Out among the walking wounded...

[j4]

I feel detached from my body.


I walked along the corridor at work and felt as if somebody else was walking with my legs. My brain knows that they're my legs, and that I'm walking, but the walkingness -- the consciousness-of-walking-as-associated-with-act-of-walking -- seems very far away from the consciousness that I perceive as myself. The only way I can describe it is to reiterate that it feels as though somebody else is acting my actions.

As I was making coffee earlier, I accidentally splashed hot water on the back of my hand. Instead of the instinctive avoid-pain reaction, all I got was a vague consciousness that I could feel something very hot, immediately followed by a thought along the lines of "That's interesting, I wonder what happens if I let that water stay on that hand?" (Nothing much. Hand stayed a bit red for a while.)

I sleep badly. I start waking up and for several seconds I'm conscious that I'm lying there asleep-but-waking-up; I can't see myself sleeping, but I can watch my dreams from the point of view of a waking person until finally awakeness overcomes me. My recurring anxiety dream about being late for work is, more and more, filled with references to itself. Last night I dreamt that I was supposed to be going back to work (having been off sick yesterday and Friday) and it got to 10:20am and I still hadn't got there, and in the dream I said to sion_a "this is just like those anxiety dreams that I keep having about being late for work". I wake up so many times in the middle of the night that I start to wonder if I really am waking up all those times, or just dreaming it; because surely if I was waking up every time I'd be even more shattered than I already am.

When I'm awake I wonder if I'm actually dreaming. This kind of worry is very much like the kind of worry that I have in dreams. I want a t-shirt that says "This is just like a dream I had." Tonight I will probably dream about wearing such a thing.

This bodily dissociation seems to have been accompanied by confirmed sightings of my libido (thought missing), and even actual contact with it. The first time I typed that last sentence I started it with "Bizarrely," but then realised that it wasn't really all that bizarre at all. A lot of my most intense sexual experiences have made me feel as though I'm somehow outside my bodily self, and a lot of my fantasies involve at least some degree of objectification, the separation of my whole-person self from my actions (either those that I do or those that are done to me) -- if you see what I mean. So perhaps some low-level bit of my brain associates that feeling of dissociation with arousal.

To go off on a bit of a tangent, I found myself accidentally (ahem) reading the stories at http://www.femgeeks.net/infamy/stories.htm at work this morning. Must not read slash at work, even if it is computer-related ("Pirates of Silicon Valley" slash, so we're talking Bill Gates & Steve Jobs... hmmm.) Surprisingly, ah, interesting. I don't know why, but gay (male) pr0n -- provided it's well-written, which these ones definitely are -- seems to more consistently work for me than other orientations. Given that most slash seems to be written by women, though, I doubt if I'm all that unusual in this.


Anyway, enough wibbling. I want to leave the office before 6pm today, I really do. <sigh> Hopefully will be able to relax a bit at the pub tonight, at least.

Comments

[simonb.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I've had moments when it seemed like I was sitting inside a little control room inside my head, looking out at what my body was seeing via monitors and controlling my body by keyboard or similar... with the lag which naturally comes from that.

Very strange feeling when it comes down to it. I've had moments like that at times of crisis as well - its almost like part of my brain shuts down and lets the rest of it get on with doing what needs to be done. I can remember putting out a chip pan fire out in the right way (i.e. turn off gas and put damp towel over top of pan) and having that type of feeling when I was 6 or so.

*HUGS*

[j4.livejournal.com]

Your (and kaet's) crisis reaction sounds like a sensible sort of detachment, though -- detaching the emotional bits so that you can deal with the emergency calmly. I mean, I can see that there's sense in having that kind of reaction. But I can't for the life of me see why my brain/body should think it's a useful survival tactic to dissociate itself in a totally non-critical situation like being at work.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

From your comments about work, it probably is a survival/coping tactic for work.

I know that if I wasn't careful I'd end up in a similar state during the last few months at WorldCom when we didn't have any work to do at all.

