Ive been struggling with depersonalization for a few months now. It began after a year long 24/7 battle with extreme social anxiety and fear. My brain has shut down and i dont feel fear anymore or nervousness. Not even when talking to people. I feel very dettached and unhuman. I dont feel real. I cant even recall the last moment of happiness i found. I feeel relaxed and peaceful but unable to relate to anyone and have a very profound lack of interest in socializiong. Although i dont really feel emotion i can tell i am experiencing symptoms closer related to panic disorder - like difficulty breathing , tightened blurry vision, tensed jaw, etc. the most disturbing apsect of this to me is that i sincierely believe i have no personality, quirks, opinions, interests, or dislikes. Nothing moves me and i can not seem to make my mind up about anything simple or large because i really feel internally that i just dont have a preference for anythinng at all. I have no sense of self to be honest. I often feel transparent and itd hard to feel like you have a relationship with anyone when you cant process that they truly want to talk to you, or that they are actually addressing you . This is hard to explain but if anyone feels the same way it would be very helpful to hear.

I find that my hardest days are days like today where I wake up just loathing myself. From the moment my eyes open the flood of negative thoughts drown out any positive I can see. In these times even my children laughing and smiling outside my bedroom door cause me tears.
I feel alone, which is hard to do when you live with five other people but there it is. I can never seem to pin point just why some days the pain is so overwhelming and all consuming that lasting the next five minutes seems impossible.
I am worthless, unloved, and discarded. These are the thoughts that are an unending cycle in my mind. The more I attempt to distract myself from these thoughts the more invading they seem.
Any advice out there?

About me and how I need help psychologically...

So this page is all about me, myself and my book of wild thoughts. Obviously my name is not Bookof!! I’m intending to keep anonymity at least for now; that’s because I’m a bit ashamed of what I write! I did not even link it to my own personal Facebook profile, I preferred to create a different entity, and this is being applied onto all my self-owned social network profiles. Besides, it’s in my constitutional rights to do so and if anybody’s got a problem with that, well…. Door’s open, please go !!

So what is book of wild thoughts all about, I can hear you mumbling… As said above, this book is all about me and my personality and how I’m intending, with the help of all my readers, to achieve in linking them harmoniously. There are other areas I’m looking forward to improve as well: my own English writing style, some books and stories I wanted to publish. So this website is all about gathering enough courage in me to really do what I always wanted !!

I’ll probably add some more text in the future for that’s all I feel like writing at the moment; my wife’s nearly finished with cooking dinner and it’s about time to wrap the napkin around the closet, oops sorry! I meant around the neck;

Just to let you know how it took me days before I started to lay my hands on my own personal blog, I even threw up out of eating whatever came in, I think it’s the stress LOL ! I don’t know why such a reaction would occur to me, maybe I got too lazy to start working on it… So you can guess by now, or I can already hear you screaming, “How am I supposed to know that?? Ain’t you old enough to know it (oh, btw, how rude of me, I’m male, thirties, and married. Where were my manners!?) yourself why are you asking me??”

So here we go: my answer is exactly your question, I don’t know myself enough and this has caused me (and is still causing me) tremendous trouble in whatever I do, whoever I lived with, in all what you can think of! This lack of personality, of self-esteem has brought me to where I am at present, a lousy web developer after 10 years in the field and writing this blog! Of course, I managed to get a nice girl to fall in love with, a little plot of land I managed to get on a good opportunity, but ‘all’ this achievement (LOL) seems so small as compared to the $#%^ I brought to my family, my wife and luckily no kids so far! Imagine the disaster, for my wife: 2 stubborn kids in the house!

So many of my friends have excelled in the field, they took courage, had the balls still have, and grabbed life with firm hands to build their dreams and be happy with their life now. It would have sounded so selfish if I had ended this sentence with “except me”!! I have a great family, wonderful parents whom I never blame for where I’m standing now, a wonderful wife who has accepted to bear me for three years now and a nice work atmosphere, what more could I want? What more would a man need to start flying on his own ship and start his business ‘happily ever after’ ??

So all these lines of thought, these wild thoughts (I’ve got more, don’t worry!!) have led me to share my life and my own thoughts into a small book which I’ll update online of course, from time to time. I’ll be pretty close with it, since I’m intending to use it anywhere I’ll be, using my mobile phone; yes, even when I’m taking a $#%^ !

That’s because it’s better to be writing something than doing anything else #######5, how about that !?

Thanks for reading my article down to here and hope I can get to read your comments very soon!

Usually people who struggle with drug and alcohol abuse or other forms of addictive behaviors come from a background of abuse or neglect or have experienced some kind of trauma when they were younger. Being in these situations, a child and/or a young person can experience various painful feelings such as fear, helplessness, shame, guilt, sadness and eventually hopelessness. Becoming overwhelmed by these emotions and not having anybody to help them and validate their feelings may lead to them learning to run away and avoid such feelings to protect against pain or become consumed by those feelings and act upon them impulsively. Later in life, they may use substances or engage in addictive and destructive activities to numb those painful feelings. Despite their effort in avoiding these emotions, they are stored implicitly in a deeper level of the brain and will be triggered more often than they may have expected.

These emotions that have been stored in a less conscious part of the brain may not be accessible verbally, but can be found symbolically in images that the person creates. Therefore, the goal of art therapy is to access these hidden and avoided emotions that once had the purpose of protecting the individual, but either have been denied or exaggerated and lost its purpose to rediscover their adaptive qualities.

Images in an art therapy session can simply be composed of a few lines, colors or pictures from a magazine to more elaborate drawings, clay sculptures and other forms of creativity. These images will give an expert art therapist the opportunity to help the recovering person uncover meanings behind the symbolic images, discover more information about oneself than just talking and open many deep thoughts and emotions. Participants in art therapy don’t need to have any skills in art.

Talking about feelings can be very frightening and painful for a person who has been avoiding them for a long time. This person may not even be able to verbally express him/herself, but may be able to express thoughts and feelings about past and present events and situations non=verbally through lines, shapes and pictures. Creating them can become a new form of communication which is less threatening and safer for the recovering person.

Individuals struggling with addiction are usually very judgmental of themselves and are flooded with shame and guilt. Creating art can give them a tangible, concrete perception of their feelings and thoughts and give them the opportunity to observe themselves from a distance which can help them gain a new, less judgmental and more compassionate understanding of self.

Recovering individuals may engage in a simple art project whenever they feel overwhelmed or have an urge to take drugs/alcohol or engage in an addictive activity to distract and sooth themselves. Creating can give them a sense of control over the situation and a tool to accept and manage overwhelming feelings. Using their hands while using art materials such as colored pencils, markers, crayons, clay, paper and scissors can help them release some of their avoided feelings such as anger and lower its intensity, and to sooth and calm themselves when they are anxious.

In general, in art therapy sessions, the recovering person will be given permission and opportunity to experience and express those feelings that he/she has been running away from and avoiding for a long time in a safe and supporting atmosphere, with the presence of an empathic professional psychotherapist /art therapist who will help him/her understand and make sense of those painful feelings, acknowledge and accept them with compassion, reduce their intensity and tolerate them, and finally use them effectively to fulfill their needs and goals.

My gambling is becoming out of hand lately and i really feel its changiny core as a person it all started when i got a job at a nearby gambling establishment and to cut a long story short i started to gamble because of my employment and now i feel like it is taking over my life and more important things are taking a back seat. i'm new to the site so any help/advice by more experienced gamblers would greatly help thank you.