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Originally Posted by Shadow_God_10
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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.
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Originally Posted by sff_writer_dan
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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.
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Originally Posted by Hakulyte
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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.