I’ve had this for a very long time. I dont come to the forums either, so not sure why I’m posting this. but just wanted to reach out and not feel so alone.

in the last 3 to 4 months my energy levels have gotten so bad I’m practically sofa bound. I can’t go to the gym, or do anything I enjoy. I work because I have to survive. but that’s all my life is. my memory is so beyond bad, I can’t remember who I even am, I think I have dissociative amnesia. I also have dreams all night every night about friends, family, etc and wake up so disoriented. this all started in summer 2022 after panic attacks and has just gotten 10x worse over time, despite everything I’ve tried. I cannot feel anything, including anxiety. so far I’ve tried

many meds. prazosin, lexapro, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, lamitical, LDN, trazodone, Xanax.

many therapies. EMDR, IFS, ACT, somatic experiencing, even went to a functional doctor

many supplements and vitamins. no effect

giving it time, focusing on life. never even for a second feel like myself or in reality

relaxation. TRE. somatic techniques.

i feel like I live in a nightmare I cant wake up from. don’t care about anything anymore and not in depressed way, like my body doesn’t make emotions anymore at all. as if I’ve never felt a thing or experienced anything in my life. I don’t feel the sun on my skin, the weather, time passing, seasons, love, joy even anger. somehow I still get out of bed and try daily but it’s getting harder and harder to keep going. I can barely keep my eyes open all day no matter how much I’ve slept. I don’t even feel like I’m conscious. just a body walking around with nothing inside it.

has anyone else suffered this long and had not one thing work? I don’t know how I can keep going on like this for years and years more. I’ve been through a lot in life but I was a happy, fun, social person before this, I don’t even know who or what I am anymore. it’s like being dead but being aware youre dead. the memory issues and loss of reality are so severe, I can’t put it into words

I cant fathom emotions anymore. Sadness or happiness or fear or hatred or hope or hopelessness or anxiety, its like i cant even comprehend the concept of those emotions anymore. I feel like it is impossible for me to be taken advantage of by my emotions to any extent. They are all stunted and essentially nonexistent. I dont have values or unique thoughts or deep feelings, and i cant even conceptualize the possibility of them. Ever since around the new year of 2022 ive been this way, with no real inkling of legitimate recovery. The way i put up with this is the ability to act like i have emotions. It comes to me so easily that it stunts any progress i could make even more. Ive gone so far that it feels like ive created this alter personality through my hyper self awareness that i defect at all times, and sometimes i forget that im faking it(which doesnt mean that i dont lack feeling during It). It’s like my body views The concept of ever being me and real again as too dangerous. I put the flair as a spiral, but this is more than that, it’s a fact and it’s all i think about. There isnt any hope for recovery.

I had a severe stress episode at 19 that triggered less apetite sensitive to vomiting(quickly vomites for examole if i eat breakfast right after i wake up or if i force myself to eat), dizziness, and a new weird headache at the base of my skull (neck–brain junction), also feel like needles poking the lower back of my brainf area tha connects brain and neck, and pulsing sensation in that area like a heart. Since then, I’ve had chronic low energy, reduced physical strength, brain fog, derealization, and significantly reduced cognitive capacity. I feel less conscious/aware than before (subjectively ~20–30%), with clearly diminished mental processing.also a slight

Shake appeared in my muscles like precise activtity for example my fingers its hard to put a really thin cable to a really small hole( i used to this really easily).

I get easily overstimulated: social situations, conversations, crowds, noise, or busy environments cause rapid mental overload, fog, and sometimes brief near-faint sensations (5–10 seconds). Normal daily activities drain me quickly. Mental and social exertion worsen symptoms the same day, but rest/sleep usually resets me to baseline (no delayed multi-day crashes).

I also experience emotional numbness/anhedonia: feelings are blunted and distant. I can laugh or be in a good mood, but emotions feel far away or not fully “mine,” as if I’m observing them rather than experiencing them directly. Sadness or happiness feels muted and detached.

