Some understanding please?

Future Nihilist, I know exactly what you are talking about.

Odd that there is so little activity on the Depersonalisation Disorder Forum, considering that this is the 3rd most common mental disorder after anxiety and depression. However it almost never happens alone and is usually a result of an another disorder, and I noticed that people tend to post on forums about those other disorders that involve depersonalization as an element (like the schizoid personality disorder forum, both here and schizoid.net). It seems that any disorder that involves very low emotionality and/or high anxiety will have an element of depersonalization somewhere in the mix.

Some threads where I personally talked about my experience with depersonalization:
About depersonalization:
http://schizoids.net/forum/showthread.p ... nalization
About being unable to generate any thoughts in one's head (also part of depresonalization):
http://schizoids.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1051

Thank you Peptron!

It's always hard to explain but your use of the word "sterile" is something I'll have to adopt because it's perfect. "It feels like I'm gliding through a sterile world whilst blissfully indifferent towards cause or effect". It always sounds crazy when you try to describe it though.

Smile

houa wrote:Do you recommend CBT? Have you ever tried it? It seems like a big waste of time to me. If not, what do you to bring yourself back to reality?

I never went to therapy for depersonalization itself, but I am in therapy to try to fix my personality right now, and I guess depersonalization might get fixed in the mix.

Also, nowadays I do not really get depersonalization. I get derealization quite often, but it's not strong enough to be really distressing. I still do get spikes where it's so strong I'm afraid I'm going insane (like it happened 2 weeks ago); and the phase of my life where I had constant depersonalization is past (and I hope it won't come back...)

What I noticed in my case is that my depersonalization seems to correlate directly with life stressors, even if I do not realise it right away. Getting away from the stressors might help, but when depersonalization gets too strong, it kinds of become its own stressor and perpetuates itself.

And about bringing you back into reality, I really don't know of any fast way to do it... The only way I see is to find out what might be causing you anxiety and try to stay away from it, but I'm not sure how effective it is if you are a very anxious person.

Smile

houa wrote:.I feel like I am being fake. I feel like I don't operate as myself. I know this because of times when being me is like a reflex action. I don't think, I just do.

I do this all day everyday. For me it comes from a deep sense of not caring about anything while at the same time being curious about EVERYTHING. I once threw my self halfway down a flight of stairs just to see what would happen. I didn't stand there and think about it, I just did it. As soon as the thought entered my brain, my body was falling down the stairs. I didn't even have time to think about it it seems. I feel best describing myself as a puppet on a string. My physical motions seem to look like this sometimes to others who give me strange looks.

If your sure it is not a personality disorder, I would look into depression. I know for a fact that you can be depressed without actually feeling sad. I've been depressed my whole life it seems and that is why I just don't care what happens about anything. But I've never actually been sad. It's something that could pan out for you.

Smile

Yeah, anywhere with lots of people and bright colors like the mall or the grocery store turns me into an instant zombie. I become even more clumsy than usual (and I'm clumsy as hell on a good day), distracted by something every 5 seconds, and most of the time I will completely forget why I entered the store in the first place (then I have to try and remember, which takes like 10 minutes). I'm pretty sure the people watching the security cameras are having a good time laughing at me while I stare at the sunchips for 20 minutes trying to decide on what flavor I want! Hah, I'm losing it!

What I mean about curiosity is like,......It's like I revert into a kid again and I'm seeing everything for the first time even though I'm quite aware of what everything is and the fact that I've seen it all many times before. Since I'm seeing it for the "first" time, It is all very awesome and makes me curious. This is probably attributed to something else besides depersonalization though. I just felt the need to explain it.

Depression has very close ties to depersonalization though. When your really depressed you often feel "outside" of yourself and incapable of moving your body, no matter how hard you try. It's not as constant a feeling as derealization, but it's too similar to be ignored I think.

Yes, falling down the stairs does hurt. I discovered that through strict scientific experimentation. I'm not curious about it anymore now that I know the answer.

Future Nihilist wrote:I have been schizoid for as long as I can remember, but for the past 5 years or so I've been having these sporadic episodes of......Cloud 9 I like to call it. It's not like the descriptions on DP/DR that I've read but DP/DR seems to be the closest thing I can find. So I was wondering if it IS DP/DR just in a lesser degree or what. It's never caused me any problems except that if I'm driving when it happens, I better pull over and try to snap out of it.

1. I call it cloud 9 because it's like all of a sudden I'm completely weightless, like I'm just hovering with my toes occasionally touching the ground and my mind is in an almost pure state of nihilism.

2. Reality doesn't become fuzzy to me, but more distant in the physical sense. Like it takes more steps to get somewhere.

3. Most of the time it makes me happy

4. It usually lasts for about an hour, every other day. But it has stayed around for days on end in the past.

5. It doesn't impair my ability to interact with people or the world, in fact I seem to gain extra sensory powers and "become one with the universe".

6. It does however feel like I'm controlling a puppet of myself from another plane of consciousness.


So, please let me know what you guys think. I know it is a symptom of my schizoid PD, but does it qualify as DP/DR? If not, do you guys know of anything else it could be? Any precedents? I appreciate your time.

I can relate to this as I've felt the same way several times. I more or mess live in a permanent state of derealization (apart from reality) and get these depersonalization (apart from yourself) episodes from time to time. They last anything from a couple of hours to 2 weeks. They are extremely stressful as I'm afraid of staying in this floating state forever.

I feel like I'm floating in space outside of my body with no way of reintegrating it or planet earth. I feel like I'm not even human and could disappear from one second to the next. These episodes are usually brought on by a stressful situation and are impossible to control. As for the derealized state which I feel daily and which is nice, not stressful,, I've learned to control it. I don't choose to drift away, it just happens, but I consciously decide to come back, though.

I also have a similar problem that is very irritating to me. My derealization has come to a point that whenever I go outside of my home, it gets so strong that it makes me believe I'm living in a simulation and everything around me, including people, does not exist but is actually a projection of my own mind. The thing is, that even when I touch an object, it does not become real to me. I can feel it and for this I know it's there, but when I look at it, it looks so fake to me that I cannot seem to "get it" that it's real. The more time I spend outside, the stronger the effects get, thus at some point I will eventually "collapse" internally because the realization of things being fake around me is so strong, that everything loses its value.

My depersonalization increases the effects of the above by making me look at everything from great internal distance. It feels as if I'm looking at things from somewhere else and my body is just an "instrument" I use to get that observation of the things I look at. As an example, yesterday my headphones broke so I had to solder something in order to get them working. When I was soldering, it felt like I knew I was doing something, but I wasn't really there and the internal distance between me and the electronics part I was soldering was much greater than the real physical distance. It was as if the electronics part was at the end of a tunnel and I was looking at it from the entrance of that tunnel.