Depersonalization and inability to sleep

I've not been diagnosed with any sort of dissociative/depersonalization related disorders, but I haven't slept for the last two nights. I planned on sleeping tonight, and now it's five in the morning so I figured I could vent.

Is anyone here familiar with solipsism syndrome, or at least the philosophical definition of solipsism?

Let me back track

I have never experienced what it's like to have a "fixed identity" or stable sense of self. I grew up adopting different personas that could last between a few minutes, a few days, a few weeks, and even months. My opinions, personality, dress style, and hobbies/future goals would change based on whatever persona I developed. I would be wholly immersed in this false identity until something else triggered me to do another 180 change.

Now that I am an adult, I feel the negative impact of this mindset to the extent that I have an extremely difficult time being a contributing member of society.

I view myself, basically, as a combination of shapes and textures that create what we know as a human body.

I constnantly slip into states where I can't guarantee that anything outside of my own mind is real. If I look at a cieling fan, I can see that it is there, but if I close my eyes, does it cease to exist? Do inanimate objects and people only exist when I can see them?

With solipsism, I feel like I am the only "real" human being who exists, and that I created this entire world around me so that I wouldn't be alone, and wiped my memory of when I created this illusion of reality.

This gives me a sort of god-complex, where if no one and nothing is actually real and they are all just creations of my mind, I can do whatever I want and act on any impulse without thinking of consequences and never learning from getting in trouble for said impulsive decisions.

All the social constructs such as morality, manners, working, etc. are just constructs that don't actually matter. I am basically a loose cannon running free in a world I believe is not actually real, and is of my own creation.

I'm devolving to the point where my health is taking a toll. I don't sleep, I forget to eat and drink water, etc.

Does anyone else have a similar experience, or am I in the wrong forum?

I also hallucinate a lot. It was always hard-to-hear audio hallucinations, but as I got older, voices became louder and I've begun seeing things that are not real even clearer.

All I know is i'm exhausted, and the reason why I'm only now trying to get better is because I self medicated with a lot of cocaine, benzos, and alcohol throughout my entire adolescence and early adulthood, so it either made these situations disappear, or I just didn't care that they were there.

Does anyone have advice or suggestions? I have no clue how to describe this to doctors. My mind goes blank and I can't remember or I can't figure out how to explain because my mind's thoughts are so disorganized and frenzied that it feels like that episode of spongebob where his mind began shredding and destroying all documental knowledge of anything that didnt have to do with fine dining and breathing.

Hi smoke40s,

You may want to read some of the posts on the DID forum to see if you relate to anything there.

smoke40s wrote:I have never experienced what it's like to have a "fixed identity" or stable sense of self. I grew up adopting different personas that could last between a few minutes, a few days, a few weeks, and even months. My opinions, personality, dress style, and hobbies/future goals would change based on whatever persona I developed. I would be wholly immersed in this false identity until something else triggered me to do another 180 change.

This sounds a lot like what many people with DID describe, although later you mention visual hallucinations and those are much less common in DID, although they do occur.

If you think it will be hard to describe this to a doctor or therapist, you can print out your post and bring it along as a starting point.

Sorry, I'm probably not much of help, but.. what you are writing about has a striking similarity to the experience of an infant. Does anyone else see it? Before developing object constancy and all that stuff. Psychoanalytic and other developmental theories so often describe the infant's (or up to like 3 years old) experience with the same details.. such as if I close my eyes, is the thing before me still real? Have I created this world around me to keep me sane? (I think that one is based on the theory about infants omnipotence, belief of making the feeding breast appear in front of you right when you need it).

I don't know how to help you. I have a little different experience, although I get what you're saying. Sometimes I "wake up" feeling like the Whole World is in on a sort of a long con, that I am basically a test animal of sorts, etc. So like delusions, but doctors don't seem to think they are delusions, of course they don't, since I know it is not real. It's just that while i "know" it, i don't feel it. I really feel like my whole life is an experiment of sorts.

For me, when this experience gets out of hand, and the depersonalisation and derealisation gets out of hand, I stop sleeping, I stop eating, I just stop alltogether. I've been hospitalised because of it. Days just blur into one big mess and every hour of the day feels like the other one; There is nothing different between 4 am or 4 pm etc. Does that sound at all like what you're experiencing?

What I can tell you, is that you could try to describe this to your doctor by using this post! Seriously. Write things down. Be judgement free. Dissociative experiences and/or psychotic experiences are almost impossible to describe to those who are not experiencing them. It's like trying to think of a new colour, while understanding perfectly that it is impossible. Like actually impossible. But without words, there is nothing. Sadly to this day we can't read each other's minds.

Personally I have found that metaphors work. I even make them up myself and I've found that "my" doctor seems to sometimes get a better hold of my experience if I think of a metaphor. But when an experience doesn't really involve "a thing", it's more about.. just being or existing, gosh is it hard to describe. So tough. So I guess my advice is: write thoughts down. Bring it to your doctor. Just keep trying.