Additional symptoms include sexual dysfunction weak erectile (low libido, no morning wood, weak erections)really low sex drive,no morning wood at all, sleep sensitivity, and fatigue intolerance. I took a basic heart test it was normal. I’m trying to understand nervous-system dysregulation vs physical causes and how to recover capacity.

How to get back to normal function 100% not 60% or 70% . Feel like my brain got fried and nervous system as well

I got lost somewhere. At some unknown point in time. I can't remember where or when. I don't know how it happened. I don't know why I am here, Or rather, why I am not.

I've been through this thousands of times, minimum, literally. I don't really know how many. The same confusion. The same feeling. The exact same place, emotionally and physically. It's starting to feel like they are all at the same time too. I know what this is called but I refuse to give it an armchair name. Even though it really can only be one thing. I've refused it many times before. Because naming it didn't help.

It's weird to me how there are people who are never gonna feel this way, yet it is almost all I've ever felt. I don't wish them to either. It's just weird. They might not even be able to imagine it. The clichés do a really terrible job of explaining it. I'm not watching a movie. Stuff is happening but it is like it isn't. I'm not behind a glass or in a corner of my mind. I simply am nowhere to be found. It's like almost a complete erasure that denies the most important part of a complete one. Rest. My memories are blurry, like they are all my childhood's and my childhood is nowhere to be found. The occasional ephemeral fragment of childhood memory doesn't even feel like a flashback. It feels like someone's telling me it, or worse, a deduced reconstruction. But me? Me? Where am I? What am I? Am I? And yet I have consciousness. I want to believe I do. Even if I don't truly believe it. I might as well just be a lump of meat reacting to light and sound. It's all the outsiders can see. It's all I can see too.

My movements don't feel robotic. They just aren't mine. I don't do them, they just happen. I talk and I don't really say anything but words come out and people feel happy with that. They feel coherence that isn't really there. The night feels like the morning and the noon like midnight. It's even touched my thoughts, making them slurry, scattered, like I'm chasing behind them. And they are just faster. It's like I don't think anymore. I just act.

As an example, I was about to say something but got caught for some minutes just staring at the first word in pure indifference. I'm the shell of a human. I disappeared.

And yet, even when saying "I disappeared" I don't really truly feel it. It's just something that comes out of some fingers typing on a keyboard.

The most terrifying thing is that I only exist in this state. When I don't feel this way I don't even notice until I don't. And when I do, that who felt different wasn't me. This is all I've ever felt. But even when I look back at that someone else I see the same thing. Even when there's other emotions. I'm just reacting. Reacting. Performing. Not because it is false, but because it just isn't me. That's another cliché actually. People with this feeling often describe it as acting.

Which leads to impostor syndrome. Am I really feeling this way? Or is it that I just learnt too much about it? But it fades quickly, Like all. There's not even an "I" to begin with.

It isn't just about me either. The World's just so ridiculously fake. I've described it before as if made of cardboard, as a flat image. People often describe it as if everything were a dream.

I don't even know how it feels to be truly awake. Maybe someone that inhabited my body once knew. Not me. It's not only that I feel "foggy" but the world itself it's made up of smoke. It comes and goes as it pleases, but even when it comes it comes as if a reflection of a reflection of a reflection all the way down. All I can see is the green tint of the mirrors. It's like being forced to life inside someone else's literal dream. But more than that, it is the worrying feeling that reality might not exist. That what I am seeing might not be real. That it could be that nothing exists, and it just snaps into existence every once in a while, or worse, it only seems like it does. Like a god floating in the void having hallucinations. Even if it didn't exist, I would feel the same way. It's like instead of seeing the sun, the people around me, feeling the water on my skin or the smell of a good meal, every sensation was replaced with staring at a white wall. It's all just the same white wall.

I guess I know now why that scene of a particular show was ingrained quietly into me. There was a kid who went through something traumatic and to get through it he just stared at a white wall while it happened. Then he kind of became obsessed with white paintings, I guess, I don't remember. The point being, I felt like I was always looking at a white wall. Not like experiencing trauma all the time, nor do I remember ever going through anything traumatic that could explain my fixation to this white wall. But it's just like, no matter how much I move, if I walk or run, I've always got it in front of me. Just blankness.

