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Discussion board 10 Regarding the content of week nine, we learned to differentiate between derealization and depersonalization. Derealization is a condition where individuals dissociate from their environment or immediate world and people close to them. On the other side, depersonalization is when individuals are conscious and stressed about not being able to produce the emotion or emotional connection with another thing or being like they used to. Besides, in most cases, depersonalization stems from the need to protect individuals from the stressors of their surroundings. Therefore, depersonalization often is known as a defence mechanism. However, it can become a psychological pathology when the individual is due to a severe form of depersonalization which impedes their ability to perform daily activities to survive. We know that Buddhist tradition calls us to live a life that is less invested in the environment to protect ourselves from suffering. My question is, what is the circumstance that arises when we follow the lifestyle with the knowledge of Buddhist tradition? Enlightenment’s Evil Twin: Depersonalization How do you asses this claim? “A mother comes to me and says, 'I received a letter from my son in prison. Please prescribe me something to cry.” • Depersonalization versus derealization - What is common and what is not? • Could anyone suffer from depersonalization? • Is it common? “Research suggests that areas of the brain that are key to emotional and physical sensations, such as the amygdala and the insula , [interoceptive and exteroceptive] appear to be less responsive in chronic depersonalization sufferers . You might become less empathetic; your pain threshold might increase. These numbing effects mean that it’s commonly conceived as a defense mechanism ; Hunter calls it a “psychological trip switch” which can be triggered in times of stress.” • Depersonalization: Loss of mine-ness or “painful absence of feeling” - Sense of ownership, richness or familiarity of sensations is missing or impoverished. Philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists, etc. • Philosophers : what is the self ? Is it a unity or is it not ? Is it real or is it not? And what do we mean by “real” when we refer to self? • Psychologists : what are the symptoms? What are the causes? How can it be helped? • Neuroscientists : are there any changes in the brain? What kind and where? • Neuro-philosophers ? -Are there any changes in the brain in relation to change of self (existential feelings)? -experience is vital to self Unusual response: “Alice is a 59-year-old ex-accountant living in Australia who has had depersonalization for more than 18 years (her name has been changed). However, for her, the experience is pleasant. “It’s helped me in my life,” she says. Over the past few years, she has learned to interpret her experiences in a Buddhist context, and she describes depersonalization as a “ deconditioning ” of sorts: “ The significance I place on the world is all in my mind ,” she tells me. While Alice doesn’t exactly equate depersonalization with enlightenment, she sees it as a sort of halfway, formless state. “ I believe I am on the path to enlightenment ,” she says.” Enlightenment? “Theravadin Buddhist tradition, which are anicca , or impermanence ; dukkha , or dissatisfaction ; and anatta , or not-self . Shinzen Young, a Buddhist teacher working with the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, refers to depersonalization as “ enlightenment’s evil twin .”

As in depression ,… “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) notes that depersonalization must cause the patient distress and have an impact on her daily functioning for it to be classified as clinically significant . In this sense, it seems inappropriate to call Alice’s experiences pathological . “We have ways of measuring disorders, but you have to ask if it’s meaningful. It’s an open question,” Bezzubova says. “But [depersonalization] certainly has the quality of being ill . It’s certainly a lack of order —especially in acute depersonalization. People cannot manage their daily activities .” Important point: Medford is wary of fruitless philosophizing around unanswerable questions. “ It’s like picking a scab ,” he says. Obsessive questioning is a common trait in people with depersonalization, often perpetuating anxiety instead of providing insight. “I think calling it a loss of self is maybe a convenient shorthand for something that’s hard to capture ,” he says. “ I prefer to talk about experience—because that’s what’s important in psychiatry .” The sense of bodily ownership As a future nurse, consider this:  “ It was painful and my arm felt like withdrawing, but it was not a genuine pain, it was a pain that did not reach the soul… It is a pain, if you want, but the surface of my skin is miles away from my brain, and I do not know whether I am suffering (Laetitia, Janet, 1928, 65).”(Quoted in Billion, 2016)  What do you think is happening with the patient and what could be the cause of it? Introduction  Billion argues that the sense of bodily ownership is psychologically primitive , which means that it cannot be explained with, or reduced to, anything else (e.g., sensorimotor, interoceptive, exteroceptive, affective, or purely bodily sensations). But, as he holds, the primitive sense can be reduced to a neurophysiological state.  Historically, Tracyan and others, held a non-deflationary view: bodily ownership is marked by a distinct sense of mine-ness that is different from sensual bodily sensation (e.g., I touch my arm and it feels mine)  Deflationary positions hold that there is nothing over and above the bodily sense of ownership that marks a sense of mine-ness.  Non-deflationary position: “A contemporary of Tracy, Cabanis, would argue that at a deeper level, the mark of mine-ness stems from “organic” or “internal impressions”, a set of largely implicit visceral sensations constituting an implicit background feeling of bodily existence, and that would later be called cenesthetic [general awareness of one’s own body] .”(2) Contemporary theories  Deflationary position by Martin (1995): “the sense of bodily ownership (i) is grounded on the spatial content of my bodily sensations (ii) and does not involve a specific mark of mineness.”(3)  Non-deflationary by Vignemont (2007): “She argues both that the spatial content of sensations is not sufficient to explain the sense of bodily ownership (against (i)), and that a mark of mineness is required for that (against (ii)).”  “Vignemont’s master argument relies on somatoparaphrenia, a fascinating neurological condition in which bodily self-awareness seems to err. Patients suffering from somatoparaphrenia can misattribute one of their limbs to someone else. The alien limb is normally paralyzed and patients do not feel any sensations in it. In some rare cases, however (I know only of four), the patient can correctly report sensations in the disowned limb. In such cases, it seems that patients have normal bodily sensations in a limb without bodily self- awareness for that limb. This suggests that Martin’s deflationary theory is wrong and that there must exist an extra mark of mineness accounting for the sense of bodily ownership in conjunction with the spatial content of bodily sensations.”(4) Problems with Vignemont  Patients suffering from somatoparaphrenia are delusional—can such cases be truly taken seriously?  Many positions, including Vignemnont’s, need to elucidate the nature of the mark of mineness. There are many positions--(see next) but there is little agreement: Various positions on mineness:

oneself. What an individual feels in a given environment and what motivate a given individual in such circumstances Depersonalization: Neglecting interceptive and exteroceptive world, BLUNTING removal of expected human emotions, it is dialed down so much that it created stress and gives raise to questions in regards to why do I do not have a FAMILIAR reaction to the world. Onset: prolong stress, drugs/alcohol, sleepless nights Derealization: when the subjects or the person say they do not feel that the world’s external to them is real, They don’t feel real to themselves – amygdala and insula goes though abnormal activities Buddhisim: live a less attached life related to the world using meditations, when we get overly invested in the world emotionally we get invested emotionally to the people in our life – which influences us to experience positive and negative emotions (TAKES EMOTIONAL TOLL ON US) when overly attach disappointment and suffer (DUKKHA) is apparent, therefore, to lessen the suffer and to be a happier person at the end of the day – practice partial removal of/from the world