# what is jamais vu???????



## Guest (Jan 4, 2005)

ive heard of deja vu,but not jamais vu.sounds like something you order in a french restaurant :?


----------



## Guest (Jan 4, 2005)

I think the "almost seen" but I don't speak French. The only reason I ever heard of it was "Catch-22".


----------



## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Dear Andy, 
Its the opposite of deja vu. When you have deja vu, something unfamiliar looks like you've seen it before. When you have jamais vu, the familiar seems foreign, out of place, or unfamiliar. Both of these have been shown to originate in a person's temporal lobes, although more studies have been done on deja vu than jamais vu. Nifty of the French to invent these terms, though.

Peace
Homeskooled


----------



## Guest (Jan 4, 2005)

that makes perfect sense to me cos when i first felt like this , it was as if i had just landed on this planet.. :shock:


----------



## Isobel (Aug 11, 2004)

I think ive experienced this. Its like your surroundings seem like a mirror image of themselves.
Apparently, its when one side of the brain 'shuts off' temporarily?


----------



## grandma-stole-my-wheels (Nov 17, 2004)

Jamais Vu, to me in this context would mean...

Feeling like somewhere you are, is been felt for the first time, unfamilairity wise. Like your seeing, something or a place, for the first time instead, again.

Deju VU, would be different, in that it feels like your reliving something again.... weird huh? Kind like the opposite of deja vu, jamais vu is.

Cripto.


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

I had horrible Jamais Vu with my derealization...and it lasted and lasted. Just too creepy for words.

Remember the word "jamais" means "never" - and it's just like you guys are saying above, a feeling of never having been in the environment, or of never having done x before - even if the thing is entirely routine. It's like the first time you ever saw your room, or your hand, or the first time you ever typed, etc. You know HOW to do those things, but it's as if you are not the same person who once did them, or that the Experience of doing them was never actually perceived before this moment.

Sounds nuts, of course...but it's a very common component to dp/dr.


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

I EXPLAINED THIS TO A DOCTOR 9 YEARS AGO,HE JUST LOOKED AT ME AS IF I WAS CRACKERS,PUT ME ON MELLERIL WHICH MADE ME WORSE. :?:


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

Thanks homeskooled and everyone.

I recall reading the term Jamais Vu a long time ago.
Now I realise that I had a huge freaky experience about six months before 
I started to have chronic dp.

It lasted for about an hour.
I drove a few kilometers down the road to check out a house to buy and noticed that everything seemed some how different.
When I drove back I had to go to the local shop where I'd been hundreds of times before.
I was so terrified because it now looked totally different,I had to walk around to find the milk etc and yet I knew perfectly well where it had always been kept.
I recall looking at buckets of flowers at the front entrance like it was such a novel and lovely idea but they had been positioned there for years.
All the shop ladies looked new,not one familar face.
As I walked out I was amazed to see people sitting outside eating at a small cafe,I marvelled at how my local shopping centre had changed.
The road looked more like a small highway instead of a minor beach road and it all seemed much brighter with new street lights.
In some ways I felt as if I'd been away a long time and I was able to experience it as if I had jumped into the future.
I came home very shaken up.I had no idea what had happened to me.

I was too afraid to go back to those shops for weeks.

Why does deja vu and Jamais vu occur with dp/dr?

I agree Clover deja vu as weird as it feels,is easier to deal with.At least it's common and even so called normal people get it.

Very scary stuff.This is when I question my sanity.

Cheers Shell


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

Hi,

I wonder if I can correspond jamais vu to my confusion when I go in and out a place.... Like when I go in a resto, then talk with my friends one hour, then go to the bathroom, and when I come back, 2 minutes later, it's like I have slept in the bathroom, I feel weird and I look at my friends, who never moved for the 2 minutes, but I feel like I am confused about time and place, all seems confusing and I feel like something is wrong and I am sooooo nervous and stressed.

I get this so much all the time that I developped a phobia to go in and out a place... silly but real :evil: I just wait until change my environment, and it's never esay... always like I just woke up or went out of a coma.

Cynthia xxx


----------



## g-funk (Aug 20, 2004)

I used to get that a lot Cynthia. When I first had anything like this dp and dr stuff, it was like my memory kept being deleted from one moment to the next. Very scary. I still get it occasionally, a bit like Im stuck in the wrong state of consciousness, but I focus on reality and staying calm. I sometimes get it when I wake up.


