does your body feel foreign to you?

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Does anyone feel like their body is foreign to them or like it's a clunky mechanical machine that they have to control (and they are not always very good at controlling)? I have this idea of a cartoon in my head, maybe it was marvin martian, I'm not sure, but it is of this little creature inside a huge metal robot that he controls from the inside. I feel like my being or soul is this tiny creature that is inside of this strange thing called my body that I'm supposed to be connected to, or in line with, yet there is an incompatability going on.

So not only is it difficult to maneuver but I also just always feel uncomfortable in this thing, something is always irritating me or I have to resign myself to one thing or another, like how I am standing or what I am doing with my hands, or what the fabric feels like on my skin. It feels like a constant negotiation not be be driven semi-mad, or trying to keep something balanced on a narrow base.

Does anyone else feel this?

I know exactly what you mean.
I'm a total clutz and have extremely sensitive skin. I believe that clothes makers should be banned from putting those labels with sharp edges in clothes, they make life impossible.

I know what you mean.

I kinda feel that way, only I see my brain kept inside a box saying "1 Brain" and there are computer banks and machines inside with me behind the controls.

On any questionnaire "Are you at one with your body?" would get a "strong disagree" from me.

It doesn't (I don't?) respond well, and acquires physical skills very slowly.
(riding a bicycle and driving a car were awful things to learn.)
And seems in some areas not to give the positive feedback that others report.

Exercise can feel good?
I've been up to 24 miles in a morning over broken country with a 30lb pack...
I've never found the endorphin high or buzz or glow that's supposed to be there.

Sport is incredibly frustrating when your mind knows tactically and strategically what you should be doing, but your body doesn't return consistent responses.

Trying to learn to juggle, as a psychologist once got me to try, showed my reflexes were too slow, as I'm thinking much more consciously than typical folk, who seem to rely more on a layer of subconscious reflexes. (are we back to mirror neurons again?)

After I meditated and studied the concept of the spirit enough, I did end up feeling fundamentally separate from my body.

So yes, I do feel like I am in a machine, but it is not a result of Asperger's Syndrome. It is the result of mental exercises. Whether for good or bad.

I can relate. I walk all the time because I don't drive. I used to skip school when I was younger and run all around the nearby town all day with more stuff crammed into my pack than the zippers would allow, I've gone on long hikes, I've done labour jobs that would kill some people, I could go on, and I've never once had an 'endorphin high'. Exercise feels good in other ways for me; mentally I feel good because I know its good for my body and makes it stronger/nicer to look at, and wearing my body down helps me sleep, but that 'high' always escapes me. Unless I'm interpreting this 'high' in the wrong way......

There are sports I like to play (if I don't have to play with 8 foot jocks ready to eat me) like floor hockey but I generally suck at them when I do play and a lot of times I feel like I can't slow my mind down enough to just play. Unless I just palin suck.......

Sometimes I feel like such a little mutant

mmmm No!?, I cant say that I do.

Body and mind/brain are the same thing to me. Watching psychiatric medications alter my wants and goals in life, my likes and dislikes, even my personality to an extent, taught me that there is no duality. I do often feel like a barely sentient thing, some mishap wandering this planet, so far failing to achieve my purpose of passing along my genetics. I used to think that trees and animals were a lot like people and had souls, but now I think that people are a lot like trees and animals except with more awareness/consciousness.

Oh yes body and mind don't co-exist here! i'm a lumbering fool!

In high school,I remember having an image of a spider looking out the "eye holes" of my body.I believe that is dissociation.I think it was due to sensory issues.I can "feel" in control of my body through exercise but it takes concentration and works best with large muscle groups.When I am biking,I will focus on a muscle and will feel it respond.

I feel like a Routemaster, sometimes. There's a little Bus inside of me that keeps going, when I'm sitting still.

If it goes faster, does it change gears?

Mine feels foreign, but in my case I think it has a great deal more to do with the fact that I've had severe depersonalization disorder since at least my early teens; it's hard to describe fully, it's basically a constant feeling of unreality. I always described it to my parents and shrink as a sense of "being here and yet not here at the same time."

When I look in a mirror, for example: I don't really feel the sensation of the person in the reflection actually being me; it feels more like it's really someone else.

I'm at least as divorced from my own identity as I am from my body (I don't even feel like it's my own fingers that are typing this).

On a DP board, someone else who has both said that Aspies tend to be more prone to this.

I'm looking for some good DP resources online, would you mind listing some you find helpful?

Not too badly. I really hate it when my body doesn't cooperate, but I know its capabilities and tendencies very well (including predicting when it won't cooperate), so it's more like a well-loved, well-used car than some sort of alien machine.

I don't really see the image in the mirror as "me"--but face-blindness might have something to do with that. And, anyway, faces really aren't the people themselves--they're just what you see when you look at them, like forum avatars.

I really do feel more like a cat some days than a human--without, unfortunately, the sky-high Dexterity score.

I agree, I felt the same after practicing it and study. Its 'the ghost behind my eyes' feeling

I'd say "good"