*HUGS*

[j4.livejournal.com]

But feeling all spaced-out stops me being able to do even the little bits of work that I do get! As coping strategies go, it strikes me as a bit of a silly one. I'd rather have a coping strategy that made me really lively and active so that I could make something of the job even when there's nothing to do.

Mind you, I should be able to do that anyway -- I did try to, when I first started here -- but there's only so long I can swim against the tide of apathy before getting weary. These days when they give me work to do I find I can't remember how to work at all.

[simonb.livejournal.com]

but there's only so long I can swim against the tide of apathy before getting weary

This was the problem with WorldCom; after all I've got plenty of projects to do right now of my own... however when you're surrounded by lots of people who really don't want to be there, or don't care, or are stressed about the impending job cuts, etc a bad atmosphere is created where its quite hard to do anything without feeling really lethargic, depressed or disconnected from relatity.

I'm impressed that I even managed to get LJ::Simple written at all, along with some playing with the perl Gtk module and some XML stuff, in those last few months given the state of mind I was in at WorldCom.

*hugs*

[j4.livejournal.com]

a bad atmosphere is created where its quite hard to do anything without feeling really lethargic, depressed or disconnected from relatity.

I'm impressed that I even managed to get LJ::Simple written at all, along with some playing with the perl Gtk module and some XML stuff

Good grief. If that's the amount of stuff you get done when you're feeling lethargic and depressed, then when you're feeling 100% you must be absolutely superhuman!

I count it as a productive day if I manage to catch up with a couple of emails or a newsgroup. Basically anything where I don't spend more than a couple of hours staring blankly at the screen or just eating packetfuls of biscuits to fend off boredom is a "good" day, comparatively. Sometimes I even manage to read an article or something on the web, and then I feel like I might actually be turning back into a functional human being again. It doesn't usually last for long, though.

This afternoon I'd estimate that I've spent at least an hour just flicking between different windows on my desktop. There isn't a column for that on my timesheet. Sometimes I get up and go to the loo when I don't really need to, just because it's something to do.

I suspect I wouldn't feel half so useless if I "wasted" all those spare moments writing software that I could actually release to other people. Or maybe I'd be up there with all the rest of the geeks, going "Oh, I'm such a failure, I've only written one new mail client this week, and I've barely even written 2/3 of the new programming language I've invented."

[simonb.livejournal.com]

Good grief. If that's the amount of stuff you get done when you're feeling lethargic and depressed, then when you're feeling 100% you must be absolutely superhuman!

Perhaps; don't forget that I had around 4 months of time to play with to do that stuff. thinks thats around 120 days of 10am until 6pm every day of time to write my own code. In a way I'm a little depressed that I didn't get more done as I've got bugger all time at the moment for my own code sigh. At least the current gig is interesting and I feel like I'm achieving something at the end of the day.

When I was at WorldCom I'd waste vast amounts of time in a loop which went something like: work email -> personal email -> news -> slashdot -> the register -> LJ friends -> LJ friends of friends. That sort of loop can chew up hours.

Anyway, didn't you say that its hard for you to develop stuff at work given the environment you're in ?

*hugs*

[j4.livejournal.com]

don't forget that I had around 4 months of time to play with to do that stuff.

So far I've had about a year (maybe more -- I lose count, the days are all the same) of having very, very little work to do. In that time I've managed to do absolutely nothing.

When I was at WorldCom I'd waste vast amounts of time in a loop which went something like: work email -> personal email -> news -> slashdot -> the register -> LJ friends -> LJ friends of friends. That sort of loop can chew up hours.

Yeah, so far I've managed to get it to chew up, ooh, about a year. Easily more than a year, actually, because even when I had some work to do I was wasting some time on that kind of thing.

Anyway, didn't you say that its hard for you to develop stuff at work given the environment you're in ?

Well, um, it's hard for me to "develop stuff" given the fact that I'm not a bloody programmer. The environment doesn't really make any difference. I have text editors and a unix account here -- should be enough, shouldn't it? Most of the people I know would have written a new operating system or two by now.

I don't really want to talk about this any more. It's just making me more and more depressed.