Your Signal
Absences (Petit Mal)
10 min read
Also known as: petit mal seizure · absence seizure · brief loss of consciousness · absence epilepsy · absent-mindedness · absence · brief blanking out · momentary loss of awareness · vacant stare
Your Body Is Speaking
For a few seconds you are gone. Not unconscious — more absent. Your gaze goes blank, your eyes stare into nothing, and the world around you continues without your participation. Sometimes your fingers twitch, sometimes your lips move as though searching for words that don't exist. Then you are back — without knowing you were ever gone.
Medically, absences are a form of epilepsy: brief, recurring lapses in consciousness in which the brain falls into a kind of electrical short circuit. The nervous system fires synchronously rather than in an ordered way — a moment of total overload that manifests as emptiness. Neurological treatment is essential. But the psychosomatic perspective raises an additional question: why does your system want to disappear again and again? What is your consciousness fleeing from when it disconnects from the present for a few seconds?
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