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Changes in emotional status and/or change in self awareness following seizures.

Sun, 11/03/2013 - 13:37

I am a 42-year-old female.  I experienced my first grand-mal seizure 12 years ago.  For several years previous to that, I had experienced what I referred to as "skipped record syndrome", where I would have auras and difficulties with words or speech, sometimes also combined with a jerking motion of my hands.  Over the last 12 years, I have had occasional seizures...sometimes going as long as a year without any episodes, and during other times having as many as 6 seizures in a month.  Last week I had my first seizure in more than a year.  Following a seizure, I have occasionally experienced a feeling of an altered sense of self.  Not just a change in my mood, but almost a sense of having travelled back in time to a previous "me" time.  I am not sure how to explain it, to be honest.  I often think we have a self-perception that changes with us, over time.  Sort of like our "self" at different stages...the childhood feeling, the teenager feeling, the young adult feeling, the parent feeling, the middle-aged feeling.  Since my most recent seizure, I am feeling stuck in one of these previous senses of self.  I just wondered if anyone else has experienced this or something similar?  And what if anything do you do to deal with this.  I don't want to say that I feel depressed...that is not necessarily so.  I just don't feel "normal" or like myself.  And of course with that comes the feeling of not being in control of my "self".

Please, anyone having experienced something similar, any input would be greatly appreciated!  I suppose just not thinking I am alone would be a comfort in-and-of itself.  Thanks in advance!!

Comments

Re: Changes in emotional or self awareness following seizures

Submitted by pgd on Mon, 2013-11-04 - 08:14
Regarding the idea of skipped record syndrome - sustained attention vs inattention - the Nerves in Collision book (about the non-convulsive epilepsies, Dilantin) by Walter C. Alvarez, M.D. is good one. Regarding changing states of alertness - awareness - the fictional movie - Limitless (2011) - about the fictional medicine - NZT-48 - poses a lot of modern questions about levels of consciousness (listen to the movie director's commentary). Also, x-ref: Inattentive ADHD, attention span, central auditory processing disorder, alternating hemiplegia, the idea of parts of the personality being housed in the right frontal lobe, etc. Also, there are examples of persons sustaining concussions where they notice that their alertness level has dropped from the level of an adult to a younger age. You are not alone in asking about levels of perception, cognition, alertness, paying attention, consciousness, etc. Best wishes.

I recently had my first

Submitted by sundroprays on Sat, 2014-03-29 - 00:40
I recently had my first seizure an i can relate to your feeling of change to awareness. read my post in medication issues about setraline zoloft seizures if you want more info on the seizure. But i also feel somewhat shifted. I read online that seizures happen in our temporal lobes, which control our level of consciousness. So yes, I think you are onto something here.

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