“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.
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; 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.“
This scares me to death. This is exactly how I would describe what’s happening to me. I relate to the "not having the solid center from which one experiences reality”, or at least that it's diminishing or "failing", so much that it makes my heart race. And it’s like the subconscious tries to mend that in a way which is out of my control, and if I’m not mistaken, isn’t that what ultimately triggers the psychosis? I can imagine how, with the brain constantly trying to understand what’s going on, and occasionally coming to faulty conclusions or rather “insights”.
I am terrified man… Don’t know what to do. And I don’t know how well I’ve actually interpeted this text but I really wouldn’t describe my affliction any other way. I am currently waiting to be appointed a therapist or psychiatrist or something, but it’s taking ages because our welfare system has largely collapsed. And in the meantime, my state is deteriorating, and feels increasingly out of my control.
