James_80

Looks a bit like a song title: "Help, doubting my experience itself? (Crazy feeling)"

Seriously though, that must be a really distressing experience to go through. Doubting existence itself. If I could offer any reassurance though, if you didn't exist then you wouldn't be worrying about it because there would be no self/ego to protect. DP causes emotional numbing which means you lose that emotional connection to life. This means the town where you live, your living environment, music, films, human connection etc all seem to be happening at a sensory level (you can see, hear, smell, touch it) but the perception is lacking in emotion. Naturally this would make you question if those things really do exist at all. It shows how much of our experience is informed by emotion. Thankfully the emotion returns when mental health improves and with it the appreciation of life supersedes any question of reality. The question becomes almost irrelevant at that point. Hope that helps! (apart from my silly joke at the beginning - it's good to make fun of dp sometimes).

Hey. I have reported similar things before, I know, but this time I want to try to explain my problem using an example. For example, I walk through the train station and see a man. I think then “this is god” but that thought doesn’t really come on but it’s more like I think that myself compulsively although I am 100 percent aware that this person is not god or something. every time something like this happens, I think of a psychosis that slowly begins and that throws me from the whole concept to accept the anxiety and classify the dpdr as harmless. a second problem are noises. 90% of the noises (the most intense are passing cars and construction site noises) sound very distorted to that pulls me much more out of the sense of reality than the optical problems. When I let myself in on noise, I feel like I’m in the wrong film. It’s very hard to explain. I’m very afraid of a psychosis. I just don’t fucking want it. with the dpdr I can be satisfied and do so my whole life long. But I don’t want a fucking psychosis.

 

You said it yourself, "...although I am 100 percent aware that this person is not god". Reality testing is intact, it doesn't sound like a psychosis. It sounds like you have intrusive thoughts based around a fear of going mad. Even if a person does develop a psychosis or schizophrenia, you should know it is very treatable. Antipsychotics are very effective. There isn't a standard medication for dp/dr however. It sounds to me like you have anxiety induced dp/dr and the weird symptoms have led to you developing a fear of losing your mind which has led to heightened analysis of every thought and feeling you experience, which feeds into itself in a cycle. You sound sane. You need to deal with the anxiety though, whether that is changing your reaction to the intrusive thoughts (seeing them as just thoughts), taking time out, livng a healthier lifestyle or finding some stability.

I had two small doses of truffles (15g) and it has lifted me out of suicidal depression and flipped everything to a positive, my vision is better, my mood is not depressed as it once was, still flat but for me Lyrica fixes that, i've made new friends, mixed a song that got noticed, a lot has happened in just two weeks. 

 

This trip was light, lasted two hours of peak, gave me time to think, i ended up writing a lot, slight visuals but this was no 'acid trip', by that i mean I was able to be around my family without anything but eyes giving it away, by that i'm just explaining this was a relaxing experience not a psychedelic one... lets make that real clear. It's called stage 2. There is 4 stages, also this wasn't mushrooms, it was truffles, i honestly don't know the difference... ask Broken or someone... Oh and the brick in my head is gone! thank god 

Brilliant. Glad you had a positive experience. Perhaps having a mild trip is the ideal way to have a tangible positive effect whilst minimising risk of having a bad trip.

It's not as bad as you think. Believe it or not you can get used to it after a while. You start to see what makes it worse and so become wise to it's ways and the fear of it reduces a lot. I've had it for many years and noticing the dp on bad days does sometimes make me feel a bit sad that I've been unable to shake it after all this time. But there is always the chance it can go away, even after decades of having it.

Plenty of medications to try!... I wouldn't necessarily recommend any of them until you have exhausted all other possibilities though such as therapy, regular exercise, finding meaningful career/life direction, cutting out alcohol, drugs, caffeine etc.

Medication can help, such as antidepressants. If it worked it would simply make you feel more like your normal self and more stable.

I've been suffering on and off with dp for about the same length of time as you. I don't have answers but my heart goes out to you. I hope you can stick around for as long as possible and maybe life will surprise you one day.

I think therapy can really help. It can set you on a course to change certain negative things in your life that hopefully somewhere down the road leads to better mental health. Sounds like a good plan to keep an open mind.

Recently I have been tried meditation again, as a method to tune down the task positive network. I think in that there is a sense that something needs to be done, understood, fixed and changed. I have hypothesised that this network may be overactive, particularly in my form of DPD. I am constantly fixated on understanding and finding the cure, and constantly interacting with objects in my reality with that negative premise.

By "objects" I use it in the way it is meant in meditation. Thoughts are an object.

