Ever heard of someone going to 2D vision?

Hello again you good people. I now have two DID clients, and as always, I tend to come into here when I’m just really stumped on something. As per suggestions, I have picked up a professional consultation, but I just met with her, and I need an answer to this now.

Has anyone ever heard of going from seeing in 3-D to seeing in 2-D?? I have a client who had a major dissociative episodes years and years ago that left her permanently with 2-D version. In my office lately, it’s been going back-and-forth, and we are both absolutely stumped. It seems to be consistent that 1/2 of my office is in 2-D while the other half is in 3-D. Anyone ever heard of this?

I just did today, and now I'm not sure if I see 2D or 3D myself..https://www.psychforums.com/dissociative-identity/topic211658.html

The quote in that thread was from here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-intelligent-divorce/201503/somatic-experiencing

Yes, I sure have.

First, "everything seems 2D" is a really common subjective experience of derealization. Also, transient loss of depth perception is a common conversion (psychosomatic) symptom. I do think these are two fundamentally different experiences, but they are not easily distinguished except by thoughtful interviewing and perhaps a thorough opthalmology exam.

Also, there are other causes of loss of depth perception. There again an opthalmology exam can be helpful.

I think I know exactly what they mean. This was something I used to notice and report to therapists and a psychiatrist before I was diagnosed with DID. It's as if your entire field of vision is flattened on a screen in front of you. The field of vision moves in an odd way, it's much like how pictures move in a Ken Burns Vietnam documentary.

Have your patients mentioned anything about how they perceive sounds during these experiences? For me, it's impossible to tell where sounds are coming from..Sometimes sounds seem super distant, or I hear my breathing as if it's someone else. It's also very hard to judge how "I" fit into my surroundings..ie walking down a hallway and feeling/perceiving the ceiling to be way higher or way closer than it really is.

Kind of. Your description reminded me of my experiences in 2014-2015 after I had an acute traumatic episode, where I sometimes couldn't recognize people because their faces just looked like flat disks with non-descipt eyes to me. It was like they flickered. Now that I think about it everything else with my vision was screwed up too but the faces thing frightened me. I had really difficult times with contrast during this period and adopted some practices traditionally used to treat Irlen Syndrome. I just now realized that I ended up dropping into some old habits from childhood and stopped looking people in the face because it was so unsettling.

I made my office at work into a bat cave, turned off the fluorescent lighting because it just made things worse and put everything into low contrast on my computer. I made sure I had sunglasses if I had to be under flourescents or if it was bright out. I never did therapy for this particular problem but I guess it improved gradually, just less and less days where it was an issue until it wasn't an issue. I had to resolve the other problems.

I was put on 150 mg seroquel in the middle of 2015, I didn't notice if it improved my vision problems or not, but it was a factor.

Maybe this helps? It doesn't sound like quite the same problem.