<story><title>Why can’t we remember being born or our first words?</title><url>https://theconversation.com/why-cant-you-remember-being-born-learning-to-walk-or-saying-your-first-words-what-scientists-know-about-infantile-amnesia-182736</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanSrich</author><text>This is very interesting for me because I have almost the inverse experience of this. When I was a child I was diagnosed with migraine induced absent seizures. I think it was mostly a &amp;quot;we don&amp;#x27;t really know what this is, but here&amp;#x27;s a diagnosis so you can stop bothering us&amp;quot;. I mostly grew out of it, but a few times per year I&amp;#x27;ll have an episode.&lt;p&gt;What will happen is that suddenly and out of the blue I&amp;#x27;ll completely lose any sense of reality. I&amp;#x27;ll have words, but that&amp;#x27;s almost it. I have no sense of self. If it happens when I&amp;#x27;m doing something, like walking around the grocery store, I can still identify where I am, and what&amp;#x27;s going on, but there&amp;#x27;s no real sense of me doing it. It almost feels as if I&amp;#x27;m in a video game and I&amp;#x27;m &amp;quot;above&amp;quot; myself. My consciousness completely disassociates from my body. When I was a kid it would scare the absolute shit out of me and I&amp;#x27;d panic. Several times I would run away from where I was, thinking I was going to die (it&amp;#x27;s really hard to explain the sense of not having a self, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly frightening). As I&amp;#x27;ve gotten older I&amp;#x27;ve been able to deal with them as they subside within 60-120 seconds.</text></item><item><author>fercircularbuf</author><text>During a shrooms trip one sapphire blue sky day in Fall at university, I lost all access to my language faculty. It felt like an invisible hand was erasing my entire lexicon in huge swaths at a time until there were no more words left in my head. One moment I had thoughts. The next moment, after the last word blinked out of existence, I had only feelings.&lt;p&gt;The clouds covered the sun, and a gust of wind passed over me, and I was cold,  and I could only experience the sensation of discomfort. Then the sun emerged, and I was basked with warmth, and I experienced happiness that brought a smile to my face and a feeling of safety.&lt;p&gt;For about two hours I existed in this language-less state. Without words I wasn&amp;#x27;t able to think. There was no internal dialogue. I couldn&amp;#x27;t reason about things, or think about the past or future. There were no words there to attach to the objects around me let alone abstract concepts. Then, as quickly as my language had been erased, it returned again in patches. Once it was all back I was able to reflect on this experience using my words. I have always wondered if this is what it is like to be a baby.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rbyvanderwoord</author><text>This sounds similar to depersonalization episodes [0]. I used to have regular episodes myself, and they scared the hell out of me. It didn&amp;#x27;t help they lasted 10 days, but strangely enough never more and never less. The experience is indeed hard to describe, but the video game analogy clicks with me. I usually describe it as experiencing life in third person.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.webmd.com&amp;#x2F;mental-health&amp;#x2F;depersonalization-disorder-mental-health#:~:text=Depersonalization%20disorder%20is%20marked%20by,like%20being%20in%20a%20dream&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.webmd.com&amp;#x2F;mental-health&amp;#x2F;depersonalization-disord...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why can’t we remember being born or our first words?</title><url>https://theconversation.com/why-cant-you-remember-being-born-learning-to-walk-or-saying-your-first-words-what-scientists-know-about-infantile-amnesia-182736</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanSrich</author><text>This is very interesting for me because I have almost the inverse experience of this. When I was a child I was diagnosed with migraine induced absent seizures. I think it was mostly a &amp;quot;we don&amp;#x27;t really know what this is, but here&amp;#x27;s a diagnosis so you can stop bothering us&amp;quot;. I mostly grew out of it, but a few times per year I&amp;#x27;ll have an episode.&lt;p&gt;What will happen is that suddenly and out of the blue I&amp;#x27;ll completely lose any sense of reality. I&amp;#x27;ll have words, but that&amp;#x27;s almost it. I have no sense of self. If it happens when I&amp;#x27;m doing something, like walking around the grocery store, I can still identify where I am, and what&amp;#x27;s going on, but there&amp;#x27;s no real sense of me doing it. It almost feels as if I&amp;#x27;m in a video game and I&amp;#x27;m &amp;quot;above&amp;quot; myself. My consciousness completely disassociates from my body. When I was a kid it would scare the absolute shit out of me and I&amp;#x27;d panic. Several times I would run away from where I was, thinking I was going to die (it&amp;#x27;s really hard to explain the sense of not having a self, but it&amp;#x27;s incredibly frightening). As I&amp;#x27;ve gotten older I&amp;#x27;ve been able to deal with them as they subside within 60-120 seconds.</text></item><item><author>fercircularbuf</author><text>During a shrooms trip one sapphire blue sky day in Fall at university, I lost all access to my language faculty. It felt like an invisible hand was erasing my entire lexicon in huge swaths at a time until there were no more words left in my head. One moment I had thoughts. The next moment, after the last word blinked out of existence, I had only feelings.&lt;p&gt;The clouds covered the sun, and a gust of wind passed over me, and I was cold,  and I could only experience the sensation of discomfort. Then the sun emerged, and I was basked with warmth, and I experienced happiness that brought a smile to my face and a feeling of safety.&lt;p&gt;For about two hours I existed in this language-less state. Without words I wasn&amp;#x27;t able to think. There was no internal dialogue. I couldn&amp;#x27;t reason about things, or think about the past or future. There were no words there to attach to the objects around me let alone abstract concepts. Then, as quickly as my language had been erased, it returned again in patches. Once it was all back I was able to reflect on this experience using my words. I have always wondered if this is what it is like to be a baby.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>newusertoday</author><text>may be you need to look at what buddhists are saying about no-self and hindus are saying about brahman and compare and contrast your experience with these texts. What you are describing looks completely normal (except for migraine) and is in fact expected as per these texts.</text></comment>