# does anyone know what this is?



## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

a while ago on PBS I watched a special on brains and brain injury-- anyway I think it was about that-- it was something scientific/ medical, I can't remember the details.

They showed this guy who had been in a car accident, had a head injury, and when he came to he recognized his family and loved ones but believed they were imposters. He thought they were strangers pretending to be his family. He could not be convinced that they were actually his real family.

Did anyone happen to see this, and/ or even if you didn't, do you know what the name of this disorder is? It's not amnesia b/c he remembered everything from his life and recognized everyone-- he just believed they were imposters or actors pretending to be the real people he knew.

I think this is like a twist on DP where nothing seems real-- objects or people.

If memory serves, the injury had disrupted the communication between certain parts of his brain.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

That is really scary actually. During my early dpdr stages I had something similar happen. When I first came come after developing this disorder, my family looked foreign. Their faces looked totally different, mind you it had only been a couple months since i had seen them last. This was mostly due to the acid visuals (warping and breathing of objects), but you could imagine how massively fucked that was for me.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

what did the warping/ breathing look like?

the only visual disturbance I have is that things look "shiny" like they're coated in polyurethane.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

I did see it, and Dreamer might be able to answer/help as the doctor who did the study/treatment is Dr. Ramachandria, who is one of her favorites.

I do know this, and this is a VERy important difference between what that man suffered and what we dp/dr types suffer: he had a brain INJURY and as such, he wasn't frightened by the feeling that his mother was not his real mother, but was an "imposter" - he was quite calm about the entire thing.

A brain injury, or brain damage, usually becomes "integrated" (accepted) within the person's mind. They completely accept the disjointed reality as TRUE without being alarmed by it. It just "is" a fact, odd and bizarre though it may be.

The stuff we experience is not that way. We maintain a "duality" about it, knowing on the one hand that what we believe/feel/perceive is WRONG and the bizarre quality of our derealization freaks us out. That's one of the hallmarks that makes this a "psychological" symptom rather than a "brain injury or brain damage." We continue to feel terror around the oddness we experience. Not so with organic brain disorders.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

Breathing usually happens on flat surfaces, with some sort of geometric patterns. It looks, literally, as if the walls were breathing, moving in and out. At its height, I would get it from just about any flat surface I would look at.

Warping still happens constantly, and it doesn't really bother me much at all anymore. Things will twist out of proportion when I space out a bit.

Its very easy to imagine, if you've done some sort of psychedelic drugs, other than marijuana.


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2004)

Z- I've seen that in movies, so I know what you're talking about now.

Janine-- aren't there mental illnesses where reality testing is not intact, like schozophrenia or paranoia? I always understood this was one of the hallmarks distunguishing DPDR from schizophrenia.


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## blackwinded (Jul 31, 2005)

i also get that breathing/warping of objects. I've never done any drugs tho. I have schizophrenia. I'll see objects change shape and become deformed, and i see things breath . Anything with a pattern in it is bad to look at. I'll see the patterns moving around and changing shape. Like the lines and marks in wood--the flow into different shapes. Whenever i look at a straight line, it never stays straight for more then a moment. Soon it starts to move around, like it will tip side to side and become wavy. Sometimes i see things jump--Like i'll be looking at a pop can and i see it quickly jump a few feet over and then back again.

-Becka


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## Scattered (Mar 8, 2005)

Looks like a correlation between the mind under the influence of psychedelics and schizophrenia. I'm sure some of the same areas of the brain are affected, albeit under the influence of a drug this effect is temporary. I also get a very slight breathing, warping of pavement and wall patterns. This happens either when I'm very tired or spaced out or stressed.


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