A ghost under a flesh bed sheet.

I am new to this forum... To all of this... I have not been diagnosed for DPD by a clinical professional and have been living with this... Void for a large part of my life, I'm fairly certain that this is the condition I suffer from, I have many of the symptoms and a lot of the users on these threads describe thoughts, actions, and feelings or I should say lack there of that I have experienced and have developed for about 15 years of my 26 year old life.

I used to see it as a strength, a power over others that shielded me from emotional weakness. But now it has near entirely destroyed my five year relationship with my girlfriend with whom I have a child.

- I am now seeking and or going to seek some serious f*ing help...

For a long time when I was in elementary school I felt detached from everything around me, detached from the cliques and groups of kids who wanted to have the newest jordans and clothes... I look back and saw those kids as materialistic, as pawns for this illusion we call culture... they and most all others I see and perceive around me are plugged into the Matrix. They are immediate people, philistines...
And I... a shadow, a ghost watching this whole #######4 show strapped to a chair watching a TV with a broken knob. I'm disconnected from so much in life, so much has been missed. I'm so young yet see life wising me by. I have not had many friends over my life, never able to really connect with them and they, me. My very presence in a room seems to pull the light from it. I can see myself in the mirror but have an odd disbelief that its me... I have had the tick for as long as I can remember... there are few pictures of me from when I was a child because I hated taking pictures so much... this might be the reason for that.

My father died 3 days before Christmas 2010... with his death I sought answers to meaning and purpose in life. It changed my entire perspective on it all... The job I currently have is one in which I attribute a bit of good to having this condition to, I bus tables at some expensive hotel seeing rich people happy. I have not been happy for much of my life so if this is indeed the Disorder I suffer from, its probably from the depression. The breaking point... the point I am now at happened two days ago. I read that marijuana intensifies the disconnection/depersonalization... I didnt know about this and sought to use the drug in hopes of relieving my depression and anxiety at work... A depression and anxiety that began to manifest in panic like attacks at the work place... The disconnection helped me function so well performing the slavish tasks required of me that I saw that things were getting better. UNTIL... I called my significant other on my work break, she was upset and I was surprised about it. She said that my depression was killing her and to seek help but in my HEAVILY disconnected state only upset and hurt her further. The words coming from me were not me speaking but as though I was listening to someone else use my lips to speak the words that ended the relationship. The void within manifested into a destructive presence that for the longest time has been there giving me advice as to how to feel good...

I know many of you may have similar experiences.... this is mine.

How are you guys coping with this?
Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?

If you read all this... I just would like to say thank you for taking the time... and I appreciate any and all feed back.

Fictional

I don't know what to say about your relationship so I won't say anything. But your mental health has negatively impacted on your life by playing a part in the end of your relationship, so it makes sense to seek help for your mental health. If you want drugs for depression and anxiety there are many medicines out there that have helped a lot of people and a doctor will monitor you for side effects and to see if it's working. That is a lot more sensible than trying to treat yourself with street drugs. What's done is done, but I wish you well in trying to change your life. X

