[Justheretosay]

I had this for around a year and a half after a series of bad drug experiences combined with undealt with anxiety. i went through just about every major symptom you could think of: the constant existential thoughts, the odd visual disturbances, the constant feeling that something just isn't "right," brain fog, thinking I was schizophrenic or psychotic, and many many more terrible thoughts and even physical pain. In terms of tips all I can truly offer you is to just do positive things for your situation. There isn't one method to heal and in fact I found that many of the people who gave advice were all giving some good recommendations even if they weren't for everyone, and you should do whatever proves helpful for you. With that said, even though there's many positive things you can do, we all know there's many you should not do: secluding yourself,eating unhealthily,spending hours upon hours on forums, and in general just doing things that wouldn't have been great for you before all this will only serve to make your condition worse. The last bit of reassurance I will offer is that I can personally attest to the fact that many of these symptoms go away, and I don't mean you just "learn to live with them," I mean they go away for good. I spent hours obsessing over things like "well now that these existential thoughts are in my head I can't just forget them" or "what if I don't ever see the world normally again." But i can tell you that once you feel better again you not only won't care about those things anymore but you will feel like yourself again! These thoughts don't represent you, they just represent anxiety that manifested itself as a set of seemingly endless terror in a time of weakness. There's hope, I promise

 

[bryaan989]

"what if I don't ever see the world normally again." That's so accurate. So happy that you got through it. I also had it for a year back in 2014 after smoking weed for the first time. Now I have relapsed and the existential thoughts scare me. This time it was triggered by stress and anxiety. Your words give me hope!

 

[Trith]

But just as every piece of advice cannot work for every one, can we really say that symptoms can go away for everyone ? Although it can be unpleasant to think about this it might still be true.

When we say that symptoms never go away, we really mean that we will die before they go away. I have had symptoms nearly constantly for 20 years. I could very well have them for 20 more years, and I could very well die before anything happens. I am not talking about having good thoughts or bad thoughts about it, that would help me or not, I am just talking about what potential recovery really is.

 

[PerfectFifth]

But just as every piece of advice cannot work for every one, can we really say that symptoms can go away for everyone ? Although it can be unpleasant to think about this it might still be true.

No, and believing they can is laughably naive. It's an extremely simplistic way of seeing things. It doesn't properly take into account the possibility that there may be multiple different causes for the symptoms, some of whose resolving may well not be possible with the currently available methods/technology. This community is prone to viewing DPDR in a simplistic manner, as a definite disease of its own, shared by everyone here, with a definite one-size-fits-all cure.

Of course, it's possible for everyone to be completely cured hypothetically. It's hypothetically possible to isolate every molecule in a human being and reconfigure it, building something else, given the right technology (though this might result in death, lol). Whether someone will actually ever be cured, and how viable it is for any given individual, is a whole different matter and depends on the etiology of the particular instance of "DPDR."

Just as there are many possible causes for headache or fatigue, there may be many causes for DPDR, and thus the mindset of DPDR being one thing with one way to fix it, or there being a way to fix it for certain in the first place, is laughable and betrays a superficial way of thinking. There are many issues for which there currently is no known cure. There is absolutely no reason to believe no instance of DPDR-type symptoms falls into this category.

 

[Justheretosay]

Disassociation, depersonalization, derealization,anxiety,depression,are just some of the major trademarks of why we came to this site in the first place, alongside the classic symptoms more specific to DPDR itself such as the ones I described above. As many of you who are browsing these stories in a time of absolute terror just searching for answers, let me be the first to tell you that for dozens of causes of DPDR (drugs,anxiety,head trauma,PTSD, and many more specific/overlapping causes) I have seen many amazing recovery stories due to the fact I once was on these forms and dozens of other websites reading hundreds of post for anything that could help. Now this does not mean I am saying every person that has ever had disassociation, depersonalization, derealization,anxiety,depression,brain fog etc etc could have been cured by listening to some youtube videos,getting off these forums and joining a gym, but it does mean that if you are here scared and hopeless because you took a few hits of weed or had a panic attack due to stress and anxiety more likely than not you will be okay. If you are here because you suffered tremendous abuse or were in some natural disaster and had a near death experience, more likely than not you will be okay also, I read dozens of stories of people who in my honest opinion had some of the worst luck and circumstances possible escape this and I truly hope that anyone reading this can find their own recovery.

Now with all that said, I will outright state I do not in fact have undeniable proof all 7 billion people on this planet can get dpdr for millions of different reasons and come out just fine. But I will say that as someone who themselves went through a phase of thinking I was one of those people who was "different," my dpdr was "worse" or "I didn't have exactly the same story as this guy", and "my traumas and circumstances were different" , the only thing that got me through this was hope (and this is coming from a pessimistic irreligious asshole who once thought mental health was a joke until I found out I was the one with issues).

