Eileen Rudnick: My Experience with Loss of Self
Let’s consider the word, familiarity. It sounds comforting, but we tend to take it for granted. Do you have a favorite chair? Is it always your choice for seating when in a certain room? Regardless of the chair style, wooden or stuffed, I bet you’re relieved to lower yourself into it. If you are in it now, notice how comfortable you feel. Maybe the act of gazing around at the familiar setting generates a warm feeling of home. When you are away from home, do you sometimes long for what is familiar? If you return to your home one day to find it changed unexpectedly, how do you think you would feel? Let’s add an element of mystery to it. Your favorite chair has unexpectedly disappeared, leaving an empty space where it used to be. If such a thing were to happen to you, your sense of home may be irrevocably changed.
After emerging from a coma, I was aware of a sudden unfamiliarity with myself. I felt like I was sharing my body with a stranger, and this uncomfortable state has persisted for several years since my brain injury. Searching for my identity is the reason why I have gone through many stages in the past ten years.
Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? This can also be a metaphor for loss of self. Perhaps, when you’ve been on the verge of sleep, this pleasant sensation has come over you. When it happened to me pre-injury, I remember gently lifting out of my body and drifting toward the ceiling. I always felt more relaxed and serene at those moments than at any other time. Even the descent and reuniting with my body a few minutes later was gentle. Now, imagine having this experience and being unable to re-enter your body. Do you think that you might be traumatized, confused, or terrified? If you had such an experience, don’t you think that your waking behavior might reflect your inner turmoil?
Somnambulism is another possible side effect of loss of self. When it happened to me, I thought it was just a recurring bad dream. In the dream, I was outside watching an obscure female walking away from me. I felt a strong desire to catch up with her, but I couldn’t move. My legs felt like concrete. I couldn’t even call out, because I was mute. Even though I had the dream several times, my short term memory was more deficient than it is now. Therefore, I never knew why I frequently woke up feeling depressed and crying.
The explanation came one day when my husband told me that I had been sleepwalking. He had awakened to find me standing in the middle of our bedroom, unresponsive and obviously still asleep. I was unnerved and reported the sleepwalking to my professional counselor. He tried to calm my fears about walking away from my house at night. He knew that my devoted husband was quite vigilant and wouldn’t let such a thing happen. He also assured me that this behavior was not uncommon after trauma and that it would probably subside. He was right about the sleepwalking. However, it took me several years to understand why.There is no cure for loss of self, because there is no cure for brain injury or any of its side-effects. It is only recently that I have begun to grasp all that has happened to me; this is why I’m writing about it. Today, I am free of the nightmare, the sleepwalking, and the search for my identity. I have finally embraced the new me. The way it happened was entirely unexpected, and I couldn’t have explained it until it was over. I have reached the final step in the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. They are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This process is not just for loss due to death. Survivors and their families go through it, too, because the loss of someone dear to you can also happen as a result of brain injury. However, the new person can become just as dear to you as the old. What do we value most, the caterpillar or what emerges from the cocoon?