Description

The following description was established and mostly written while in two dissociated states, one ‘inactive’ and lethargic and the other ‘active’ and more fogged in cognition.

I’ll try to treat this condition ‘sequentially’ inasmuch as what sensations result from each ‘step.’ I am in no condition to elaborate further or to make this treatment more efficient through any compositional format. Part of the thing is not understanding the thing.

Even trying to start writing this I felt a forbidding, purely (insomuch as the feeling is only and simply) ‘anti-effort’ inherent resistance. Thinking of other hypothetical examples of things to do and how this would apply, I find that my willingness and motivation dictate everything I do in the absence of any other influences, which only sounds like stating the obvious. Here, I seem to actively regress in intelligence, even if ‘not really.’ I am vegetated, ‘only want to do what I see and wouldn’t at all trouble me,’ and totally averse to abstraction to the point where I don’t want to do anything whose work or effort I would have to imagine (or ‘maintain in mind’).

The results of this are of two main kinds. The first is a noticeable reduction of aptitude in anything which takes abstract effort. For instance, my writing thus far is all perfectly valid English but my variety in words and the length of sentences have not so much ‘deteriorated’ as they have oddly simplified to precedents that are gratifying and already established.

Like when you unknowingly default to using the same adjective as if it’s not so much all you know as what you enjoy about the subject you’ve established for yourself, which is just as much a certain mood as anything objective and maybe even moreso. Multiple times I’ve had to add clarifications to what I’ve written, like revising ‘a reduction in anything which takes abstract effort’ by adding ‘of aptitude.’

A more illustrative example is intellectualism, like giving analysis to any given thing or in trying to develop an idea you have. Basically you can’t get a handle on ‘the plot.’ Anything beyond your eyes and fingers feels unreal, as if it was a nonexistent phase or never existed, which from the outside looks like you’re just ignorant of it. You either can’t resolve yourself to begin somewhere or you’re irresistibly compelled by insights/observations that are self-explanatory, non sequiturs (at least given that nothing can be ‘done’ with them), or lines of argumentation that you know are unconvincing but can’t let go of.

How this feels to experience is, ‘you know, but you don’t care, and you have no other options except what you know is wrong.’ The only memories available are those which are useless, outdated, and ruminative. They’re just as much a prison as your faulty environment, and nothing will get better until they do. You effortlessly forget stuff. You get ideas but they make you sad because you know you’re not willing to implement them. A certain phrase in something you’re reading gives you an idea and therefore feels like magic because nothing that you don’t already know exists except as fiction or an exercise in indulgence, like an intoxicated and impulsive lie told by an out-of-it juvenile trying to talk a mood or “culture” into existence. You didn’t read any of the rest of it, you didn’t even notice it, and therefore your response looks mentally ill. You’re fogged, you’re an invalid, and you want to go to sleep to make it go away. Some hypnotic, self-fulfilling solipsism keeps you up until everything’s forgotten and everything goes back to normal somehow.

Primary Causes

Remember, this isn’t ‘full-on’ dissociation, derealization, etc., caused and triggered by seriously traumatic events like childhood abuse or anything else severe enough for your consciousness to briefly shut off. This is ‘practical dissociation.’

• Being stuck in one, discouraging environment for too long.

• Having a lack of recent good memories.

• A lack of good examples among loved ones.

• Not being able to move around how you would like and how you know you should.

• The encouragement of bad habits, such as a poor sleep schedule.

• The isolating disappointment of people you thought were better than the typical fare not being so.

• Excessive abstraction, rumination, etc., especially in a reliance on fantasization and/or nostalgia as it inherently vilifies and dissociates the ‘real world’ as sad and inescapable.

• Exclusive (as in, only) and on-some-level repeated exposure to examples of ideals, institutions, or goals that you know are natural to your character being failed, bad, abused, or going wrong.

It’s like trying to cook something with spoiled ingredients.