February 11, 2009 at 10:14 am (psychiatry)
Tags: obsessive compulsive, ocd, personality disorder, psychiatry
As humans, we have a tendency to want to get things right. Some of us more than others. Such people might be called perfectionists. They spend hours over something and may still be unsatisfied while others might be happy with half the work. I’ve always believed I was a perfectionist when it came to my work. So, when I came across the Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, I naturally assumed it was me. But it wasn’t. It makes me looks like a lazy perfectionist at best.
Now, some of you may have heard of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) but that’s not the same as OCPD. OCD is described as a person being obsessed with something and in order to decrease their anxiety, they are compulsed to perform certain actions repetitively. Eg, if someone was obsessed with being clean, they compulsively wash their hands multiple times maybe for hours until they are satisfied that they are clean. Whereas a person having OCPD is someone who is obsessed about details. They have “chronic preoccupation with rules, orderliness, and control. This disorder is only diagnosed when these behaviors become persistent and disabling. The individual with this disorder often becomes upset when control is lost. The individual then either emotionally withdraws from these situations, or becomes very angry. Occupationally, the individual tends to be a high achiever with an excessive devotion to work. However, inflexibility, perfectionism, preoccupation with detail, and inability to delegate work may seriously interfere with the individual’s ability to complete a given task.” Source.
Thinking about these disorders makes me glad that I do not suffer from these problems. Alhumdulillah, I know when to be flexible, when to take it easy and when I need to put my nose to the grindstone. Being a doctor can be humbling and inshaAllah I hope this attitude doesn’t change as I increase in knowledge and experience.
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February 11, 2009 at 10:03 am (medicine, psychiatry)
Tags: brain, psychiatry, sleep, sleep paralysis
In my last post, I spoke of hypnopompic hallucinations and my experience with something known as sleep paralysis. I had to research my experience and have managed to come across some lovely explanations on the matter.
Taken from this webpage:
“Sleep paralysis is a condition in which someone, most often lying in a supine position, about to drop off to sleep, or just upon waking from sleep realizes that s/he is unable to move, or speak, or cry out. This may last a few seconds or several moments, occasionally longer. People frequently report feeling a “presence” that is often described as malevolent, threatening, or evil. An intense sense of dread and terror is very common. The presence is likely to be vaguely felt or sensed just out of sight but thought to be watching or monitoring, often with intense interest, sometimes standing by, or sitting on, the bed. On some occasions the presence may attack, strangling and exerting crushing pressure on the chest. People also report auditory, visual, proprioceptive, and tactile hallucinations, as well as floating sensations and out-of-body experiences (Hufford, 1982). These various sensory experiences have been referred to collectively as hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences (HHEs). People frequently try, unsuccessfully, to cry out. After seconds or minutes one feels suddenly released from the paralysis, but may be left with a lingering anxiety.”
And from an Islamtoday article:
“The source of this phenomenon is a natural bodily function. When you sleep, your brain shuts off the signals coming from your muscles so you do not get up and act out your dreams. This is to prevent you from injuring yourself in your sleep. For some reason, people with sleep paralysis come into consciousness before the brain returns voluntary control back to the muscles, creating a sense of feeling paralyzed. This sensation is quite uncomfortable and understandably frightening, which can lead the not wholly conscious person to experience some of the secondary symptoms of this disorder that can often be very frightening and realistic.”
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February 10, 2009 at 9:31 am (Islam, jinns, psychiatry)
Tags: dream, jinns, psychiatry, sleep, sleep paralysis
Hypnopompic hallucination is a psychiatric term that refers to a hallucination that occurs while a person is waking up from sleep. In psychiatry, a hallucination can be in any sensory modality like an auditory hallucination (sounds), visual (lights, figures), or tactile (pressure, pain), etc.
So, why am I talking about this?
A few nights back I was asleep, I felt I heard a sound and then as though there was something sitting on me. As a reflex, I wanted to recite the ayat ul kursi but I was still asleep in reality and paralysed and couldn’t recite it. By the way, I talk in my sleep too so it would have been normal for me to recite surahs in my sleep. Then I tried to move and I couldn’t for maybe 10 secs and finally I was able to open my eyes and move and I started reading the ayatul kursi thrice, then the 3 quls thrice each before I finally felt better. I was wide awake and wondering if this was a dream or a jinn.
My friends and I used to love sharing jinn stories and I remember my friend saying that there are a certain type of jinn which sit on you and you can’t speak or move and these jinns are usually very powerful. Personally, I never researched this. I guess I should.
If you haven’t already figured out, the reason I mentioned hypnopompic hallucinations are because if I had relayed my experience to a psychiatrist, he/she would almost certainly tell me it was a hallucination as I was awakening. These kinds of hallucinations are not pathological and do not indicate any mental illness.
In psychiatry, we learn about and see patients with certain symptoms very similar to jinn possession. Sometimes, it’s hard for me to separate the two. Maybe because you learn with experience and I haven’t studied either in great detail.
Maybe what I had experienced was a hallucination or maybe, just maybe, it was a jinn playing around. *dum dum ddduuuummm* *x-files music* 
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