Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist

Re: Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist

Self awareness is key for these things. If you understand that this is happening, you can develop countermeasures to avoid or reduce the effects. That part is probably better handled in the hands of said Psychiatrist.

I think the closest experience I have with that was dealing with epilepsy and having residual "mental absences" as in the brain not wanting to go back into its thinking state until a certain short period of time. It's like it needed time to breathe and reorganize itself before letting me continue to think properly. In these times, I often ask really simple surface level questions that makes very little sense to ask if you think for more than 5 seconds. e.g: I read the time myself and then ask someone what's the time as if I needed a confirmation that I'm still processing thoughts properly. (and no, it's not a language barrier thing, but I sure loved that excuse)

This only occurs to me if I'm really tired or if I've been doing a high effort activity like sprinting nonstop for a while. So, in my case it's pretty simple. If I need to drive a car and go somewhere, I must have slept properly and I must not go sprint and make myself tired on purpose. I think the most interesting thing for you to do at this point would be to monitor how often it happens, how to trigger it and if there's preventive things you can do so it doesn't happen. I feel like you started this process already and if you have obstacles that you're unsure about, it makes complete sense to go for the professional.

It's very possible what you have has different variations from what I have so, it makes sense to not rely on it. Your trigger was stress and mine was failing to get sleep when I needed sleep. It might affect slightly different parts of the brain.

tl;dr: The more you understand everything about what's happening to you, the better. Mental health is mostly about keeping a balance and clearly this is worth looking into.

Re: Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist

I have a hunch that the content of that exam was EXTREMELY process based yes? Like most of what you'd be studying would be "Doing the correct things in the correct order to check, double check, prep, and operate the aircraft"?

The amount of stress you put yourself under, to the point of causing a complete breakdown could well have been traumatic stress, and so now any time you get into "working through a process checklist" you trigger your trauma of the stress of trying to memorize so many processes for that exam and you have an episode.

If that sounds likely, it seems like your best bet for talking to a professional is to talk to them about CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) which is the process of trying to interrupt processes that are happening without your conscious control and resulting in problems, and redirect the process literally through other pathways of the brain by interjecting other elements into what was happening automatically, to make it so you don't have every "What are the steps to this" moment routing automatically through "oh god panic exam" pathway.

Re: Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist

As someone who has worked as an airport operator for over three years, I can fully understand the need to mentally walk yourself through the steps of what you need to do.

For example if I have an emergency I tell myself that "Okay, I need to collect all the information, then call this person, then that person, then tell this other person". It's a very useful tool to maintain an air of calmness in a situation where your brain SHOULD be thinking "OH GOD, OH FUCK, OH GOD, OH FUCK"

If your brain somehow STOPS doing that little mental process, then I would suggest and wholly support your idea of seeing a psychiatrist

Re: Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist


Indeed I agree with you 100%. My training to become a pilot taught me a great deal about risk management and situational control. I've had these instances happen to me whilst flying and when it happens, I just set the plane flat and level and just wait out the storm of emptiness when I can start to process complete thoughts again.

I don't fly into anything more busy than Class D airspace and here in Idaho, Class D gets about as busy as like 5 airplanes in the airspace on the busiest of days so even with this problem of mine, I can usually handle the situations. As flying becomes more and more natural and second hand nature, I can rely on my reactive mind to handle a situation if my procedural mind decides to vacate for a few minutes.


A great deal of private pilot knowledge is centered around procedural control and analysis. This factor affects these factors which in turn changes the outcomes of those factors which plays into the decisions based on these other factors. Being a pilot is a never ending pile of checklists, procedures, cause and effect, and risk management. While on whole, it's not a hard program to wrap your head around, I put myself into an incredibly unnecessary amount of stress to do it perfect the first time. I wanted SO desperately to pass my exams, and I did, but failed to see how it was causing the traumatic stress, as you described, that ultimately left me scarred with this condition that just won't go away.

You offer a very interesting view to this issue, one I'm going to really dwell on and experiment with more. I'm trying to keep track of the things that exactly trigger my mental shutdown but it's hard because often times it's a scenario or explanation of things that becomes incredibly complex or interconnected just under the surface. So in those instances, it's almost impossible for me to track exactly where in that rabbit hole my brain decides enough is enough.

That's an interesting take on it. While your case is wholly different in circumstances, the symptoms are similar. In my case, as far as I can discern, I'm not having any outward symptoms of my condition, at least that no one has noticed and told me about. As far as something like epilepsy or similar neurological conditions go, without consulting a doctor, I can't say I'm experiencing anything textbook based on my single symptom. I don't exhibit any signs other than the mental shutdown.

When I go into shut down, say when I'm talking to someone, I can't think of the words coming out of my mouth yet I keep talking, somehow. I feel very disconnected from my own speech until my thinking starts up again. This goes back to the description of everything feeling very instinctual when I'm suffering an episode. I'll keep talking without thinking as if my body knows what my brain was going to say but I'm not actively thinking about saying it simply because I'm not thinking at all. It's the weirdest fucking sensation and so hard to describe but you seem to have an idea of what I'm going through from your own experience.

It's interesting that you talk about asking yourself very basic questions to try to regain normality. While I'm still trying to experiment on what can resolve these shut downs faster, I've noticed if I look at the clock, and read the time out loud or focus on a calendar and stare at the current date and try to force my thoughts to center on just that date, I can regain some level of thought earlier than I otherwise would have, albeit a small improvement overall. I can do this with most things that my eyes can perceive as language so looking at a magazine or book or reading text on the TV can facilitate a slightly faster recovery, nothing seems to work as good as reading the time on a clock or staring at a calendar.

Thinking about that now it seems strangely coincidental that in the days building up to the exam, I stared at the clock as time seemed to speed up incredibly fast towards that exam and I counted the days down every day. I put a huge amount of emphasis on tracking the time because my stress commanded me to try to find more of it. While it might not be connected to my use of the date and time to help my episodes, it is a fascinating connection.

Re: Suggestions Before I See A Psychiatrist

I can recall myself trying marijuana for the first time in my life, multiple times and getting bad trips from them. The bad trips themselves weren't so much of a concern for me, but every now and again after that experience, I will get moments of deja vu, similar to ones you may have experienced, but instead of lasting for a brief moment or a split second, they would last for 20-30 seconds straight for me. My brain would get constantly get crossed with itself, saying to itself that it's done this before, in this exact same way, this was the outcome, and this outcome happening reaffirms that I've done this before, in this exact same way, etc. etc.

It's happened less and less for me, in smaller and smaller intervals since then. It's been 6 or 7 years since then, and it's went from once every other week for 20-30 seconds to once every other month for 2-3 seconds. I kinda feel though, that we have similar cases where something misfired incorrectly in our heads, and then it just learned how to do that randomly from time to time.

I think Hakulyte's case and your own seems to lock in on the idea that the problem was created by an event and happens from time to time, just like mine. Also, it's noticeable that in all cases here, it's likely to get better as well, rather than get worse. What matters here is the acknowledgement of the issue, and taking steps to better yourself in a direction to improve against it.