What's the strangest thing to ever happen to your body/mind?

McElroy

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As a pre-teen kid I had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night, terrified and crying. I only remember it happening once - it was some terror of falling into a pit, I guess - but it happened at least dozens of times in total. Must've been annoying for my parents.
 

Asita

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The Rogue Wolf said:
Around my middle-teens I had one episode of a "night terror", where I woke up unable to move and seeing a large shape (imagine a jet-black skeletal creature like some sort of warped dragon) hovering a few feet over me. Over the course of what felt like five minutes the shape faded away, and only when it had completely vanished could I actually move again.

It's never happened again since.
That sounds more like sleep paralysis than a night terror, to be honest.
 

Euryalus

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I underwent surgery without pain medicine for like ten minutes. Adrenaline and violent shaking kicked in before any drugs did.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Ezekiel said:
DeliveryGodNoah said:
Ezekiel said:
Can't think of anything. I guess some moments of dizziness and disorientation. I've also started getting brain zaps again, which I thought stopped when I learned the cause ten years ago.
Brain zaps?
Imagine you're calmly sitting at your computer or lying in bed and suddenly something that feels a quick but powerful electric shock blasts through your brain, making you jump slightly and your heart race. The sensation is over in less than a second. It's caused by depression and doubt.
Is that related to SSRIs by any chance? Or other similar medication? I get those quite bad as one of many a withdrawal symptom from any time I fail to, or cannot take them. It's annoying there doesn't seem to be any official term for them yet, nor physical explanation available due to lack of research as far as I know. The first time freaked me out so badly when it happened at work, till much later when it became clear what caused them. Still really unpleasant.

OT: hmm, not sure how much is worth delving into, am almost certain every abnormal thing is just another indicator that proves how unfit for existence this malfunctioning survival machine is. Does not inspire confidence in the slightest as to why it still demands to live so much. The physical stuff just makes me hate myself more, the mental stuff is too worthless trying to explain unless it directly affects somebody else. I think I just thought myself out of this idea.
 

Rabish Bini

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Ezekiel said:
DeliveryGodNoah said:
Ezekiel said:
Can't think of anything. I guess some moments of dizziness and disorientation. I've also started getting brain zaps again, which I thought stopped when I learned the cause ten years ago.
Brain zaps?
Imagine you're calmly sitting at your computer or lying in bed and suddenly something that feels a quick but powerful electric shock blasts through your brain, making you jump slightly and your heart race. The sensation is over in less than a second. It's caused by depression and doubt.
Not doubting you because depression can cause all kinds of weird shit, but I've never heard of brain zaps caused by depression, though it is a common side-effect of coming off of anti-depressants, have you been on any medication lately? If you don't mind my asking.

EDIT: Just saw I was beaten to it...
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Easily it was my traumatic brain injury I suffered in a motorcycle accident.

The best way to put it is you stop feeling the same way about stuff.

People, places, food, hobbies, memories. The last one of which isn't as bad as it sounds, because despite you thinking otherwise memory is always a fickle thing and prone to confabulation, mutability and altered states of engagement with another.

Hence why when you hear two old friends reminisce a lot of the times one or both in the span of an hour will say; "Hold on a tick, I thought such and such met us afterwards!?" >>> "Oh yeah! No, you're right!"

In truth there's a good chance both of them are wrong, and the memory has been sufficiently altered simply by continued correspondence of the fact, and they've run enough experiments into false memory phenomena to realise just how fucking bad memory is of keeping 'facts' together.

------------

But a traumatic brain injury? You blatantly know you're not you anymore. It's not merely a confabulation of the things you once were or did. You start to lose friends because, well, you're not like who you were. Either you or they can no longer connect and eventually relationships fall apart.

You're a different person. In my case, I had to relearn to walk, relearn how to express myself, deal with the fact that you can't connect with people you thought of as once friends. Everything feels off and reality will never be quite the same thing again.

To put it plainly, it's like rebuildng a new reality and systems of engaging with it.

This is why many people who suffer a TBI, they get so easily frustrated in situations that seem so very simple, or trying to fill out documents, or negotiate with former friends or family who once had a certain level of 'tolerable annoyance' factor that a person may have weathered but now no longer. Hence, anger and depression come with it like an 18 wheeler. It was my injury that made me want to study psychology, however. Get in deep about how the brain works.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Ezekiel said:
I don't take medication, ever. I haven't looked into this in probably ten years, so I can't tell you where I read that it's caused by depression. But the following article says it can be caused by anxiety and stress, which does sound correct.

http://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-symptoms/brain-zaps.shtml
Anxiety is one explanation but I'd talk to your doctor. Spasms like you're describing can be caused by a lot of things. I'm no doctor, but I do study neuroscience and there's a lot of things that can cause brain zaps. Understanding what causes it means being able to treat it.

Multiple sclerosis, alcoholism, PTS, and so on.

MS in particular has periodic episodes in development and typically are diagnpsed between the ages of 25 to 40 when problems begin to truly manifest. The idea of you getting 'over it' only to suffer them out of the blue again, it may pay to see a doctor for a referral if there are other worrying signs that mark down more checkboxes.
 

sanquin

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It's not a one-time thing for me. Under certain conditions I can faint, and in the worst case scenario have something resembling an epileptic seizure. (though it isn't that) Usually it's when I experience intense pain or when I get REALLY nervous. I've had it all my life, had it checked, but the doctors can't find anything that could be it's cause.
 

