hyper aware of existence

Very nice response.

Omg can I relate to your original post... it gives me so much anxiety, this feeling. Normal human behavior just feels so strange and foreign to me, and the fact that it doesn't seem normal to me makes me feel even weirder. It's a never ending cycle of things feeling strange and that strangeness making me feel strange about my own perception of things. I can't even walk normally when I know people can see me because the motion of walking feels weird. Being a human and looking like I do and knowing I'm in my body and this is MY body and nothing will change that yet my body will change and my mind will change yet I'm still this person... I don't know. I'm sorry i'm rambling, I wish I had a helpful answer for you but all I can do right now is relate. Reality is too strange to be real, but I can't imagine what a more "normal" existence would look like. Existence is in itself almost a paradox too weird to comprehend, and living in it must take some amount of ignorance to feel comfortable with all its strangeness and impossibility. Like a dream. Sometimes I feel like it's a miracle that in this cold, infinite universe there can be a self-contained terrarium with diverse creatures who can think and feel. Other times it flips from being a universal view to a very claustrophobic, self-conscious view and I'm terrified of being an individual living thing in such a big world populated by people I don't understand, in a universe I can't comprehend, in a body I can't fully connect with, with a mind that seems to work against me--and yet I am my mind! I wish everyone who felt like us could meetup at a big existentialist convention and hook our minds up to a machine that connects all our minds and lets us feel less alien and alone lol.

I only skimmed through your post/the replies, looking for similarities in myself, but not actually caring about your situation or even my own. And so I think that is the base of this disorder, for me at least.

I look in the mirror a lot.

Others, myself included, like to joke around about my "egotistical" nature. I flip my hair and laugh, because of course, I'm the best. Self-absorbed. I've taken what can be seen as a negative trait and turned it into something quirky and funny.

But it's not what I say it is. I look at myself and I study the thing looking back at me. What are my eyes but squishy, delicate spheres? A sphere is just a shape. What is a shape? My skin, stretched over muscle and bone, protecting me from the elements. What is skin? What is muscle? *trigger warning- cutting* I can take a scalpel and draw it over the skin, slicing it, watching the red flow. Its warm, thick, and I can sense that there is pain associated with this action, but what is pain but your brain's response to harmful stimuli? *end trigger* If you are not in any actual danger, what is pain? It's pointless. It's nothing.

I feel pain. I feel love. I feel, constantly, just like everyone else. But I can't perceive it as anything but my brain responding to stimuli. I feel, though have no emotional connection to the feelings. I can accept and note that they are there, but they mean nothing to me.

And so I'm obsessed with self-care. I do not neglect anything. I perfect my appearance. I do anything I can to succeed and project a positive, inspirational image. I have no shame, no guilt, no empathy, because as far as I'm concerned, other people are in the same boat as me. They are just objects, the same as me. It's like nothing is actually real, and nothing is meaningful. They, too, are just skin, stretched over muscle and bone, moving around, spouting quotes to make themselves feel better, guzzling coffee for energy, going about the motions.

All I long to do is lay in bed forever. But I need to get up, go make an appearance, pretend. This all doesn't always interfere with my day to day life. I have a hard time holding jobs, I'm irresponsible, impulsive, I have the capacity to be very heartless and cold. I can go out and dazzle people, but it begins to drain me, and I change my path and quit everything as easily as I obtained it.

None of this is anything. Everything is absolutely nothing. I am not here. And neither are you.

is anybody here in 2018 ?

the problem is identity- I am so and so, I feel so and so, my thoughts, my body, my life, personality, individuality, history... Instead of being happy and enjoying the freedom from the burden of identifying with a body-mind [depersonalization is detachment from 'me'=body-mind], a human, and individual, you feel something is wrong. That comes from the conditioning of living in the society, starting with family conditioning in early childhood when you went through the 101 of separation- how to be an individual in a world that is either full of temptations or full of threats- the duality of desire and fear that rule over the belief of being an individual.
Let feelings and emotions be- they are transitory; you are not them but you are behind them, the background upon which they come and go while you remain unchanged. Live as the observer, witnessing all these without getting involved by reacting and you'll be at peace. Space does not judge, take positions of agreement or disagreement with what is happening inside it; it accepts everything equally. Be like the space, that you already are but fail to see this by indulging into thinking, fascinated by all that moves, like a kitten... Leave movement alone, let it be and just be still!

