What is your take on continuity of self?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I’m hardly the same person who voted in this poll.

This helps me to believe in the continuity of self:

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/2d/76/c9/2d76c958bbda9baeae73a642adb49e75.jpg

Depressing if true

I had a severe tbi 5 years ago. A very good friend asked me at about 3 months post-injury, just after my release from in-patient-dom, “do you notice differences in your personality or behavior?” My response then was “i am definitely the same, just worse.” By which I meant that my previous defects or weaknesses—in say, executive function, or in navigating between tasks, or in managing conflicting instructions— were now hugely magnified. (Later, and over time, I would learn that I was now um, very dysfunctional in certain roles). Anyhow, my response backinaday was not a bad take for where I was, then.

Buuut there was a universe of other differences that I could NOT really perceive. It took a long time to persuade me, but the recovering TBI patient can have an extraordinary lack of insight. For all the difference that I could notice, there was so so much more that I could not see. And that I STILL cannot see. Because I still feel like, just “me.”

There are many tasks for which you can say “ah, I used to be able to do x, now I cannot,” and that inability to do is plain to you, as a patient and person.

However, it took much more time to make me BELIEVE that “in the past I would have felt like y and acted like z, while now I would feel and act differently.” Gaining even that level of insight years, and a lot if heartbreak. Having your partner say “you are not the person I knew,” that is hard. And it’s not either persons fault. And it is not to be cured. Your “self” changed in ways you don’t perceive. But everyone else does.

oh there is no self only behaviour, surely every fule knoes that?
& since there can be no self I can't complete this.
For there is no I

Loved your post, Hunt3r.

That reminds me of the plot of the film The Mind Benders (1963) starring Dirk Bogarde in which he goes into an isolation tank and then gets mentally reprogrammed while his brain is soft and then his wife knows he's a different person but he fights her over it.

Never heard of it but def will search out if i can!

Great post hunt3r

TY all. Been reupping my 90s zen sitting and thinking, I find its been more effective than a lot of other things at settling myself.🤷🏻‍♂️

Yes, great post Hunt3r.

Dirk Bogarde was a great actor and animal advocate, on top of being really dreamy.