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Old 18-07-2010, 06:58 PM   #4026
hope.is.overrated
I am on the verge of being a complete disaster...
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Navas View Post
I study everything and everyone I come into contact with. I study myself. It’s just my nature; I’m a student. I assume others are often studying me also, and it’s not a feeling that makes me especially uncomfortable. I find it reassuring actually, because I want to be understood. Of course it’s disconcerting when others seem to be coming to incorrect conclusions about you, which is always a risk. When I think that’s happening, I try to tell them so.

The idea that I’m “studying you like lab rats” seems to imply that I don’t care at all about you as people, or even that I regard you as something less than human. Both of which are not the case. The phrase also tends to connote a sense of superiority and a degree of arrogance on the part of the observer, which I do my best to avoid.


I didn’t mean to imply that I don’t think anyone has had such experiences or that they’re not valid. Nor that I think anyone is a “liar”.


Just that they are essentially illusory, or due to confirmation bias, like for example noticing some of the hues in the iris, which isn’t uniform, and discounting the others.

Or in some cases maybe they’re the effects of changes in behavior (which might not be highly conscious/intentional) while in different states, e.g. being willing to squint to compensate for not wearing corrective lenses and/or being willing to deal with some blurriness, or downplaying or exaggerating the severity of an asthma attack in order to appear more or less vulnerable, or being more psychologically stressed in some states such as could exacerbate an attack via sympathetic nervous response, and so forth.

Of course your face can change according to how you’re feeling, to some extent. It’s something you have muscular control over and an important part of communication. But eye color is another thing.


I don’t know anyone (other than online) who’s told me they have DID. But if I had, and hadn’t seen their eyes change color rapidly or whatever, that would of course hardly be proof that it doesn’t happen at all.


And indeed there is no proof that it doesn’t happen at all. I could be wrong. But all the available evidence leads me to think it’s very unlikely that I’m wrong.

Rare phenomena could easily be missed by an individual but I have a hard time believing that things as astounding as rapid eye color shifts wouldn’t have been seriously investigated at some point. I was looking for several hours to see if I could find some substantiated reference to rapid eye color shifts as being a possibility in humans, and haven’t found anything. If you have, I’ll be happy to look at it.

So anyway, in the absence of such evidence, I think the most likely explanation is that such experiences are psychological effects, which have a certain kind of reality, but not of the sort that’s denoted by a literal interpretation of sentences like “My eyes change color according to my mood” or whatever.




Actually, no I’m not. Eye color does change, but it does so over intervals of at least a few months as melanin particles are synthesized and degraded at differing rates, or gradually migrate to different locations in the eye.
There are creatures like cuttlefish and chameleons that change their skin color *very* rapidly (especially the cuttlefish, and they’re so CUTE), because they have the needed mechanisms (muscularly controlled chromatophore pouches, and so forth). But there’s no evidence that humans have comparable mechanisms in their irises.

=0.0=
I get what you mean, but it's not everyone who likes to be observed and studied by other people like they were some science project...I know I wouldn't like...

Not being disrespectful to you, but what the change of eyes' colours has to do with DID? in my opinion, nothing...



I write this alone on my bed; I've poisoned every room in the house; The place is quiet and so alone; Pretend there's something worth waiting for; There's nothing nice in my head
The adult world took it all away; Wake up with same spit in my mouth; Cannot tell if it is real or not; I try and walk in a straight line
An imitation of dignity - MSP - From despair to Where

I am human and I need to be loved just like everybody else does - The Smiths How Soon is Now


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