WolfThomas

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I had my first ever general anaesthetic last week. Nothing really trippy. Just you know unsettling... Anaesthetist makes joke about swearing at his registrar and suddenly I'm in a bed, disinhibitedly scolding the recovery nurse for eating at a giant tourist trap when he visited my home town.
 

twistedmic

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I've had a few occasions of deja vu strong enough where I've spent several minutes trying to figure out when I had done what I had just done before.
Also, recently I had such a long and mundane dream that for a few seconds after I woke up I thought my dream had been my real day off and I was hours late for work.
 
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Easily, it was the time I found out that my body has a high tolerance for Pain medication.

It was the time that I went to the dentist and I found out I had multiple Cavities that needed filling.

After the fourth shot of Novocaine, the doctor said my 15 year old self shouldn't have been able to talk. And that it was too bad, but he wasn't allowed to give me any more shots.

And I felt everything. Each time.
 

Tanis

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I've managed to drop pretty much every drug I've taken, cold turkey, except caffeine.
I smoked tobacco products for nearly three years, back in middle school, always bumming off of other people.

But I couldn't bum them off of anyone in 9th grade...so I quit.
I've, maybe, had 10 tobacco products since.
Only for special occasions, like births or graduations.

So...yay?
 

zoey

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I used to have this dream (read nightmare) where I'd be falling off a building (and I clearly remember it would be night time - pitch dark) and I heard people screaming as I fell. This fall seemed to go on forever and there would be times I was desperate to wake up, but just couldn't! It felt as if my body was held captive by my mind. At times, I would hallucinate long after I woke up...I'd hear those same voices screaming as I tried to go on about my day. I was afraid of sleeping and I was scared of being awake and I felt helpless and hopeless. I was traumatized by the frequent occurrence of this nightmare until I met a shrink who told me about sleep paralysis (here's an interesting essay [http://www.studymode.com/essays/Sleep-Paralysis-186661.html] that sheds more light on sleep paralysis) and helped me to deal with it using various helpful mind control techniques. It's been a little over 7 years since I got rid of sleep paralysis. I can't thank my luck enough for finding help at the right time.
 

iwinatlife

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I did forget the other less controllable thing that happened in high school after my sister tried to kill herself. First I had spontaneous leg twitching. So my right leg would randomly start bobbing of its own accord. Eventually suppressed that only for it to be replaced by what the ophthalmologist called Accommodating Eye Spasms.

Hard to describe but the closest I can get it is this. Remember in school when we used those desktop microscopes? and you twist the dials to adjust the focus and it would shift from clear to blurry and back? Now Imagine someone is constantly twisting the dials back and forth...that is what my vision would become when it was happening. Constant swooping focus with tantalizing moments of clarity.

Terrifying at first because we had no sure answer on why. Apparently stress is bad. Still happens sometimes now but a couple dilating eye drops partially paralyzes the focus muscles so its less of a problem.
 

LetalisK

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Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Easily it was my traumatic brain injury I suffered in a motorcycle accident.

The best way to put it is you stop feeling the same way about stuff.
Would it be an overreach to say that at the event of a TBI one person dies and another person is born?

OT: Erm...I have ASMR, so does that count? Not traumatic like everyone else and it's actually quite nice. I was surprised to learn everyone doesn't have it.
 

sageoftruth

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Undoubtedly seizures for me. Even after I stopped having the grand mal ones, it really messes with your perception of time. You feel lightheaded, and usually try to close your eyes, since you're trying NOT to overload your brain with stimuli. Thoughts pass through your mind and it feels kind of dreamlike, and then mere moments later, everyone is staring at you and someone tells you that you've been sitting/standing slack-jawed for 15-20 minutes straight.
 

Dismal purple

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LetalisK said:
Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Easily it was my traumatic brain injury I suffered in a motorcycle accident.

The best way to put it is you stop feeling the same way about stuff.
Would it be an overreach to say that at the event of a TBI one person dies and another person is born?

OT: Erm...I have ASMR, so does that count? Not traumatic like everyone else and it's actually quite nice. I was surprised to learn everyone doesn't have it.
That is a subject of philosophy. Google ship of Theseus.

Or watch this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI
 

Guffe

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My bodyhair tried to kill me by starting to grow inwards.

I once slept on my back, both arms under my back (don't even ask how they got there, I have no clue) so they went numb, woke up with the feeling of having no arms. Really freaking scary first seconds!

That's about it I think.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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WolfThomas said:
I had my first ever general anaesthetic last week. Nothing really trippy. Just you know unsettling... Anaesthetist makes joke about swearing at his registrar and suddenly I'm in a bed, disinhibitedly scolding the recovery nurse for eating at a giant tourist trap when he visited my home town.
Why do they ask you to count down from 10? It seems kind of cruel. I never managed to get past 2, but challenge accepted. Do they ask you to repeat if you get down to 0? I'm kind of terrified of the idea that once you get to '0' it will be accompanied with an "Ah crap..."

I personally don't mind GA. You feel like crap afterwards, but at the same time it feels like the only time you've really ever slept... It's like magic. Suddenly you're unconscious. No tossing, no turning, no indefineable itches in the back of your brain. It's like having a proper reboot.