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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Chloe's Thoughts / Blindsimming and Such

Blindsimming and Such

Written by Chloe on Thursday, January 15, 2009

Back in July, Sean and I had a little interchange of posting comments in connection with "Bronwyn’s fateful weekend". Sean suggested there that I should talk to my psychotherapist about what has motivated me to do blindsimming. My first reaction was "Yeah right Sean, he’s just going to think I’m a nutcase". Then I realised that psychotherapists like nutcases. That’s why they are psychotherapists. Here’s what the ensuing discussions with my psychotherapist uncovered:

After my failed attempt to become paraplegic when I was nine years old, I started to wonder if something other than paraplegia might work out for me instead. I began to imagine having every kind of disability that I knew of, every amputation that I could conceive of, every sensory loss.

I started to simulate a variety of impairments. Since I had no access to how other people might do such things, I just made it up as I went along. I wanted to figure out if I might simply want to be disabled, as opposed to specifically being paraplegic. When I was ten years old my parents started leaving me home alone. Most of my pocket money went towards elastic adhesive bandages.

My first amputation simulations were with my legs. I would put a knee into full flexion, and tightly bandage the lower leg to the upper leg. Then I would try to get around. It wasn’t until I left home that I acquired crutches to facilitate this, but my dad had a bunch of walking sticks from when he broke his ankle. I found out that it felt better to do this to the left leg than the right leg. I also did both legs at the same time.

I figured out that one could use a similar technique for one’s arms. Put the elbow into full flexion and bandage the forearm to the upper arm, with the hand taped to the shoulder. I liked it best to put on a loose fitting shirt with short sleeves so that the "stump" poked out. It seemed to look more realistic if the elbow was completely bandaged with no skin showing. As with the leg, it felt better to do it with the left arm than the right arm.

I did it a lot with hands and fingers too. Again the left hand and fingers felt better than the right. There seemed to be something a bit different about the left hand compared with any other amputation simulations. All of these things were interesting to me, but with the left hand I really felt that this amputation would be very reasonable. Hmm, maybe "reasonable" is not exactly the right word here. I have never been able to figure out any kind of psychological factors that could have contributed to this. However, it has been completely consistent in later life, just at a very much milder level than my feelings about paraplegia. The main reason I would be upset at losing my left hand is simply that it would make life with paraplegia more difficult, rather than any emotional attachment to my hand. It is a matter of indifference from an emotional standpoint.

In terms of sensory loss, I already knew that I wanted my legs and genitalia to be devoid of sensation. I imagined quadriplegia too. Partly it was because of my attempt at self injury when I was nine. I had realised that a possible outcome could have been quadriplegia. I wanted to imagine what that would have been like, both the paralysis and the sensory loss.

I am very protective about my sense of smell. The closest I can come to understanding someone else’s horror of paraplegia is to imagine that I have lost my sense of smell. I would never want to simulate loss of my sense of smell. That would freak me out massively.

I have simulated both deafness and blindness. The deafness has not interested me much, which is too bad since I have partial hearing loss. Something grabbed me about blindsimming though. I often imagined being blind when I was a child. I am sceptical about whether this actually has anything to do with BIID, since I definitely do not wish to be blind. To be sure, the investigation of impairments other than paraplegia after I was nine years old led me to blindsimming. However, for me it has been an interesting sensory experience rather than a BIID experience. I have done this at home alone, but when I have gone out it has always been with a friend. The longest continuous stretch has been three days.

There is a little twist to the blindsimming. When I was thirty three years old I had a chemical burn to one eye. I had both eyes bandaged for about ten days. Then the one eye was bandaged for another month or so. The physician told me there was about a 70% chance of completely losing my sight in that eye. I was completely calm about that, and the idea didn’t bother me in the slightest. It was just one eye after all. I have no idea if that’s a normal reaction, or if BIID helps with such things in some way. In any case the eye completely recovered without any long term damage.

There’s another twist. When the nurse was bandaging both my eyes for the first time I found it highly sexually arousing. I can’t figure this one out. It has never happened when I’ve been blindsimming. It has also never happened when I’ve been in the emergency room and had other body parts bandaged, or when I had an eyelid torn almost all the way through. The only analogous experience is when I had braces on my teeth. Every time I went to get them tightened I would find it sexually arousing.

Besides paralysis, sensory loss, incontinence and amputations, I have done other imaginations/simulations too. An example is wearing a colostomy bag to see what that might be like. Another thing is to tape my lips and/or tongue in various ways to simulate a speech impediment. Actually one of the reasons I like wearing the retainers for my teeth is that they give me a slight speech impediment. Only my partner gets to hear that these days. She thinks it’s cute and endearing. My partner does in fact have a speech impediment. I also find it cute and endearing. We are so cute together!

All of these simulations were at a peak when I was in my twenties and thirties. Then everything diminished with the exception of paraplegia, my left hand, and blindsimming. After my back injury two years ago, everything except paraplegia became irrelevant. I was back to where I was at nine years old: desperate to become paraplegic.

Tags: Amputation, Bandages, BIID, Blind, Blindsimming, Braces, Crutches, Disability, Incontinence, Paralysis, Paraplegia, Psychotherapist, Quadriplegia, Stump

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