but not reach. It was inside my head. I could feel it for many months after this trauma. The white spot on this MRI photo shows exactly where I could not reach. The white spot is a lesion caused by focal seizures on the patient's MRI. It is a scar on the hoppocampus, which is a structure within the temporal lobe. It is a dead neuronal mass. When it died, a portion of that patient's life potential died with it.
The point of my explaining this, is to say that DP/DR is neurological in origin. How else can it be? Your mind is a function of your physical brain. At the basic level, emotions are a physical phenomena. Candice Pert can tell you all about it. http://candacepert.com/ I'm not suggesting everyone who suffers DP/DR has an observable brain injury.
Stress can alter the processes of the brain. Would DP/DR theoretically be observable at the neurotransmitter/molecular level? Certainly. Can we do that? No. Is your DP/DR real? Well, it is as real as you are. Can the brain heal itself? Yes, it can. I was dead at 17. I had no emotions, and was afraid to leave my house. I put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes I back pedaled. I used the cognitive side of my brain to make decisions. I put my cognitive side through hypertrophy, in order to survive. People who lose their emotions have to do that. There is even a personality disorder named for it. I lived by memory for a spell. I did things I used to enjoy, just because I knew I used to enjoy them. Slowly, very slowly, my emotions began to return. I re acquired a sense of self. I feel like I got back about 85% of what i had. I don't think that would have happened had I stayed in the house. But I still don't recognize myself in the mirror. The guy I am looking for was much younger. Some of you may have been hurt as bad as i was. Most of you were not. Stay in the game. Take car of your physical self, and give your brain some time to re adjust.


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

Oops. Left out the link to the MRI of mesial temporal sclerosis.

http://professionals.epilepsy.com/wi/print_section.php?section=cs_101510q2


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## rightwrong99 (Apr 17, 2011)

Thats really interesting forest!
Honestly, I think a lot of people on here have probably had some sort of head trauma. 
I know 8 people now, from this site, that have all discovered a head injury of some sort before DP (even if they thought drugs brought out the disorder.)
I think a bad drug trip, or any kind of drug trip can manifest as a sort of trauma in the brain.
I went to a neurofeedback doctor last week because Im going to be trying this therapy to restore certain functions - and after all of the symptoms I listed (which a majority of us relate as being 'depersonalization'), they said it looks like I have a mild brain injury (which is totally recoverable, and neurofeedback speeds up that process.) 
Depersonalization is a loss of consciousness. A loss of what it is to be human, and it involves a disintegration of a variety of normal neurobiological processes. People who don't have DPDR take for granted that all of these processes fire at the same time for them, which gives them the LOVELY illusion of being human and having a soul.


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## Visual (Oct 13, 2010)

Dopamine is a major player in visual processing - starting right on the retina (though eye examinations cannot reveal anything about it).

Dopamine is also a major player in 'feeling'

One fellow on another forum said that he could see ships out his window all blurry. 15 minutes after taking his first dose of Sinemet, he began crying since for the first time in 5 years he could feel his emotions. Now the ships are clear and the writing on them is sharp and readable. He has motivation, sex drive, and even his eyes are no longer so dilated - all from 1/2 pill of a simple old med. DP/DR is gone

There is even research for treating adolescents with low dose Sinemet for 'lazy-eye'.

It is well established that increasing dopamine is helpful for many with brain injuries.

I've had enormous improvement with meds that increase dopamine levels - and only need small doses to work. Noticed everything is sharper and brighter. And also it improved night-blindness. And there is some cognitive improvement as well.

Hope this is helpful...


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## rightwrong99 (Apr 17, 2011)

Visual said:


> Dopamine is a major player in visual processing - starting right on the retina (though eye examinations cannot reveal anything about it).
> 
> Dopamine is also a major player in 'feeling'
> 
> ...


Prob why DPDR was 20x worse when taking antipsychotics cause they reduce dopamine.


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## never_giving_up (Jun 23, 2010)

Visual said:


> Dopamine is a major player in visual processing - starting right on the retina (though eye examinations cannot reveal anything about it).
> 
> Dopamine is also a major player in 'feeling'
> 
> ...


Do you have anything other than anecdotal evidence for this? Sounds interesting.

--

After a long time of putting it off, I went to get my eyes tested recently. Turns out that my vision problems aren't just caused by DP. Turns out I do actually need glasses!


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