WIP Altered States Project

For a few years now, I have been living with a somewhat uncommon dissociative mental disorder. It causes me to frequently experience bouts of depersonalization and derealization, in which the world feels two dimensional and unfamiliar. Looking in the mirror, I rarely recognize myself. In the middle of conversations, I often feel like auto-pilot has turned on and I am moving via muscle memory alone. I can carry on conversations and laugh along, even make jokes myself, but none of it is conscious. I feel that I am not in control of my behavior, even though I am not doing anything out of character. It's not a violent experience, but it is scary. The best way I can describe it is it feels like I am watching a recording from my own point of view, like everything has already happened and I am just watching it without any influence on it. It feels almost like when you wake up from a nap you didn't know you were taking, it's disorienting and upsetting.

With that out of the way, I have decided to recreate the way this feels, paired with the other assorted anxieties I experience. I have recorded some of my friends reading a poem about my disorder, and I have an audio clip from Lost in Translation that I feel encapsulates some of my fears about life. I have found a clip online of a man finding himself in the woods and becoming confused, which I feel represents well the feeling of looking in the mirror. There will be some ambient sounds in the background. I have also found POV clips that are intended to represent what it is like living with Schizophrenia, but I feel that the distorted nature of the clips is relatable.