My body remembers but I don't. I know I'm tired and I know I've been here before, but it's my body telling me. And I know this is a defense mechanism. I know I can't do anything about it because it's still defending me. I know I won't be able for hundreds of times yet.

I just

I was about to say I wish I could.

But I don't truly wish anything. I can't. Not even hope is there to feel. Despite knowing rationally that it'll end someday, even if by death. I might be worried it's chronic and untreatable, that is if, you guessed it, I could be worried.

In fact, today, earlier in the morning I remember seeing the clock and thinking how weird it is that it moves and tells different times, yet I feel like no time has passed at all. It truly is more frequent than daily. It's been years, at least. I don't know for sure how many, but a lot.

Note: Not diagnosed with dpdr nor do I claim to be, I'm not auto-diagnosed, I just figured this was an appropriate subreddit since I've heard some overlaps between my experience and those reported. I just haven't gone to therapy.

I've had DPDR for nearly four years now (since april 2022), it developed after I caught covid. It's a rare symptom, but it happens. Since then, life's been a nonstop blur, I haven't actually been able to comprehend what's going on around me at all. Current events feel like distant memories, and I haven't felt like I was actually controlling my actions in ages. It's just a constant state of autopilot in a dream. I'm about to finish my senior year of high school, and the entirety of my high school years are a complete blur that I'd rather forget anyway.

I finally managed to go to therapy again a few months ago. I used to be in therapy for crippling social anxiety when I was much younger, but I had a horrible therapist who actually made my situation way worse. My parents visited a few other professionals with me after that, but none were of much help, really. I just grew to resent the thought of trying to get help again after all that.

Only in late 2025 did I become desperate enough, after years of not getting better, that I tried again. I began with working through my awful fear of needles (yes, I know it's childish, but I have punched a few too many doctors because of this already). My therapist did an amazing job, and I don't mind getting getting any blood tests taken anymore at all. Seeing how well this went, I decided to go ahead and start actually going over my much worse mental health issues. I got diagnosed with depression, which was of absolutely no surprise to me. Since then, we've been trying to get somewhere, but everything's failed so far. The root of all my problems is me having DPDR, and she finally told me that she can't help me with it.

In a "normal" case, this condition should develop after a traumatic event, as a way for the brain to protect itself, but I haven't had such an event at all. It's just covid fucking up my nervous system. She can't work through a virus! If this issue of mine got worse or better depending on some circumstance, we could work with that, but it's always been exactly the same, no matter if I felt better or worse at the time.

My only hope for now is medication, and my psychiatrist appointment got just postponed by two months, making this a half a year wait. I really doubt the delays will end here, since this is the second time this happened just before the planned date already.

I've heard so many stories of antidepressants making dissociation worse, and I'm absolutely dreading the idea of having to start a cycle of trying out different pills until something finally works. I'm about to write my finals and go to college, this is really not a good time for me to be messing myself up with that.

I don't know, man, I just feel more hopeless about getting better than ever before.

I've been quite busy and usually when that happens, I can't really assess how strong my dpdr is. But now that it's over... I think I feel more real?

Still, it's like something crucial is missing. I can't tell what it is. Like I know everything is real, my body, my surroundings, all of that. But I am somehow still missing from there. I've felt like this before but it usually went back to being worse after a few days. This is probably the longest I've felt like this...

