Reader’s Question

I was wondering if could get some help to identify a strange phenomenon that’s been going on with me off and on through my adult life. I have seen various psychologists and counsellors over the years for various different reasons. But none of them had heard of this problem, and in my extensive research I’ve found little that comes close to describing it.

I am also undergoing treatment for mild adrenal and thyroid insufficiency, but neither my general practitioner nor treatment specialist has heard of my symptoms occurring as a result of the particular problems I’ve been having.

Let me explain my symptoms as best I can. For as long as I can recall, I have had brief episodes of a sort of spontaneous and distracting “nostalgia” from my early life. They’re not pleasant, and they’re not flashbacks or disturbing memories either. It’s as though I am experiencing myself and my life as I would have during an earlier era of my life. It’s usually the same periods (although there is one that I appear to “regress” to more than others). Although the feeling is familiar, I can’t grasp the details, like age or the year. All I know is that at the time these episodes happen, I no longer feel connected to the present but to some time in the past. I could liken these episodes to when you hear a song or smell something that instantly throws you back to how it felt to be the person you were when you heard that song or smelled that smell the first time. That’s kind of what it’s like; I can feel myself being that person again, except it lasts for days or even weeks at a time. And all the mood and “colour” of the present vanishes.

These symptoms are distracting and pervasive, and I feel slightly dissociated, foggy-headed and unsettled because of them. There don’t seem to be any specific emotional triggers to these episodes. But when they happen they color everything I experience and cloud my mood. I’m literally not myself, during these moments.

I’ve read about post-traumatic stress disorder and repressed memory syndrome, and even multiple personality and dissociative disorders (I’ve experienced only two “black out” episodes in my life) to see if what I experience might be associated with any of these, but nothing I’ve read really describes my symptoms.

I’d just like to know what it is that’s happening, and better yet, to find a possible way to put an end to them. I’m hoping that someone might shed some light on what I have described above, and I’d be grateful for any information at all.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

It’s probably best that you keep in good and regular contact with those providing both psychological and physical treatments to you.

It’s not all that unusual for a rarely-occurring psychological symptom to be hard to adequately label or assign to a specific condition. Sometimes, things are just not that simple. The brain is a very complex organ. And sometimes medical conditions can produce some symptoms that appear psychogenic in origin but actually have a physical basis. Also, individuals prone to dissociative states have been known to report some unusual “episodes” not specifically listed in official diagnostic criteria.

It would be best to keep working with your doctors and therapists and do your best to describe not only your symptoms but your concerns about them. If your primary purpose is to find a possible way to end or to minimize the impact of your symptoms, a behaviorally oriented or cognitive-behaviorally oriented therapist might be of particular help.