# DP and the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE)



## derrrr (Dec 7, 2016)

I stumbled upon the concept of 'self-disorder' a few weeks ago while in a manic research phase, and read that it shares a lot of affinities with DP.

I don't know if this list is helpful what with all the psychological jargon, but it does list a lot of things that DPers tend to experience from what I've read since lurking/posting here. Maybe it can help other members put to words what they couldn't before about some of their symptoms.

*Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE)*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-disorder#EASE_items

(You'll have to click 'Show' to pop down the list in each sub-category)


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## Anto395 (Mar 21, 2017)

Thanks you so much for this. My therapist suspects that I have a mental illness related to my sense of self, and not necessarily DPD. I have to say, some symptoms in this list that I relate to were articulated way more specifically than I have been able to describe them. I think a lot of DPD sufferers should go through this list.


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## inferentialpolice (Nov 26, 2012)

Anto395 said:


> Thanks you so much for this. My therapist suspects that I have a mental illness related to my sense of self, and not necessarily DPD. I have to say, some symptoms in this list that I relate to were articulated way more specifically than I have been able to describe them. I think a lot of DPD sufferers should go through this list.


In looking over the domains of the EASE, they overlap significantly with identity issues that define dissociative disorders that are further along the spectrum than "mere" DP. That is, someone who has DP and who identifies with the phenomenology expressed in the EASE should perhaps be assessed for their being not just DP alone, but rather the spectrum disorder Other Specified Dissociative DIsorder (Previously called DDNOS). Treatment for DDNOS proceeds similarly to that used for more explicit and extreme identity pathologies such as dissociative identity disorder, concentrating on therapy meant to address a "disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior." (quote from DSM5 section on dissociative disorders)


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## Anto395 (Mar 21, 2017)

inferentialpolice said:


> In looking over the domains of the EASE, they overlap significantly with identity issues that define dissociative disorders that are further along the spectrum than "mere" DP. That is, someone who has DP and who identifies with the phenomenology expressed in the EASE should perhaps be assessed for their being not just DP alone, but rather the spectrum disorder Other Specified Dissociative DIsorder (Previously called DDNOS). Treatment for DDNOS proceeds similarly to that used for more explicit and extreme identity pathologies such as dissociative identity disorder, concentrating on therapy meant to address a "disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity, emotion, perception, body representation, motor control, and behavior." (quote from DSM5 section on dissociative disorders)


That's interesting. In my case, I don't particularly identify with the traditional symptoms of DP/DR, like specifically feeling unreal, disconnected or the like. What I am experiencing is more akin to what is written in the "disturbance" section of the Wikipedia article. I could quote it directly:

"In the schizophrenia spectrum disorders, the minimal self and the self-world structure are "constantly challenged, unstable, and oscillating," causing anomalous self-experiences known as self-disorders. These involve the person feeling as if they lack an identity, as if they are not really existing, that the sense of their experiences being their own (the "mine-ness" of their experiential world) is failing or diminishing, as if their inner experiences are no longer private, and that they don't really understand the world. These experiences lead to the person engaging in hyper-reflectivity, or abnormally prolonged and intense self-reflection, to attempt to gain a grasp on these experiences, but such intense reflection may further exacerbate the self-disorders. Self-disorders tend to be chronic, becoming incorporated into the person's way of being and affecting "how" they experience the world and not necessarily "what" they experience. This instability of the minimal self may provoke the onset of psychosis.[4][6]

Similar phenomena can occur in other conditions, such as bipolar disorder and depersonalization disorder, but Sass's (2014) review of the literature comparing accounts of self-experience in various mental disorders shows that serious self-other confusion and "severe erosion of minimal self-experience" only occur in schizophrenia;[7] as an example of the latter, Sass cites the autobiographical account of Elyn Saks, who has schizophrenia, of her experience of "disorganization" in which she felt that thoughts, perceptions, sensations, and even the passage of time became incoherent, and that she had no longer "the solid center from which one experiences reality", which occurred when she was 7 or 8 years old.[8] This disturbance tends to fluctuate over time based on emotions and motivation, accounting for the phenomenon of dialipsis in schizophrenia, where neurocognitive performance tends to be inconsistent over time.[7]

The disturbance of the minimal self may manifest in people in various ways, including as a tendency to inspect one's thoughts in order to know what they are thinking, like a person seeing an image, reading a message, or listening closely to someone talking (audible thoughts; or in German: Gedankenlautwerden). In normal thought, the "signifier" (the images or inner speech representing the thought) and the "meaning" are combined into the "expression", so that the person "inhabits" their thinking, or that both the signifier and the meaning implicitly come to mind together; the person does not need to reflect on their thoughts to understand what they are thinking. In people with self-disorder, however, it is frequently the case that many thoughts are experienced as more like external objects that are not implicitly comprehended. The person must turn their focus toward the thoughts to understand their thoughts because of that lack of implicit comprehension, a split of the signifier and the meaning from each other, where the signifier emerges automatically in the field of awareness but the meaning does not. This is an example of the failing "mine-ness" of the experiential field as the minimal self recedes from its own thoughts, which are consigned to an outer space. This is present chronically, both during and outside of psychosis, and may represent a middle point between normal inner speech and auditory hallucinations, as well as normal experience and first-rank symptoms.[9]

They may also experience uncontrolled multiple trains of thought with different themes simultaneously coursing through one's head interfering with concentration (thought pressure) or often feel they must attend to things with their full attention in order to get done what most people can do without giving it much thought (hyper-reflectivity), which can lead to fatigue.[2][3]"

I'm not entirely sure to what extent I relate to this, because I'm not sure I interpeted it 100% accurately. I should add that for me, this process of deep introspection feels entirely subconscious, and like it's completely out of my control. It also makes me feel like I'm unable to become entirely immersed in what I'm trying to focus on.


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