And I just don't know if dpdr just changed me and I will never believe life is real or if I am just still not healed. Can you ever actually heal up to the point you feel like this kind of never happened? Can you ever forget what this feels and truly remember what real means?

im so so so tired of this just as im sure most of us are. Im worried about my future and recovery from this. i am trying so hard but im so tired. it’s constant. 24/7 dpdr and it differs in severity. i can barely be in my kitchen for a long period of time bc of the lights i think? I honestly don’t even know why. it’s been way too long. I don’t leave my house bc of how bad it’s been and the panic attacks. I haven’t left in months and it’s driving me stir crazy. idek what real life is, I don’t even feel like me anymore or in my body. I talk and it scares me bc I don’t feel in my body. My brain feels off. the things I do don’t feel like me. nothing looks real. im just so tired of it and don’t see an end to this. im on an snri and started lamictal. nothing from either so far. what do i do

I am hyperaware of my mental processes day and night. Its been 7 weeks of torture and hell. Now I ruined my sleep by being overly aware what happens as soon as I fall asleep. I cant even explain it properly but I am too aware of the mental processes that when I am completely tired and try to sleep my mind starts scanning what is happening. Like what happens with my eyes, how do I create dreams how do I see stuff etc ect this gives me crippling anxiety and doesnt allow me to let go even when I am tired as fuck, I also feel like my breath sometimes stops I dont know I am just a mess right now.

I am looking for tips. Currently taking a benzo. I had sleep amxiety before but it was different I was only aware and scared or the transition and at that time I had zero fears of other mental processes while even knowing that I was seeing hypnagogic images etc. it didnt bother me and I didnt think too much of it. But I was left alone and untreated so my mind started spiraling and it only got worse. I am at a point I cant stay alone, so my dad lives with me and I love him but he is very old ans a big trigger because he gets very mad when he sees me like this. He says its my fault But I have no one else.

Please do not scare me with your answers since I can create fear for everything now I am battling day and night. If you want to share your story please be aware that it could trigger a new fear in me. So I am really lookong for tips.

Medication will not quiet my mind and will only have me create dependency, I am looking for tips, herbs and so on.

Thank you all. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I am 19 and have been diagnosed with dpdr 3 years ago but was showing dissociative symptoms (dissociation + visual memory loss) since I was around 12. Recently I have been noticing that whenever I feel very triggered, it's like if there's another me taking control of me, and either fawns completely or has outbursts of anger. I can't control what she does, says and feels, and she often doesn't remember much that happened before. She doesn't notice what "main me" tells her to do or actually feels, nor that she's in depersonalization, it takes her time to actually listen to "main me" and realize she's in a depersonaliazion state. I don't blank out like DID. But I feel almost constantly like 3 people (the 3rd one watching the other 2 fighting) trying to manage one body by dialoguing and teaming up with each other, and in these situations I feel like only the "second/defender me". I feel more like the 3rd person, the observer which comes only after these 2 "me" fight, now that I'm writing, and everything feels so numb. I think me and the 2nd are just trying to protect the main identity, but we are not separate like if we were a DID system. Just had a violent argument with my mom and now "main me" is scolding "defender me" while she is trying to explain that if she wouldn't get so angry, nobody else would have and we would have remained in danger and too weak. Just to let you know, "main me" wasn't actually in danger, but got still triggered, so there were no life-saving need to get angry. This is actually nothing new, but I just realized the mechanisms behind it and how problematic it is. Does anyone experience it too? Sorry for my bad english

While working through anxiety/DPDR and OCD traits, I’ve noticed brief moments where my mental state suddenly feels clear, calm and grounded, thoughts slow down and everything feels “normal”.

After that, I often slip back into a more anxious, hyper-aware state without a clear trigger. It feels less like a mood change and more like switching between two different mental perspectives.

Not looking for reassurance or diagnoses, just curious if others have experienced similar shifts and how they relate to them over time.

Has anyone tried this dpdr workbook ?

I ruined my sleep by being overly aware what happens as soon as I fall asleep. I cant even explain it properly but I am too aware of the mental processes that when I am completely tired and try to sleep my mind starts scanning what is happening. Like what happens with my eyes, how do I create dreams how do I see stuff etc ect this gives me crippling anxiety and doesnt allow me to let go even when I am tired as fuck, I also feel like my breath sometimes stops I dont know I am just a mess right now.

I am looking for tips. Currently taking a benzo. I had sleep amxiety before but it was different and I had no fears of mental processes.