I feel the same way you do. Life is passing me by. I often think that reality is an illusion like the matrix.
I see most people, wherever they are in life, acting as if they choose to be there, yet I wonder how that can be when they can't predict the different places they'll be in at different stages of their life. Not even remotely.
Yet, through all these changes, jobs, places of residence, etc, they always act as if they are in control.
Maybe that doesn't make sense.
Anyway, my point is I feel left out of that. Whether it's an illusion or real, since I'm left out of that feeling of being in reality, and in control, I am not in control.
Decades of my life have gone by with me struggling to keep afloat, forget about changing my life.
I have always held jobs like you have now, and I'm 42.
This depresses me to no end. I know most of us have to have some kind of job most of our lives. I do not want this kind at all, and see others take for granted the ability to change their job situation.
So maybe I'm a loser in life and maybe I always will be.
Still, here's my advice for what it's worth.
Being dissociated makes you feel as if reality is just some buzz word, that you are not affected by things you do or say.
As much as you can, recognize that that is not how the world operates, and try your damnedest to act accordingly.
For example, I honestly do not view money as being real. I see one dollar in my banking account online, and owe a thousand dollars to a friend, and am two months behind in the rent. (I actually am not those things)
I honestly do not feel concerned or bothered in the slightest. For the numbers in my bank account might as well be made up, as much of a mental impact as they have.
I need to tell myself, over and over if I have to, they ARE real, that the figure shown has a REAL impact on my reality.
And force myself to act accordingly. Don't say, like a child, wow, a buck, I can go to the dollar store and get that thing I wanted.
Say, instead, I need to increase that amount. I need to not spend when I should save.
As far as my job, I need to say, no matter how much I hate this place, removing myself mentally will not improve my situation. I will only end up homeless. If this is honestly the best job I can get with my mental problems, then I need to work hard, try to have a good attitude, and save save save.
Perhaps I then give some of that savings to an investment firm, and maybe be able to quit, or at least have a decent retirement.
I need to force myself to pull back and see the forest for the trees.
Maybe the money example may not apply to you. But my point is that, despite the depersonalization, you need to tell yourself over and over it's just a feeling, try to ask what someone who is in reality would do, and try your best to do that, even if it doesn't feel like it will have any real impact.
Because it will.

If you had positive self esteem and derealization....some people would consider you enlightened, whatever that means. Shinzen young has a video on youtube where he calls dp/dr the "evil twin" of enlightenment.

Your emotions are still there even if you are not aware of them. I would not quit therapy. It helps to keep people in your life to stay "grounded". People are social animals, you included.

Derealization/depersonalization...is a new trendy term in a trendy field of medicine called psychiatry. It used to be called "isolation".

I feel for your current situation. Life seems so much easier if I can remove myself from it. Considering myself completely different from those around me, whether above or below, just kept me safe for the longest time. My dissociation actually went so far as to blind me from the mental health issues I actually face. Dissociation has a cruel effect on us. It causes us to never even consider the fact we may have a mental health issue. Bah! Those diseases must be made up. I would say. That is all a scam to fool stupid people, the drones. Recently I have considered otherwise. This summer was a momentous summer in the reckoning with my mind.

Writing freed me from it somewhat. I will not say I am "cured," but I am mindful. As an engineer I have no background in any form of expression. I would stray away from activities that put me out in HS. This caused me to gain little skill in the arts or any form of expression, which only made it more awkward and anxiety ridden to try in college. I dissociated to protect myself from feeling the need to express. At the beginning of this summer I read "If You Want to Write," no this is not an add for the book just my personal experience. I am sorry if it sounds like it. The book was amazingly positive about me expressing myself, and just writing what I thought, what I felt. After a few months of fledgling attempts at writing, really really bad, I had a major breakthrough.

I wrote with no care of anyone else, as though I were going to be the only person to read it. The dissociation caused me to be absolutely sure of my thoughts, but the writing showed me otherwise. I saw holes in my logic, good in my bad, confidence I never knew I had, actual problems with my mind. I wept as I wrote sometimes, but the experience humanized me. I saw myself for the first time as a person of this place, everything I felt was just as valid as the rest, someone else had the exact same feelings. I actually sat down and considered all of the happiness life has brought me. I saw that if I actually took time to treat myself as my best friend I could see that I had done great things in life, had good friends, a life of meaning to myself at the very least.

When reading this keep in mind these were not nights of happiness a lot of the time. I have learned to harness my most depressing moments into just a few short paragraphs. I know not what form of expression you might take a liking to, but know this. I think expression may be one of the best ways to "ground" yourself back to Earth. Putting your feelings and emotions down in some form takes them from behind the fleshy sheet. Suddenly you will realize that you can see that ghost on a page, or a canvas, or a piece of clay, and that it is real. For me it meant that I was not a perfect being meant for a different path than the others, it meant I was human. A person with flaws, but a person with the ability to fight it.

I wish you the best of luck and an easing to your suffering. My experiences with knowing that perception is reality, counting my blessings, and expressing myself have helped me a great deal, and I hope that they can help you in some way. You are not alone in the fight against our selves. Keep strong.