This has become known as the “reticular activating system” in popular psychology, named after a part of the brain located in the brain stem related to attention and mental filtering. We only pay attention to what our brain determines as important or significant. One of the most important aspects of attention is the deletion of unimportant stimuli. If sounds or images in your peripheral vision distract you, bring your attention back to the page, ignoring the potential distractions around you. Read slowly and take in all the meaning fully. Speed is not the goal, but rather complete comprehension. Start anywhere and try as best as possible to stay totally focused on what you are reading. Take a book, especially something dense and technical, and take it into a noisy environment like a cafe. I am going to recommend two exercises for you, to help get you started with strengthening your attention, which will go a long way in helping you get over your dissociative tendencies and symptoms of Depersonalization. The opposite of this is single tasking, which is where we engage in one activity for a sustained period. Multi Tasking has been found to be very unhealthy for the brain. Conversely, by using our focus more often, and strengthening it like a muscle, we stimulate the neurons related to attention and short term memory, which are impaired in most people with Depersonalization. Where we put our focus largely determines our mood, and a lack of focus can derail our conscious experience of life and ability to reach our goals. It makes sense that people with Depersonalization feel they have lost a piece of themselves, since attention is a key component of consciousness. Whether or not this is true, attention and meditation exercises are extremely important in integrating the brain, and eliminating DP. Some researchers speculate that this brain wave form is central to neural consciousness. It turns out that sustained reading is a very integrative and therapeutic activity for the brain in general, and was something that greatly helped me recover from Depersonalization Disorder, among many other things of course.ĭeep states of attention and even meditation have been linked to gamma brain waves. By frequently engaging in sustained reading, one can heal many mental problems that would be seemingly unrelated to attention. Dan Siegel, a UCLA psychiatrist and founding father of Interpersonal Neurobiology has pointed out that attentional activities such as sustained reading require coordinated mental functioning of many different brain regions. In order to mend distractibility, and a tendency towards spaciness, it is important to practice attention exercises. Attention on the one hand and distraction on the other can be thought of as two ends on a focus spectrum. This correlates with distractibility, fogginess, deja vu, jamais vu, derealization, and a host of dissociative symptoms. In Depersonalization Disorder, attention and short term memory are often among the most impaired cognitive faculties. Harris Harrington shows you how to increase your attention and decrease your DP.
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