Reading French existential philosophy helped me with these thoughts. Will make you feel less alone, and give you words to put to your feelings. Especially "the absurdity" of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

thefuture wrote:Reading French existential philosophy helped me with these thoughts. Will make you feel less alone, and give you words to put to your feelings. Especially "the absurdity" of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

From there I would advise diving into Phenomenology to get really deep into the perception of things.

Its comforting to know there have been thousands of philosophers who have felt how you're feeling now; and wrote about their experience in great depth and beauty :

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/

thefuture wrote:Reading French existential philosophy helped me with these thoughts. Will make you feel less alone, and give you words to put to your feelings. Especially "the absurdity" of existence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

I agree with this entirely. While it's been a while since this thread was alive, this might be important to someone looking later.

I used to suffer from this. I kind of just ended up accepting it for what it was and moved on. It made me largely depressed and lose a lot of motivation for almost everything. It got so bad that I refused to do anything at all, even eat.

But, I managed to get myself out of it though Absurdism. It's essentially what thefuture mentioned, but is an application of Existentialism. Absurdism states that while nothing has a meaning, or a reason, and just is - we should use that to spite the "absurd universe" and make our lives what we want them to be. We shouldn't allow our own feelings of ourselves, our reality, our existence get to us. We should use it to life our life the best way we can.

It helped me because, I guess at the time, I was trying to find meaning in everything. If I exist, surely there's a reason for it, right? I can't just exist with no meaning. But, that's wrong. There doesn't have to be a meaning, and searching for meaning in a meaningless universe will only bring pain, depression, depersonalisation, and a disdain for living. Upon realising this lack of meaning, and forcing yourself to believe it as much as it may not seem true, your head will start to clear. If there's one idea I've gained through this philosophy, it's that we, as humans, as living beings, are simply the universe experiencing itself, and I think that that is incredible.

Everything we are, will be, and have been is just the universe acting with and upon itself. When we die, "we" are gone, but truly, we are not. Don't think that this should inspire you to kill yourself, or make being apathetic look reasonable. Do think that this means you can live your life how you want, separate from your anxieties of what you do, who you are, what you are, or even what life is. As corny as it sounds, your life is literally what you make of it. Your hyper awareness of existence is a tool that you can utilise to be compassionate, caring, happy, and self-assured.

While philosophers hate it, whether or not life is "real", or a simulation, you know that right in this moment, that subjectively, you exist. That's what matters.

Ive been through this and know it’s agonising. I have recovered, although I recognise certain things change it (can’t go anywhere near doing mindfulness practices!) I found this information helped somewhat https://www.ocdbaltimore.com/navigating ... bsessions/

As a previous poster said, going towards all the stuff rather than away seems the best way to deal with it. Try to think those anxious thoughts more and it seems you can almost make it run it’s course. The thought of ‘I’m always going to feel like this’ is anxiety producing and often the ‘obsessive’ part of this. The constant checking whether you still feel like this seems to be the ‘compulsive’ and the cycle runs around and around.

Good luck and have faith it passes. You’ve not always felt like this and you won’t always feel like this.

I can relate to this completely. At times it will often cause a huge spike of adrenaline which can sometimes result in panic unless I ground myself, breathe deep, and reassure myself consciously that I am OK.

As a deep thinker I've felt like this for some time, I often would if its a mix of biology and spirituality, during those intense moments of awareness, I find I step outside of my ego, outside of the constructed idea of myself I have built up over time through thoughts, processes, beliefs and things - and ill step into just feeling aware. It's a strange state because I personally find i can be in that state in two different places. One can come from fear, which is usually anxiety and worry based about the future, death, the after life, etc etc - however at other times if you consciously do it, become aware, just sit still with nothingness other than you're own sense of awareness it can be absolutely beautiful. I'm not sure its something you can recover from so to speak unless you become unconscious completely, I think its more along the lines of how you view it and how you choose to experience it.