Nicely put. When I went through a particularly bad phase of dp, it felt like my thoughts were all clustered together and swarming on any perceived threat. A bit like a really terrible football team (soccer team if you're in the US) who would collectively all chase after the ball together rather than remain in their positions on the field. It's a weird analogy, I know.

It is perfectly possible to recover from an anxiety based disorder without medication. I recovered fully without meds first time I got hit with DPDR. However, my later breakdowns got worse, and I had to try out meds to manage it. My brain gets seriously out of control though.

Personally I would say if you can manage without meds, then go without. I wish I never got involved in the dpdr/ medications lifestyle. But I was horrendous so i kinda had to

The exact same happened to me!

I agree with what Al_pk said - medications can help if you're really bad but once you get started on them and they work, you might not be the same after. You may wonder if the person you are on medication is the person you should be or if the medication free person is who you really are. My mental health become much more erratic once I tried to come off antidepressants. It's like they messed with my brain long term. It's what has been part of inducing my latest period of chronic dp. You can be really unstable after finishing a course of antidepressants and this can sometimes flick the dp switch to 'on' in your brain. I don't regret taking them because they showed me what normal mental health should be and really changed my life around when I needed it. It's just that medication can screw with your sense of who you are and what you should be.

You can heal without meds and it will be much more empowering to do it that way. No one should be left in desperate suffering though when medication can help out. Proceed with caution is what I would say.

It doesn't seem to affect me. Driving is a very automatic thing and you'll find your reflexes do most of the work for you. It's common for people even without dp to finish a journey and feel like the whole thing has been a dream, like they weren't consciously in control. Not that you should aim for that kind of state. It's always good to consciously pay attention when driving but I think you'll be ok unless you have a serious depression, which can slow down reaction times and make you more tired behind the wheel. Otherwise, taking up driving again might help dp as you will feel more in control of your life. More control and empowerment = less anxiety.

Anything that causes worry can make dp/dr worse. I would say go and see what your doctor thinks about the inflammation if you haven't already.

Appreciated, Mayer-Gross! My health is poor, so I am slow to respond.


Amen! Early on I was put on beta blockers, as the doctor thought that if my heart rate problems would subside, my cognitive symptoms could subside. I never believed it would have any sort of effect, but went with it thinking I'd at least have nothing to lose.

It's almost like dp has enabled a disconnect between the brain and the CNS.

At my worst, i had a brown lense over my vision so life appeared like a sun bleached, faded photograph

Great description. That's exactly how my vision is. I look forward to the summer, when it's socially acceptable to wear sunglasses again. Wearing them helps distract from that horrible effect.

I recovered from dp in the past and the way I would describe it is like you are fully absorbed in watching a film (aka life) again. You can't believe you spent so much time worrying about dp. It seems so uninteresting when you're fully out of it. Because, at that point, what you see in front of you is what it's really about now because you can really feel what's going on and the more you become absorbed in how it feels, the more attention goes into it and so on. It's really all about more feeling and hence more absorption into what's happening around you.

He then started me on Prozac 20mg with the Lamotrigine 100mg 2 times a day.

Nothing happened for the first 2 months. I just tried to keep surving and providing for my family.

Around 1.5 months ago I started feeling a lot better. Fast forward to now and I am 90%.

Really glad to hear it worked. Goes to show that it is important to give medication enough time to work before giving up and switching after only a few weeks. I myself am guilty of that. It's really hard to keep going with a medication when it has worsened your dp or if you are having other terrible side effects. I've been on Prozac before, like yourself, and it also took over 2 months to see positive effects and then after about 3 or 4 months I was pretty much in the clear. It's such a good medication in my view but takes much longer to work than most other antidepressants. I wish I didn't come off it the first time because it hasn't worked as well when I've tried it second and then third time around. I haven't tried the Lamotrigine but I see there are plenty of recovery stores where people have mentioned success in taking it.

When I've been at my worst, I've been described as seeming stoned, spaced out, slothlike etc. One person assumed I was a heavy drug user when I didn't touch anything, even alcohol, haha. I mostly see the funny side as I know it's not my fault. However, one thing that affected me was that I've never been promoted in my life and I've been working for nearly 20 years now. Mostly in jobs where I have been stuck behind a computer doing extremely dull work. Last year I decided enough was enough and I'm now working as a support worker in mental health. Early days but it's going well so far. I think the key with dp is to find a way of making money in something that really engages your attention in a positive way. Whether that is being creative, helping people or simply making loadsa money. Any old crappy job is no good for dp and I would say it is better to not work than have one of those jobs.