Breaking Through the Wall of Glass

The treatment was quite straightforward and I could navigate easily through the different phases of it.

Since the first session I felt a big shift that became more stable and defined during the other two sessions.

Before the treatment I had the sense of being inside a submarine alone with only my feelings and thoughts. Other people’s feeling and thinking processes were very far away, outside the submarine: I could see them though, but it was like watching the world through a round porthole. I felt like I was separated emotionally from people and events and this made it difficult acting in social situations with empathy, for example. It was like wearing an invisible old fashioned submarine suit at a fancy dinner: no one knows you wear it so they treat you “normally” but you are not very graceful in your movement and interactions and you end up ignoring or hurting people next to you.

As this condition can have the apparent benefit of protecting you from what hurts others, in this scuba suit, you also let out those subtle feelings of interactions with people. The result is making you feel that you are not belonging in the world where others perfectly fit into. You might learn all about how to act, but it doesn’t feel like you are actually living it with ownership. In fact, I rather had a passive role in relationships.

The treatment made me “get out of the submarine” and all those feelings changed: in the first days after the treatment I felt like I was “outside” the suit, and therefore being exposed to a 3-dimensional world. Trees looked huge and sticking out from the background, the sky looked high and all objects somehow had a “presence”. I have an intuitive knowledge of what is around me now and I feel that I can reach out to the world. As a consequence, I feel I belong to what I do. There is no separation. I also felt that I can have an influence on the world and on people, helping out when needed and comforting.

It was funny one day right after the treatment when I entered a very narrow elevator, and the presence of the walls on both sides made me prefer to turn 90 degrees so that my awareness would “have more space” inside that small place. Another time I went running with my partner that was right behind me and that I couldn’t see. Suddenly she changed her direction crossing the street and I felt her while she was doing that. I started laughing from the surprise of my newly acquired awareness of the space around me. I believe that in team sports I would do way better now because I would intuitively feel my teammates moving around me without the need to look and think.

The first few “shield-less” days were funny and at the same time a bit of a worrying experience because it was all new, but I quickly got used to it. Now landscapes look marvellous and a simple stroll downtown is way more interesting because it is a world inhabited by aliveness and characters that I can interact with. Hiking in nature as well has a whole new meaning.

Most importantly, now people occupy a “volume” on their own and have a “soul” or a “presence” on their own, separated from my presence and therefore I can interact with them as a peer player of the game. I feel my presence and my emotions and I feel other’s presence and I have intuitive insights about how they feel. This brought within a great deal of peace in my relationships: everything feels way more simple and uncomplicated. I react to the world stimula with aliveness and with appropriate responses. At a dinner with other people, I stopped overthinking and I simply enjoyed being together participating in the natural flow of the conversations.

Finally I’m less preoccupied and in need of recovery alone-time. I have less tics and social anxiety as well.