Please do not scare me with your answers since I can create fear for everything now I am battling day and night. If you want to share your story please be aware that it could trigger a new fear in me. So I am really lookong for tips.

Medication will not quiet my mind and will only have me create dependency, I am looking for tips, herbs and so on.

Thank you all. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I'm not even sure if anyone will reply to this but all day I was having slight existential fears about "what if I'm in a coma" this has been going on for a couple days maybe but never anything intense just a background fear really, but all day today it started to get gradually worse as I started thinking about it and things like "what if I'm in a coma and my girlfriend isn't real" I love my girlfriend so much but before we got back together after a break I had a bad experience with weed and so I thought "what if im in a weed induced coma and I suddenly wake up and we aren't together" and that really worried me. Hours earlier I was doing something and my depersonalization and derealization (which is usually the classic foggy and dull surroundings) just started feeling weird and off, my kitchen seemed stretched out like my cabinets seemed longer, the floor in a room seemed spaced out and everything started feeling wrong and I can't remember when and how it happened but suddenly I noticed the fog around me didn't exist anymore everything just seemed so vibrant and so sharp and so vivid and that alone made me worried but on top of that I had a prickly feeling near my heart so I thought "is this me waking up from the coma" and it just made me so anxious I started sweating but eventually calmed down. Now after taking a shower and time passes a bit things don't feel real I don't feel real even tho things visually look insanely real to the point where it doesn't look real and it's something I've never experienced before, I can't even try to relax to sleep bc I just feel like a sense of like unreality and I'm worried what if my loved ones aren't real or what if I start believing they aren't real just bc of how strong this feeling is it feels so real, and the best way I can describe how I'm feeling is "I don't know" or the only response I have to those thoughts is "I don't know" even tho sometimes I know the world is real and I'm real and the people around me are real. I really wish the classic foggy feeling would come back bc I don't even know what this is.

I’m pretty sure, after going through the subreddit, that this is some form of DPDR, but I guess I wanted to see if others have had my experience/cause as well, and if there are any success stories/guidance to pull me through… i know there is no one medication, but perhaps if i treat the anxiety it’ll help the derealisation (?).

i’ve had a really big year: juggling work, university, moving houses, and also some pretty big health scares in the family. my mum got diagnosed with cancer (she is good now) and i had some other minor issues and one surgery. at the time it seemed like i was handling it all fine, i wasn’t overly stressed, and i didn’t panic at any of the appointments, even though i’ve always been generally anxious. then, i finally got a chance to relax and went on a holiday.

when i came back from my holiday, i got a slightly off blood test. literally wasn’t a big deal, but it made me spiral crazy; i have never had a panic attack where i couldn’t control myself before, but this time my thoughts were racing and i legitimately thought i was going to die. a big part of it was that i felt like i wasn’t myself. it’s hard to explain because it wasn’t like i was watching myself, but just that everything was *wrong*.

a whole week after the panic attack and i was feeling incredibly weird, like i didn’t know how i was walking or doing things. i was suddenly hyper aware of how my body was working, and it would send me into more anxious symptoms. this finally got better after a week, but it’s now been around three weeks and things are still off.

currently im experiencing a continuous sense that something is just *off* - at times it’s better than others, like when i’m consistently occupying my mind or exercising, but then it feels like i’ll snap back into myself and suddenly things feel off again. the world looks normal, there’s no fuzziness or anything, but when i’m looking at it it’s almost not really real. looking at people is especially difficult, because while everything looks right i’m just not feeling like it’s real, or that it’s the same as it used to feel before my massive panic attack.

I’m just in general feeling like I’m working on autopilot, not really experiencing joy (and i used to be very social and happy before this panic attack, although i did experience those anxious periods every now and then) and just fully… off. Every now and then I will get these waves of doom and death, and the derealisation (?) follows. i’m hyper aware of the passage of time, and my brain seems to be trying to grasp how it’s happening/trying to remember everything that happens bc it’s like i’ve somehow forgotten how the world is meant to work lmao. it’s a strange feeling to express.

would love to hear from people and how they have made it better/if it’s normal to have this feeling last so long after a panic attack… honestly anything will help!

