Schizophrenia is not multiple personality disorder. It’s a perceptual issue. It’s why they used to (and to some small degree still do) view autism as a form of schizophrenia.
In the case of schizophrenia, a person’s perceptual process is too open. Their ability to determine salience is compromised. You learn things reflexively. Your neural pathways become sensitized to specific kinds of information over others. That’s how the brain picks out what to make you “notice” and also how it begins the process of recording a memory even if you disregarded the noticed information as irrelevant to the current situation.
In schizophrenia, the person winds up “learning” too much, recording everything as if it were personal, recognizable and meaningful. This over time begins to wear down their sense of self and their ability to be emotionally responsive in an appropriate way. They can’t keep track of or make sense of things in their head so fatigue makes them stop trying.
Even for myself, stimuli can exhaust my ability to track new information. My wife at times moves entirely too fast for me and I mean in her train of thought. So I have told her that though I don’t understand her, I trust her, and we should just go forward anyway. Where I differ from a schizophrenic is I don’t suffer cognitive bleed through. This is also why I obsessively systematize things.
That sounds familiar. The brain goes numb when it’s being stimulated too much. Mine doesn’t just go numb, part of it stops. My executive function to be exact.
Do you feel better when it stops? No, much worse. It feels like a total loss of identity. I become a non participant even in my own senses. I have had sessions of playing World of Warcraft where I wasn’t able to recall what exactly happened in the game.
What gives you relief? My mental rituals give me relief if I am given time to implement them.
So rituals like meditation? Yes, my meditation helps.
Is a non-verbal persons perception affected by their lack of language or does it always work the other way – perception to language? Their perception is affected by their lack of language.
Those who are non verbal tend to evaluate their perceptions in a more visceral way, and tend to be easily frustrated with the verbally able because to them their perception seems completely obvious. They label things with emotions instead of words. Gentle sensations tend to be pleasant for them, fascinating. The rapid pace and noise of trying to keep up with the verbal tends to be emotionally and even physically painful to them.
They probably have a hard time slowing down to even try to communicate with others? Yes, or need to slow down beneath a communicative threshold on the other extreme. Animals are like this. It’s how their brains process the intensity of their perceptions and reactions, and without their rest breaks their behaviour becomes deranged rather quickly. So language is a labour saving device, and as zen also teaches, it makes the mind lazier and weaker in general if not properly managed.
Have I covered sensory perception more or less fully yet?
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~