Constant foggy feeling in my head

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The constant fogginess in my brain which I've had since early adolescence when I noticed it settling in, when I look at the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience (EASE), seems to match item 2.15: "Diminished Transparency of Consciousness." The EASE is linked to here:

http://www.nordlandssykehuset.no/getfil ... r/EASE.pdf

One of the examples given matches my experience: "Frequently, I have a strange foggy feeling in my head." Now, it doesn't count if it's secondary to "thought pressure, hallucinatory states, mental exhaustion, clinical depression, seasonal affective disorder, [or] organic brain disorder." Now when I was 5 and a half, I received a CT Scan to look for organic brain disorder, but no organic brain disorder was found--the indication given for it was that I had macrocephaly (head bigger than 98th percentile) at that age. When I was 9, I was tested again for organic brain disorder, this time with an MRI, on the recommendation of my school psychologist and my military child neurologist at the time, but none was found. There's no evidence of clinical depression or seasonal affective disorder at any point in my life. I have had very brief hallucinatory states, and occasionally thought pressure, and of course I feel tired before going to bed, but I don't have that all day. So it looks like 2.15 matches. It also appears to be a trait, and trait-like phenomena receive the most attention from the EASE.

This also seems linked to a lack of spontaneity on my part. I can never cut loose and just be spontaneous and have fun; the fogginess is accompanied by a sort of dampening feeling that keeps my inner spark extinguished. If I'm in a situation that calls for spontaneity, like a party, the fogginess gets worse and I experience derealization (item 2.5), where the room gets foggy. It seems to have lasted since early adolescence. This has long been a trait of mine. This seems to match the description of item 2.18: "Diminished Vitality" Subtype 2 "Trait-like." The description is given as follows: "A pervasive or frequently recurrent sense of inexplicable mental or physical fatigue, dampening of immediate aliveness, diminished energy, spontaneity, ?élan.'" The exclusion criteria are the same as the above, plus pharmacological side effects, but I've had it for so long I don't think side effects can be blamed for it.

This is also linked to 2.4: "Diminished Presence," subtype 3, as in these situations there is the perceptual change (e.g. the room gets foggy) and I recognize there is a deficiency in myself, a sort of distance to the world. I can never fully interact in many situations and I'm often lost in my own head, which has drawn criticism from my dad many times over the years, as he for a long time expected me to be more social and kept trying to pressure me into it. This matches the description of Diminished Presence: "A decreased ability to become affected, incited, moved, motivated, drawn, influenced, touched, attracted or stimulated by objects, people, events and states of affairs. This decrease should not be understood as active and deliberate withdrawal, but more as something that afflicts the patient and hinders his life. The patient does not feel fully participating or entirely present in the world; he may feel a distance to the world, which may be accompanied by changes of world perception. This item includes both physical and social hypohedonic states as well as apathy (lack of feelings)."

This is also linked to 2.6: "Hyperreflectivity: Increased Reflectivity," where I have a tendency to get stuck in my head and reflect endlessly on my thinking, feelings, and other events.

So there, I can find just from 1 self-disorder I have, that 4 more self-disorders appear to accompany it, and they are all traits that I will probably live with for the rest of my life. According to the authors of the EASE, it is common for the different self-disorders to be linked to each other and they don't generally occur in isolation.

Just from this, my EASE score is at least a 10 (5 self-disorders at the mildest level, which is given 2 points on a 0-4 Likert scale), but the severity of these items may be higher, at a 4, so I may score at least a 20. In recent research using that same Likert scale, the average EASE score for patients with bipolar disorder is a 6.3, while for non-affective psychosis outside the schizophrenia spectrum it is 11.5, and for schizophrenia spectrum psychosis it is 25.3, very significant differences between disorders:

http://tinyurl.com/o8lwlc4 (This downloads a PDF file.)

I meet other items as well, such as 1.8: "Spatialization of Experience," which is accompanied by 2.2.3: "Distorted First-Person Perspective: Spatialization of Self," as since about age 6 I often have felt I have eyes in the back of my head that look through my head through the windows outside (the eyes) and at the thoughts that appear above the windows in the anterior portion of my head, so it appears that my EASE score is possibly quite high. But does that necessarily mean psychosis?

Now, here's the interesting part. The EASE scores for people with non-psychotic schizotypal disorder are similar to the EASE scores for people with full-blown schizophrenia, which unifies schizotypal disorder with schizophrenia:

http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjour ... /1300.long

So a high EASE score seems to be more of a "schizotypy thing" than a "psychosis thing." The psychosis appears to result from a separate breakdown process.

Hi
Without sounding rude, perhaps the foggy feeling in your head is because you are too complicated? You think too deeply?

Try to relax, keep the context of your thoughts in the 'here and now'.

That is actually a treatment suggested by the psychopathologists who wrote this. It's very difficult, however, as I must compensate for certain deficiencies by thinking very deeply. I lack a "natural attunement" to the world.

I can testify to that also. You kind of feel the need to analyse so you can 'reach' deeper states of emotion again, with the help of, in some cases, a lot of meds as a backup.

Deeper states of emotion? I usually do it to get a better understanding of what's going on in the world around me.

Another self-disorder has been spotted! My mum said that I seem to do better with other people because they get me to do the things I need to do. By myself, I have difficulty getting going with anything, and as my mum said I've had this problem for several years, but when I'm with someone else who is helping and giving directions I do really well. Maybe living with my parents will get me back to work. I seem to have the self-disorder 2.16 "Diminished Initiative."

I think this emerged at around the same time as the other self-disorders I discussed in this thread, in my early adolescence when I noticed changes in the way I experienced the world that were somewhat unpleasant and disturbing, such as Diminished Presence, Hyperreflectivity, Diminished Transparency of Consciousness, and Diminished Vitality. I seriously remember early adolescence, once I started to get into middle school, there were things about how I experienced the world that changed and made me feel a little disturbed and weirded out, somewhat mentally hurt by it as I found it suffocating because the changes made things harder, and feel like I'm dull, in the sense I could not engage in spontaneity anymore, I could no longer be carefree, I had a mental pain and a lock. Until recently, I could find no words to even describe it--in fact I could not even think to describe it (i.e. the idea to try to describe it never entered my head),--until I found this Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience and learned about the concept of self-disorders, which have in common "a disorder or deficiency in the sense of being a subject, a self-coinciding center of action, thought, and experience."