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

Hi G-Funk,

Sometimes I had this BEFORE dp, but it was when I was drunk, or sometimes out of the blue, with friends, or in a public place, but it never lasted more than seconds. Since my delivery it's always thee, and some AD worsen it (Zoloft).

Cyn xxx


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

It's all just pieces of the same experience of dp/dr, etc. Deja vu, Jamais vu, perception changes, things look "odd' or "off" somehow, appear as mirror images of themselves, etc....it's not that you 'HAVE' jamais vu (as if it was a disorder or something)... it's an Experience that comes during altered states of consciousness.

All those experiences are within the range of what any normal brain can "do" - but probably would only do it for a couple of seconds, then "re-center" the point of consciousness. With us, we stay in the Unreality state, or we keep re-entering it a hundred times a day.

Cynthia, you say it's the worst when you go in and out of some place. VERY common. That was always my worse experiences, too. The very concept of a "transition" - going in, or coming out of any actual place mimics the "transition" of going into or coming out of a state of consciousness. So it's more likely to produce "odd feelings of reality"

Same with the transitions of falling asleep and waking up. ANY transition is going to challenge the state of consciousness - and it's a very good example of precisely when you need to keep FOCUSING OUTWARD the hardest.

If you enter or leave a room and notice the transition is kicking the dp feelings up even higher, DO NOT try to "re-orient yourself" into feeling more normal. As soon as you TRY, you're making the entire experience a thousand times worse. The worse thing you can do is to try to MAKE things "seem familiar" - or to try to "feel right" ? the harder you try, the more elusive reality becomes. *The more you TRY to make the room like it did five minutes ago, the more unusual it's going to become*. Pick up a book, throw yourself into a conversation, count tiles on the floor, or do your nails or call someone to talk or balance your checkbook. Do ANYTHING NORMAL immediately - and that is still not going to make things feel normal, but at least you're not going to be making it worse.

Again, my metaphor of a ghost: if there are scary spirits trying to freak you out, and everytime you walk in the room and they say "boo!" and rattle their chains, if you get scared and start trying to find them or telling them to leave, they'll laugh and remember what a sucker you are and plan even more scary things for the next time. You are entertaining them. You are telling them that their tactics work on you.

If you give the scary noises NO attention, if you acknowledge to yourself "oh, boy....okay, this is that weird stuff that happens sometimes..." and the move ONWARD....push right past the "boo!" sounds and step over the chains and ignore all the pictures on the wall that are moving.........IMMERSE yourself in something in the moment that is NOT about the creepy feelings.

Those ghosts will say "well, shit. She's not falling for it." And they will eventually stop bothering you because it's not fun anymore.

This is not going to cure you in a day. Or a week. But it will cure you of these symptoms. The hardest thing you will ever do is to really DEDICATE yourselves to this, commit to it - and KEEP at it. It will cure you. Period. No if's and's or but's.

Yet........99 per cent of those who read this will not do it.


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

Thanks Janine,

What you are saying right now is that if we ignore the horrible dp feelings, and ajmais vu sensations, and try to live with it, it will go away and we'll be cured?

But you always talk about therapy and psychoanalysis too..... but now you can say that if we forget those false realities and obsessions, they will go away? (Almost impossible to do) :shock:

Thanks for your post. I will re-re-re-retry again. I have much difficulties now, I am so impatient, and on top of that I have those zaps from Paxil withdrawal...and it's been a whil since I am notwith Paxil, but it stays  I know I know what you will say. But argh! I hate them.

Cyn xxx


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

How can EXPLAIN those sensations to a psychologist of psychiatrist???? How to explain them? Only you understand.

Cyn xxx


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

There is nothing that would change if the psychiatrist understood them!!!

It feels great to know that the doctor GETS it, I know that. But there is absolutely nothing that their Understanding can DO for you.

The way out is by focusing outward and by doing the inner psychological work on other things in your mind/life. THat is how we do it. IF we have a doctor who understands the dp, that's lovely. But it has NOTHING to do with the way therapy will work regardless.

Love you,
J


----------



## Kelson12 (Aug 10, 2004)

Janine,

Ok, so I understand that we need to focus outward...but how? What exactly does this mean???? How can I focus outward??? I just don't get it. When ever I think of anything I get a little panicking, depressed, weird thought in my head. 
How does one "think outward"? And what does this mean???
Thanks.

Kelson


----------



## DM (Aug 12, 2004)

Maybe 'focusing outwards' is a bit confusing.

What Janine means when she says:
'The more you TRY to make the room like it did five minutes ago, the more unusual it's going to become.'

is that you are analyzing every part of the room and THEREFORE it will look strange.

