Weird dreams and the Capgras syndrome

Today, rooting around the internet, I came across the Capgras delusion. This in itself isn't strange, I've been coming across quite a few psychological disorders lately, partly because I've been reading quite a bit of Oliver Sacks.

The curious thing is I was reading the symptoms and despite what the internet agrees upon (that it only happens to people with mental damage of some sort) I recognised the symptoms perfectly. I have experienced it before.

First of all, let me explain a little bit about Capgras Delusion or Capgras Syndrome. It is a psychological syndrome in which a patient, usually after having suffered some sort of brain damage (a concussion, but also dementia or Alzheimer's), are convinced that their family members are impostors, this is, that they are the exact family member, with the same voice and mannerisms and memory, but that they are not "their" family member, that "their" family member has been supplanted. The delusion can extend to several people and even to inanimate objects or pets.

Curiously, the only reported case in a healthy person was someone who'd taken ketamine. However, I suspect that the reason for this is that in healthy people Capgras delusion only occurs extremely sporadically and for very short times.

Now as to my experience with it.

It happened a few years ago, I must have been 16 or 17. I remember waking up, and I remember it being a weekend (or something like it, I didn't have to go to school). I remember lying in bed and feeling very, very comfy. And terrified.

Because here's the thing: even though everything I could see seemed "right" I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was in a parallel universe. That that house was not my house, those books were not my books, that world was not my world. I felt like I was in a sci-fi story and I'd fallen through some sort of wormhole and gotten somewhere where everything was exactly the same, but it wasn't my the same.

The scariest thing is that I had no one to turn to. I've had very vivid nightmares since I was a kid, and at some point I found relief for them: my father said to me that if I told them to someone they would stop being scary. This is true. I have tried it plenty of times, whenever I tell someone about a scary dream (now that I'm older I rarely have "scary" nightmares, but I still have very intense stress nightmares) it stops being as scary, and I feel better because the subject of my fear becomes a bit comical once it is expressed out loud. I realise that my worry is not that big. Now, imagine the same situation but knowing with almost certainty that the people I would usually tell about it were not them. That if I told them they would try to tell me it was them, but that I would know it wasn't true. That everyone in the world I trusted did not exist in this parallel world.

I got out of bed and out of my room, and around the corner and down the stairs, all the time expecting to find something that would confirm my suspicions that I was not in the "real" world, and more and more terrified because everything looked exactly the same, and I couldn't tell the difference.

The prevalent feeling was isolation. I'm not sure anyone can imagine it, but it was essentially the feeling of being in a world of complete strangers, where nobody knew me or knew who I was, even though the my pseudo-family seemed to know me and I seemed to know them.

Talking to my mum was a challenge. She acted like my mum. I don't think I was very friendly that morning, probably replied to things in monosyllables and didn't really ask questions. I was terrified. As the day wore on things started to slowly fit back into their place. This metaphor has been used before, but it was like a rubber band had been stretched too far and now my reality was slowly going back.

I went to sleep that night and woke up the next morning and everything was back to normal.

But whenever I think about it, it terrifies me, for several reasons: firstly, things never "snapped" back. I never went from believing I was in this parallel universe to believing I wasn't and that it was my world, but rather, as I carried on through the day things kept going how I expected them to, so it became easier to somehow convince myself (or become convinced) that the world I was seeing was indeed my world. Because of this I'll never know for sure that I'm not in a parallel world, and as stupid as this is, this terrifies me. Secondly, I fear that I may have sacrificed my "real" world. After all, if this parallel universe was so much like my world that I couldn't tell the difference, maybe it's ok that I'm here and that maybe the girl from this place is in my original place. After all, we can't tell the difference. Finally, and I guess this is a weird one, but I wonder about the rest of the people. I wonder if they were all originally "here".

But only sometimes. Most of the time I believe that that day my mind played some weird trick on me, probably because of some weird dream I was having.

In any case, I wonder if anyone's had a similar experience and I also wonder if it has to do with the Capgras Syndrome.

I suspect it doesn't, if only because it appears that the Capgras syndrome is a result of a damaged pathway linked with visual recognition (people are able to identify people they know, but he neurological pathway that links that recognition to a feeling of familiarity does not function properly) and I don't see how that could be damaged for a day, but who knows? If anyone has any light to shed on the case, please let me know. It doesn't terrify me anymore (this world is my world now, bitches!), but I am curious.

On a last point, I did finally tell my parents about my experience, and more than anything they found it curious, and they seemed to think that if everyone was exactly the same and I couldn't tell the difference it shouldn't really matter whether or not they were the same people.