In short, if you see this and you truly have tried everything and life just fucked you over and left you in DPDR for 44 years and its virtually impossible to get out of this I'm sorry and I truly hope you can live the best life possible. However, if you are here and scared to death just wanting to know that somewhere, thousands of people (including myself and the majority of people who have had dpdr) have gone through what you are experiencing right now and made it out either with a full recovery or to the point where they could live life to the fullest, then just know you aren't alone and you are probably gonna be okay!

 

[Himjyoti Dutta]

Hi my name is Himjyoti Dutta. A victim of major Anxiety sensation depression DP/DR for the last 5 years. I have recovered from my anxiety and depression. I believe im at the last stage of DPDR. And I have never faced anything like this before. With These existential thoughts i would gladly take back my anxiety journey. This is hell..i mean if something worse than death is there then it would have been these existential thoughts. For me it goes like this, a thought pops up and then WHAT IS A THOUGHT???WHAT IS A MIND??HOW CAN I HEAR MY OWN THOUGHTS??HOW AM I AWARE OF MY THOUGHT??ARE THESE MY THOUGHTS???IF I CAN THINK OF A THOUGHT DOES IT MEAN ITS A THOUGHT TOO??WHATS A HUMAN??HOW AM I HUMAN HOW CAN I TALK and the loop goes on...People who have recovered completely..Please help me with this...I have a very strong will power and inner strength which kept me strong trhoughout my anxiety journey and I have recovered 80prcnt. but i dont want to give up at this point. I know I can recover 100prct...but at the moment...its like demonic amd living hell...please help..if i learn how to overcome this...im done with my anxiety journey...I have learned a lot...please help

 

[Justheretosay]

Hi my name is Himjyoti Dutta. A victim of major Anxiety sensation depression DP/DR for the last 5 years. I have recovered from my anxiety and depression. I believe im at the last stage of DPDR. And I have never faced anything like this before. With These existential thoughts i would gladly take back my anxiety journey. This is hell..i mean if something worse than death is there then it would have been these existential thoughts.

Hey, for me these existential thoughts were one of the symptoms I always said was "the one thing that keeps me from recovering" or "if I didn't have these thoughts I could handle everything else." At the end when the thoughts faded away I quickly found that I just started focusing on new things that became my new "if only I didn't have this!"

The thoughts are meaningless, you don't have to solve these questions. They simply represent your anxious mind trying to make sense of the world around it because you feel threatened almost 24/7.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE NEXT PARAGRAPH

I will give you a personal example. For me one of the worst and ever present ideas was the concept of solipsism. I became outright terrified of the fact I can never prove other creatures are conscious. I would look at my own friends and family and they would look machine like and "Fake". I never found the "proof" I was looking for, but that doesn't mean I just "ignore" this feeling that was with me for a long time, instead I realized that as I started interacting with the world and talking to people again I began to feel like my old self again! I had never questioned if other people were real before because in all honesty the philosophy of it all just does not matter, the only reason it seemed to matter during dpdr was because it seemed more physical than mental. DPDR caused me to actually feel the sensation of derealization that leads to these odd beliefs and they went away 100% and the same can happen to you.

 

[inspiredpoet]

I will give you a personal example. For me one of the worst and ever present ideas was the concept of solipsism. I became outright terrified of the fact I can never prove other creatures are conscious. I would look at my own friends and family and they would look machine like and "Fake". I never found the "proof" I was looking for, but that doesn't mean I just "ignore" this feeling that was with me for a long time, instead I realized that as I started interacting with the world and talking to people again I began to feel like my old self again! I had never questioned if other people were real before because in all honesty the philosophy of it all just does not matter, the only reason it seemed to matter during dpdr was because it seemed more physical than mental. DPDR caused me to actually feel the sensation of derealization that leads to these odd beliefs and they went away 100% and the same can happen to you.

That's really interesting. I can relate, at the moment my thoughts aren't really about 'are people real' but 'is this world real?'. I know I can't answer it but because I feel disconnected/detached the thought keeps coming into my head.

 

[PerfectFifth]

I personally don't give a shit if others are conscious like me or not. They function perfectly fine, so it makes absolutely no difference. If everyone is "fake" and not actually conscious, then what? They have all the features of a conscious being like me, so it's practically one and the same. If they're only there to provide something for me, the only real character in this existence, then I'll gladly take it as it is. They adequately provide content for me and flawlessly fool me into believing they have the same essence as me.

But there's no reason to believe in this crap.

 

[badsidejoe]

This is not how this works. It's not about believing or not believing in such concepts. It's more about obsessing over them what causes the distress.

 

[Findyourself1997]

Did u recover from eye floater or did u see any people who recovered from eye floaters ?