For example - if you would focus totally on a can of Coca-Cola you would suddenly read things and see things you never have noticed before. The can is the same, the way you are looking at it is much more intense and the can is different. Just try it! Use all your DP/DR power and look at some stuff in your own house with immense concentration. You will experience DR after a few minutes.

Derealization - questioning everthing you normally took for granted. If you question certain aspects of yourself (deep introspection) you will find amazing stuff - but, you will not recognize yourself anymore. Like the can of Coke. DP.

Focussing outwards means taking things for granted like they are (no glaring), not paying attention (the ghost metaphor of Janine) and doing things you want to do. You will put everything into context - normality.

Who cares what the serial number of the can of coke is? Normal people do not notice it.

However, DP/DR sufferers do!!!

Or do they suffer DP/DR because they notice it...?


----------



## person3 (Aug 10, 2004)

that's like when you say a word a lot of times, like "pretzel"


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

Jamais-vu and deja-vu are definately temporal lobe related....I never thought that dp/dr could get so varied... but it gets so complex+disorientating (bleurgh!!!!!!!) I've had some nasty deja-vus and jamais-vus but kinda gotta do the reverse psychology thing and fight it off.....kinda builds up the coping/defense mechanism...

take care


----------



## Guest (Jan 5, 2005)

I think I know what focus outward means.
I recall Dr Claire Weekes was very big on using distractions when in phobic situations so I guess it's much the same.
I have read but I'm not certain if it's a fact that we can only think one thought at a time.
If this is correct then distraction will stop us thinking about how terrible/weird etc our dp is.
Whilst we are able to think of something else.......anything else, we won't be dwelling on our dp?
This is like meditation,you keep coming back to the mantra,in this case the mantra would be any thought other than dp.
Anyone who has tried to meditate will know how hard it can be.The idea apparently is not to force it,it's a skill that takes years of practice.

I just realised that if focusing outward is one of the keys then being here on this board and talking about dp in length and detail goes against the grain of the theory :roll:
ok now I'm good and confused

Shelly


----------



## Homeskooled (Aug 10, 2004)

Dear Shelly, 
I think that everyone gets jamais vu...probably more often than deja vu. Have you ever gone away from your home for a vacation that lasted a week, and on the day you come back home it seems completely different and unfamiliar, and usually smaller or drabber?

The temporal lobes are fascinating areas of the brain. For the longest time, neuroligists referred to them as the "armrests" of the brain because of their unique winged postioning in front of each ear. But they began to notice that people with severe damage to them would not be able to grasp the simplest concepts. They seem to be able to help us differentiate between things and also give them emotional significance. In one particular syndrome, men with temporal lobe damage lose the ability to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects in regard to their love life. Neurologists dryly refer to this as extreme cases of "hypersexuality". One man in California with this was found making violent love to his sidewalk...and was promptly put in a psych unit. The temporal lobes also affect our ablities to see a familiar face and realize that it is familiar. In another syndrome, men will recognize the appearance of their spouse but beleive that they were replaced with exact replicas of their "previous" wife- like a scene from _Invasion of the Body Snatchers_. She looks the same, but she doesnt "feel familiar" to his temporal lobe. I see jamais vu as a much, much milder form of this same temporal lobe dysfunction.

Peace
Homeskooled


----------



## Guest (Jan 6, 2005)

I don't think leaving home and returning later should qualify as jamais vu. Its unfamiliar in every sense of the word because you have not been there and this feeling is understandable.

I experience moments inside of my childhood home where i did not recognize my surroundings, or they seemed alien. I was cutoff and distant from family members, but only for moments (sometimes long). This perceptual change is accompanied with the associated feeling you get with deja vu: a body shift and feeling a bit whacked out, or like on drugs for a bit.


----------



## Beth (Sep 27, 2004)

Although my dp is drug-induced this is yet another thing that ties in that I've experienced since childhood. I used to find quite often that familiar items suddenly looked different, it didn't worry me, I found it really interesting. I think normal people get this a fair amount too, my boyfriend said he did as a child, and it is just like that thing with words.

Would that be a good way to try and explain it to someone? "It's like where you say a word over and over again until it seems like nonsense, except you do it with the universe and everything in it and it doesn't come back..." Maybe not...


----------



## Guest (Jan 8, 2005)

I find myself listening to myself talk as if I didn't understand the context of the words...as if i didn't understand a word of english. I'll just let my mind slip into this daze and pretty soon the English language sounds like garbled nonsense.


----------

