Hello D. I hope you find this discussion easily enough. There were a few factors that really jumped out at me in your post that I thought I might speak to.
Sometimes this fog makes reality hard to see, and I can get lost, or confused about where I am, and I have to try to figure it out logically. This happens driving, or doing paperwork, and can make things take a very long time to complete, because I can't concentrate. ... It is the moods, with the slow thinking, and fog that become the problem. It's much harder to say a mood isn't real, or that the molasses movement of thought isn't real. It's even harder to care about doing anything well. Of course, depression is my longest delusion.
Something that frustrated me in terms of my own child's experience was that once they were medicated, it became difficult to determine if what we were seeing was due to the medication or whatever state of mind they were in. In your case, you mention two factors that might contribute to this foggy feeling or molasses movement -- dissociation and depression -- but sometimes this can be related to medication as well. I don't know what your medication status is, but it's possible that if you make use of them you might benefit from a different med or a med reduction.
There has been so little time that my brain thinks normally, but it is closer to that right now than it has been in 20 years or more. I keep thinking what if I can't stay here for more than a few weeks or months? How can I keep being this person who is never herself because she is never her long enough to experience ...who that is?
Patricia Deegan wrote an article a few years back that, I feel, addresses this aspect very well -- let me drag it in here for you. Note that the article makes reference to "God" and that may not resonate for you. If that's the case, it may be helpful to simply replace that word with "center" or some other term you feel comfortable with...
Quote:
I was in a very difficult, emotionally turbulent passage, punctuated with periods of psychosis. The anguish of it seemed endless, and I had lost all sense of time. I remember pressing my body against the concrete wall in the corridor of the mental institution as wave upon wave of tormenting voices washed over me. It felt like I was in a hurricane. In the midst of it, I heard a voice that was different from the tormenting voices. This voice was deeply calm and steady. It was the voice of God, and God said, “You are the flyer of the kite.” And then the voice was gone. Time passed and I kept repeating what I had heard, “I am the flyer of the kite.” When I repeated this phrase, I had the image of a smaller me, standing deep down in the center of me. The smaller me held a ball of string attached to a kite. The kite flyer was looking up at the kite. To my surprise, the kite looked like me also. It whirled and snagged and dove and flung around in the wild winds. But all the while, the flyer of the kite held steady and still, looking up at the plunging and racing kite.
“I am the flyer of the kite”, I repeated again. And, slowly, I began to understand the lesson. “I have always thought I was just the kite. But God says I am the flyer of the kite. So, even though the kite may dive and hurl about in the winds of pain and psychosis, I remain on the ground, because I am the flyer of the kite. I remain. I will be here when the winds roar, and I will be here when the winds are calm. I am here today, and I will be here tomorrow. There is a tomorrow, because I am more than the kite. I am the flyer of the kite.”
The notes in my chart that day probably said I was floridly psychotic. However, for me, that day was an epiphany. The lesson I learned on that day was a lesson I relearned, over and over again, in my recovery. Basically, I learned there was a deeper part of me, that was centered and unmoving and steady and constant and calm. Without this deeper part of myself, the wind could easily blow me away. This deeper me learned not to over identify with the good times or the bad times.
Like the kite blasting around on a windy day, my recovery often meant having a difficult time, with lots of ups and downs, pain and suffering, setbacks and bad days. But God taught me there was more to me than these ups and downs. Deep down inside, no matter how rough things got, there was a still, quiet place within me that held steady and that survived. On some days, recovery, was just about learning to ride the tumultuous winds, while hanging tightly to the kite string, until the storm passed. At other times in my recovery, I needed my therapist or a trusted friend to hold the string, until I could reconnect with the flyer of the kite within me...
Read the full article here: Voices of Recovery: Patricia Deegan
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I think the essential message is that there is a "you" within you that remains stable and unchanging -- the rest can be thought of perhaps as clouds moving across a sky or ripples across the surface of an ocean.
If you have experienced psychosis this can deeply impact one's sense of self-identity. Some people, may find that they benefit from a therapeutic relationship as a means of rebuilding that identity and shoring it up in the vulnerable places. Is that an option you've had the opportunity to explore?