Pardon me while I dissociate...

My head is reeling with the plethora of disorders we are studying in Abnormal Psych. We just finished up anxiety disorders, you know, things like phobias and my personal favorite, panic disorder. I've been there, when the floor drops out from beneath and I was left free-falling into terror. Most people believe they are having a heart attack. I just thought I was dying. In a way, I was; I was so lost and afraid in my early sobriety, without any drug to ease the fear. Now we have moved into dissociative disorders, like dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as mulitple personality. Interesting that this is a phenomenon that exists almost solely in our American culture. It stems from traumatic abuse in early childhood. That says a lot about our parenting skills. I particularly like depersonalization disorder, those moments when we just zone out, like on the road, scary. A whopping 80-90% of the population has experienced this, yet they persist in calling it a "disorder". I think it is just a mini-vacation mode, myself. And then there are the somatoform disorders, like Muchausen syndrome, and hysteria, another favorite of mine. Mood disorders are coming up next. Oh, boy, depression. I could never be a medical student; I would die of some dread disease I was studying before I could graduate.