Below are three terms that describe the experience of not being fully aware of one's own mind. I've come across these terms at different times in my life, and each one resonated with me, instantly causing me to think, Oh, that's me. It was only when trying to figure out which term was most accurate that I realised their was little significant difference between them.
Ophelia Syndrome – This describes adolescent girls who are dependent on another person for explanations of their experiences, for naming their feelings and for making them feel grounded and contained. The name comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Act I, Scene III of the play, Ophelia asks her father, Polonius, 'I do not know, my lord, what I should think', to which Polonius replies, '...I'll teach you.'
Alexithymia – This is the inability to name or identity one's own feelings. People with alexithymia may not be able to distinguish between their feelings and the feelings of others. (Statistically shown to be more prevalent in females.)
Imposter Syndrome – This is the feeling of being a fraud, that any success is an act of affirmative action, luck or pity and that at any moment, someone is going to stand up and yell, 'Fraud!' Although this may sound different from the first two, it is similar in that it is the experience of not being able to see one's self as a valid and equal person. It is the experience of feeling that you are living at the fickle mercy of others. (Thought to be more prevalent in females.)
These triplet terms seem to apply more to women than men and for good reason. In 2013 Ragini Verma, PhD from the school of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania published a study using brain imaging to prove that the female brain is wired to have a greater social drive than her male counter part; we are quite simply more socially inclined. So, to start with, women are taking the feelings of others into account more than her male counter part. This in itself make us more vulnerable to developing the above conditions.
The real risk factor though is spending time in an environment that refuses to acknowledge the individual’s personal experience, sending the message (in both overt and subtle ways) that one's personal perception is simply wrong and that their needs are not real. This is common amongst minorities or people with unseen disabilities. It's like a child saying, 'I want a drink' and an adult replying, 'No you don't. No one else is thirsty, so how could you be thirsty?' The child eventually begins to think, Oh, this must not be what thirst feels like. They grow up learning to look outside themselves for permission to have even the most basic of experiences. When we are constantly referring to others about how to be ourselves, what to feel, what's acceptable, we cannot then set appropriate boundaries for ourselves.
When our feelings and perceptions do not get enough validation our inner self becomes malnourished. We look to others – sometimes one specific other - who posses the self awareness we lack to nourish us by witnessing who we are and giving our experiences the validity that we aren't able to give ourselves. Living like this keeps us in a cycle of dependency, needing external approval that is often contingent on what parts of ourself we extenuate and what parts we deny. We easily enter into a cycle of feeling anxious about continuing to gain the external approval and extreme dependency on the people we've appointed to nourish us. Non clinical labels for this behaviour include: clingy, crazy, control freak, bunny boiler and more. But at its foundation is likely a life experience that was never properly validated.
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