Disassociation from your own body?

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Wow! Seeing people's replies this sounds like a very common Aspie thing!

Another way to explain it...

It's like the sense of self or self image does not include include a face or body. It is like I am a creature consisting entirely of mind. The body is just somewhere I inhabit and use to move around in, like a car in a way.

When I get up every morning, I shave a face. It's not even my face - I haven't got one!

How do NT's perceive their bodies? Does their sense of self include their body? Seeing how vain some of them are I'd guess so?

Yeah, I know the feeling too. Although for me its not a permanent effect. There is usually one part of my body that I don't associate with but that part keeps changing. (Right now its my hands and arms).

Byit is called depersonalisation disorder.

am have lf autism and have never had a connection with the body in the same way am have no connection to others,the idea of being something physical is something am do not understand-if are unable to feel self,how can begin to understand it?,and walking into any obsticles is a daily routine as am dont automatically think obsticle=not going to get through,it doesnt get through head.
am see things as solids rather than specifics,so find it very difficult to connect with/filter a lot of things,the only real connection am have [both physical and mental] is with cats and horses,though am not around horses anymore.

I dont really have what you are describing, but I have sometimes felt my body as being like an object that I care about - for example if I cut my arm, then I will feel sad for my arm - not for myself being cut. I have always imagined that if for example I was to lose a foot or a leg, the first thing I would think is not 'how am I going to survive without a foot/leg' but more along the lines of being sorry for the foot/leg as though it is a seperate animate being that is now dead.

Sounds like disembodied, where one does not feel wedded to their body, like an out of body experience.

Meant to be common in schizophrenia, psychosis, especially people who are badly abused!

I also had this on an LSD trip, I floated out of my body and was up on the ceiling watching my friends playing cards and then freaked and was back in!

I've just Googled that and while it sounds very similar it doesn't seem exactly right. It may be related though. Depersonalisation disorder seems to relate to both a depersonalisation of the body and to the environment making everything seem unreal. It describes seeing things as though in a film set. What I experience as unreal is that a body is somehow "me". There is no sense of unreality with my environment nor is it associated with any of the unpleasant sensations described in depersonalisation disorder. The experience has also been life long and not sporadic. I've never been my body, but I've always lived there.

It is closer to the description given by KingdomOfRats "the idea of being something physical is something am do not understand" but unlike her I have an awareness of the solidity of the body which is being inhabited and its spacial arrangement with other physical objects.

You know, i could probably write a book where aspies turn out to be energetic aliens who have taken human hosts to survive.

It sounds alot like scifi to me. like outer limits of in the new Dr Who with the fog watches concealing a Timelord's true self from the human body. I really want one of those.

I would have to say that I am mostly one with my body, but I feel that I should have more potential than human phisiology provides.

Yes! This is exactly how I feel at times. Like "Get me out of this frigging thing for a moment so I can actually do _____!" I don't want to die or whatever, I just want to make my body capable of whatever it is I want to do.

I think this is very similiar to depersonilization but am not sure if it is a brainwiring as AS or chemcical creation. I know that the most extreme times have been in social situations and sensory over load. I recall very clearly explaining to a therapist when I was in high school...

I am a spider that lives in my brain and looks out the eye holes aat the worls. I am attached to nothing but am a seperate intity to this body which is a machine I am learning to navigate.

I also recall when I was aroung 6 or 7 KNOWING that I was an alien, not only put in this animal husk but that someone had screwed up and put me in the wrong gender husk. I was a tomboy and liked bug, rocks, climbing trees and building little forts of twigs for my bug friends. It wasn't until I was in college that I became more comfortable with being female when I relized it didn't actually mean I had to wear dresses and like it. My BF, and I am straight, said I looked very female, so I don't think it was a real case of gender confussion but that I was a literalist and thought I can't be a girl because girls play with dolls not bugs.

I even had a planet name when I was a kid and that is were my nick comes from....Krex...anyone from m home planet? If you are...when the heck do we get to go home...this husk is wearing out!! !

As others may have said, this sounds exactly like Depersonalisation Disorder. It is a form of Dissociation.

I strongly recommend seeing a movie called 'Numb'. It should be available at your local video store. It deals, very specifically with Depersonalisation.

more like in dreams, if that. Most of my dreams are me watching myself in one @#$%up or another.. Only time it happened in real life was when I had my wisdom teeth out. I felt like I was crawling up my throat to get back in my brain...hey! I was on major anesthesia...

I watched that movie based on your previous recommendation and would recommend it, it was good. There were some differences though...he also seemed to have (that thing where you feel no pleasure)..I have had that but I do get brief glimpses of extreme pleasure and always have had such moments. This seemed to be more the problem for him and I don't know if it is really a part of derealization.

This is my experience too. My body doesn't seem to have a lot to do with me.

I often feel 'merged with' another thing, phenomena...like firelight, running water, mechanical objects, etc......I really don't know where the distinction is - is it me or other? Unknown. I think is like what OP mentions. I think I feel deeply part of certain others things that are actually not physically my body.

I often used to daydream (?), and I still do, about one part feeling HUGE and riding a giant crayon! I realize this sounds weird, in print, but it's true. Sometimes I feel invisible - really, but this cannot be. When I'm in a public place, like shopping or whatever, I feel as if I am the ONLY one in that place and do not even process another being.

I've read this, in so many forms, on WP, and about autistim so often that I don't think it's some 'bad' personaltiy disorder, but part of autism in some way unknown.

Knaidle - interesting; I've thought/felt this, and even drawn it! As if we're a conduit to another in some way undefined.

How do you know the planet is still there?

Last edited by tailfins1959 on 26 May 2008, 9:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.

There's too many things I wanna quote, so I'm just going to say what I want to.

I always get this way when drunk, it gets to the point where I can't look at my own face cause I feel like I'm trapped inside of a stranger. Nothing well seem embarassing, cause well, it's not really me. Another part of me gets more control. It's even to the point where every dream I've ever had is either in 2nd or 3rd person, never first.

Another thing I've noticed is that I'm always of two minds, which makes it sound more like something else. Memoiral Day weekend in consideration, I've drank a lot these past few days. I've been trying to learn myself to stop analyzing so much and rely on instinct more, and part of me completely took over. A part of my personality is the regular AS me; shy, kind of quiet, analytical, a little bit crude, sometimes funny whatever. But there's complete flipside talking to me in my head, he's never in control. It's the instinctive, primitive, non-thinking part of me. The part that of me that wants to be social and live life for a more possibly dangerous cost than the usual me. The part of me that doesn't know what embarassment is and just wants to have a good time. Yeah, it took over this weekend and I had a good time. I feel like I just went way off topic.