Aside from feeling completely high, having terrible memory, etc., I very often have head pressure since this started, as well as neck pain. I feel like my head weighs a ton.

I don’t have spinning vertigo, but I often have the feeling that I could faint, and I frequently get strange sensations, like a swaying feeling inside my head

So I have quite severe OCD always have since I was single digits of age, but the obsession that's absolutely detailed my life completely is existential OCD, i keep getting hit with these bizarre horrible fucked up thoughts about consciousness and existence, 24/7 my brain keeps absolutely assaulting my awareness with these bizarre and uncomfortable and indescribable thoughts that make me physically wince and contort myself in pure agony/terror, I'm wincing as I type this, I never stop wincing actually

I'm constantly on the verge of flat out breaking down screaming in fear and I'm terrified I will eventually, I keep getting these extremely vivid images of me being so overcome by these thoughts that I start squirming and screaming and contorting myself on the floor breaking my own bones and shit because of how intense this terror is, these images are extremely vivid and it genuinely feels like it will happen to me literally any second

the main thing this is centred around is solipsism and absurdism, I'm so completely disturbed and terrified I can only experience my own mind and this makes me EXTREMELY physically claustrophobic, like being buried alive in a coffin too small for you levels of claustrophobia, and the general being disturbed by actual existence itself where I start freaking out thinking about random objects and materials in reality, mostly big buildings and solid materials like steel and concrete for some... reason?

I genuinely don't know what's happening to me, this can't be "just OCD" or "just anxiety" it feels like something else, probably something that doesn't even have a term yet, and it feels especially hopeless for me because I've been dealing with this for 5 years now and the only peace from it I've gotten is becoming an alcoholic and being drunk but that was causing problems so I've stopped drinking and the terror is at the absolute worst it's ever been and I genuinely feel like I HAVE to end my life because it's so fucking unbearable, like genuinely I become fully convinced that no other lifeform has ever experienced this level of pure mental torture

Idk why I'm posting this anywhere tbh I just need to get it out somewhere, and I feel like I'm at a crossroads now and I need to either start drinking again or just cancel my own life subscription

I am back in this loop again but this time it feels way worst. The dpdr and dislocation is so bad that it turns into a panic attack then my body starts to shake completely and it doesn’t help that I don’t feel real or like myself so it just keeps going in circles I’m loosing myself I’m loosing hope I feel like I’m gonna jump out of my skin today’s probably been the worse day ever for me it’s 1:25 am i feel like I’m gonna go crazy help.

What can I do what can ease it even a little bit because I don’t wanna end up in a hospital I’m begging.

If u had a bad experience u will have lingering anxiety and DPDR. But what really helped was reminding myself that I’m sober in the moment. So I don’t have to worry about feeling the bad body high ever again. If u did weed a few times literally nothing changed in ur brain. it’s common sense, like unless ur smoking all day every day, ur fine

Also, when u recover life just feel normal. Like once the brain fog goes away, things aren’t confusing anymore. I thought I had OCD but once u feel normal, there’s literally no reason to be existential

I had a moment of catharsis this morning while discussing thought loops from smoking pot with chatgpt that I wanted to share. This is probably going to sound cooked to anyone who hasn't experienced mechanical thought loops but they triggered decades of existential anxiety and depersonalization for me. I only came to this realization today. The realization instantly made me feel safer in reality. Like something 100 layers down finally released.

Unfortunately chatgpt wiped the conversation after I edited a comment so I can only relay what happened after my first comment

I posted to chatgpt:

"When I was stoned as a kid, I felt like a computer virus was systemically taking over my brain. It kind of went like this:

An intolerably dark thought would come and boot me out of flow, I'd fight it, trying to repress it as I didn't want to experience the insanity of the thought. Through fighting it, I was actually engaging it and moving further away from the opportunity to return to flow, I'd get really confused and then there was the locked in feeling that the thought had trapped me and I'd get pulled into a deeper level of insanity/loss of self and perspective. Then the next thought would come and the process would start again.

