Most people, and rightly so, think of themselves as being completely "normal", but what we subjectively perceive as "normal" is very different from the actual picture of he alth. We sometimes experience mental disorders such as sleepwalking, perseveration and hallucinoids. Fortunately, they are not a sign of mental illness.
For example, sexual dysfunction occurs much more often than we think, and people who experience it think that something is wrong with them, even though they are actually within the normal range. We also experience manymental disordersrelatively often. Although it may sound like a contradiction, the presence of certain disorders is treated by psychologists as a symptom of mental he alth. What pathological symptoms appear most often in completely he althy people?
Mental disorders that appear in he althy people
Sleepwalking, or what happens when you sleep
"My husband woke up in the morning and said: Honey, finally our Kacper slept all night without waking up! In fact, the husband got up at night, because the baby was crying, he took him in his arms, carried him to the kitchen, made the milk, fed him, and then he went to sleep and fell asleep himself. It was his turn for the night shift with the baby. Is it possible that in the morning he did not remember anything? ”. Most people have sleepwalked at least once in their lives, although they may not know anything about it.
Somnambulismis not dangerous, unless the person goes out to the balcony or opens a window, for example. Usually, this condition affects boys more than girls and is to some extent genetically determined, there are entire families of sleepwalkers. It is rare for someone to perform complex tasks like Kacper's dad duringsleepwalking , although it is possible.
Systematic research by psychologists has shown that sleepwalkers are not distinguished by any special personality traits or unusual properties. They are perfectly normal people!
Sleepwalking - what is it?
Perseverations, i.e. repetitions of the machine's fault
When someone is looking for keys or a wallet in a hurry, they first look into the purse, and when they are not there,starts looking elsewhere. Then she looks in the purse again, and sometimes she does it again and again, as if the keys were to magically materialize in it. Such pointless repetition of actions is called perseveration. An example of perseveration is also checking several times whether we have closed the doors and windows before leaving the house, whether we turned off the iron, turned off the water, turned off the lights in the car, etc.
They have a medical significance, especially when a person remembers perfectly well that he checked whether the electricity was turned off, and yet he feels an irresistible urge to check again. In other cases, perseveration is associated with a minor disturbance in the functioning of attention. A person repeats an action because he simply does not remember whether he did it before ("I turned off the iron or not?") Or is not sure if he did it well ("Are you sure I checked the entire drawer carefully? Maybe the keys got lost somewhere under the pile cards? ”). Normal people miss what they were just doing, because the actions that are repeated over and over again become automatic and are performed without the participation of consciousness. Thanks to this, you can focus on more important matters.
On the other hand, however, starting an automatic action often leads to its execution from beginning to end. A thoughtful person can drive the whole city and only realize in the parking lot that he intended to go to the store, and not to work. The automaticity of "looking for keys" is based on the fact that starting a search can turn off the consciousness, which is dealing with something else at that time, therefore looking into the purse or checking the gas taps is repeated many times and in a completely thoughtless manner.
See what is not there, i.e. hallucinoids
Hallucinations (hallucinations) in people who are not exposed to any psychoactive substances are treated as symptoms of serious mental disorders (e.g. schizophrenia). Meanwhile, every person happens to see things that are not really there. Nothing more common! Just wave your finger in front of your eyes (please check), and you will see a non-existent smudge, like a shadow, trailing behind the finger.
Hallucinoids are a kind of simple hallucinations, i.e. perceptions that arise without external stimuli. For example, when someone bends down and suddenly raises his head, he may see dark spots in front of his eyes. When we hit our head hard, we see "stars". These stars or dark spots are hallucinoids. They canalso appear spontaneously for no apparent reason. Hallucinoids take many forms: fiery flickering points, undulating floor, streaks, flashes, tingles, bizarre smells and flavors. Many he althy people also hear other people's voices in their heads from time to time, as well as crackles, shots, squeaks, music, etc. It happens relatively often just before falling asleep.
Although hallucinoids are a symptom of a malfunction of the nervous system and their frequent appearance may indicate organic changes in the brain, they occasionally appear in most he althy people and are not a symptom of a disorder.