A couple of interesting things happened yesterday. My first experiment in "brainspotting". We found calm places and anxious places in my field of vision. It was kind of weird, but it was noticeable.

The really interesting thing - he had me move my eyes to different positions and talk about the thoughts that came into my head. At one point, one of my really bitter childhood memories came into my mind, I told him about it, talked about it, and moved on.

It is dramatically less vivid in my mind today ... I'm almost a little freaked out by that ... maybe it's psychsomatic, maybe it's the placebo effect, maybe the brainspotting thing really works. I dunno -- all I know is the image from age 5 has now receded a lot further back in my mind, it isn't as "palpable" as it was yesterday. Weird, huh????

Also talked about dissociation - he seems to think I do it a lot more than I am aware - I always viewed it kind of as passing out or lapses of total memory, where you would have "missing time" or whatever ... but he explained that it's on a continuum, from daydreaming to "zoning out" to complete dissociation like DID ("multiple personalities" for those old enough to remember 'Sybil'). I do have these moments where things look "off" - the light, the landscape, the lay of the land, the appearance of familiar surroundings. I always felt it was something related to the "silent" migraines I have from time to time - no pain, but significant visual distortions, bright, bright chartreuse green auras that often make it hard to see, and blind spots/black holes. But he thinks I'm temporarily dissociating a bit - if I'm interpreting this right, that is. Again, I dunno. I need to do more research - I so far have just looked up the wikipedia entry, which isn't that detailed.

Finally, an interesting comment about bipolar - he confirmed what my current psychiatrist said - his comment was that bipolar is so over-diagnosed now that it is essentially meaningless. He said that is partially the fault of the insurance system, because they DO provide more coverage for certain conditions, and bipolar is one of those and the range of symptoms is so wide that almost anyone with some kind of MH issue may fall into the category when symptoms are viewed superficially. Like I did!