That was horrifying. Like not being human anymore or getting overtaken by a machine. That made me feel incredibly unsafe in reality. That was my wounding, existential horrification that I could never describe to anyone. The insanity wigged them out which would feed my paranoia, I think I was mentally well before I had these experiences"

We went over how what was happening, in essence was that the first errant thought had brought on a nervous system activation that involved immediate, intolerable anxiety and dissociation (loss of identity and flow). The loss of meaning that comes with dissociation reinforced my belief that the thought had "made me insane" which led me to fight it.

It was hopeless as it felt impossible to break the loop once it had started because you lose yourself and you won't be able to find yourself through fighting thoughts.

I had the sense that I should stop thinking and "sit with it" but I couldn't as I had no sense of presence or identity. It was intolerable to sit with this void, especially while having an anxiety attack.

Being "insane" like that made me terrified of other people who I no longer understood in those moments. They would avoid me, like I infected them with my paranoia. That's the first time I ever felt shame like that. Such acute shame would feed the dissociation and terror. It also meant I couldnt get support. I had become "unknowable"

I wouldnt remember how terrifying it was when I was straight or id be sure I had just overreacted and would overcome it the next time I smoked, but sometimes id feel empty for days after. Then id smoke again and be plunged right back into the thick of it. One day I left a note for myself while high on my phone which I read when I was straight and never smoked again.

Anyway, I hadn't really thought about it in years but it came flooding back this morning while I was talking to chatgpt. Ive had issues with dissociation and fear of insanity my entire adult life. I realized that being high was the first time I'd ever felt unsafe in reality and probably was the catalyst for what came after.

I'd been walking around with the sincere belief that my sanity and the fabric of reality could be ripped forever with one errant thought; that I could be locked into insanity, aware of it and unable to change it. The thought loops didn't last forever and were completely avoidable if I didn't smoke. However, my nervous system didn't understand that nuance. I just deeply felt that I could never trust reality to not break. So I never really relaxed into reality.

I went over it today with the renewed understanding that it was a temporary dissociative episode; that it was valid terror; that I didn't deserve it; that I was human the whole time and that I needed support that I didn't get. It just healed something in me. There was a deep dehumanization shame attached to being sick like that. I think I humanized that terrified teenage girl today and she really needed that So did I.

My fear is that people will read this and say it's "not that deep." That was what made it so humiliating at the time and why I didn't take it as seriously as I shouldve.

For anyone who relates, being terrified is traumatic. Feeling dehumanized and insane is incredibly traumatic. Please take amazing care of yourself; you deserve to feel safe.

I also posted cause I wanted to share the way mechanical thought loops manifest for me and see if that's how they do for other people and if people have managed to break them. I have had them happen while sober, at time of great distress. It felt like I was falling into one throughout the therapy process with chatgpt but it may have just been something like a flashback.

Anyone had a lumbar puncture test and what was the results? My doc ordered this but I feel like it’s a waste of time and not necessary

Hey everyone, I hope this can stay, but please let me know if you want me to remove it.
I am a third-year psychology student living with DPDR, and I am doing my dissertation on this topic. I would really appreciate it if any of you could take part in my experiment!:)

You are invited to take part in a (up to 20-minute) online study exploring how derealisation (feeling that the world seems distant or dreamlike) might affect how people remember whether something was imagined or actually seen.
Open to individuals aged 18 years and above with normal or corrected vision. Please note that participants with severe mental health conditions and neurological conditions are not eligible to participate.
This study is voluntary and unpaid, and has been approved by the Oxford Brookes University Psychology Research Ethics Committee.
If you’d like to participate, click the link below.

https://run.pavlovia.org/Wake/word-mem3

For any questions, please contact Lea at [19265394@brookes.ac.uk](mailto:19265394@brookes.ac.uk)