I've tried, with varying degrees of success, to explain DP to loved ones. You hear stories of people having out-of-body experiences (I think most people without DP can still imagine how bizarre the sensation must be), but for me, there is no out-of-body; my consciousness is detached, but I am trapped within my body, forced to experience the world through a filter. It often feels like playing a video game where I'm piloting a mech, but with serious lag; my conscious self is able to think quickly, but my body feels bulky and unresponsive, and physical sensations seem distant and trivial (they may as well be blips on the heads-up-display)... That's not to say I don't feel things, obviously, but often the sensations feel delayed and muted, like data transfer over a slow connection. Also, there are so many tasks that just get automated, without any necessary pilot intervention, which means I often don't form any memories of those tasks or their processes... The whole sensation might be something I could get used to if it weren't for the sudden reassociations that remind me what it actually feels like to be in the present as a single entity-- no lag, no flesh-prison... Just me... Cohesive, but utterly incapable of remembering how to do all the things that just happen automatically when I'm piloting my mech... I guess the best way I have to describe that part of it (I'm not 100% this is relatable, but it's the only analog I can think of) is like when you're clapping to a beat or doing something else that requires you to maintain a rhythm, and you suddenly become very conscious of your movements or the sound you're making or even the timing of the beat itself. Something draws your focus to the details, to the process of how the rhythm is being maintained or to the nature of the rhythm itself, and immediately, as soon as you focus on the present and on what you're actually doing, you lose the rhythm, and there's no real way of getting back in the groove... It's just gone, like a perfectly cozy spot you had under the blankets that disappeared when you sat up, and lying back down and trying to get back into that same position never works.
Add to that the bizarre time-sense fluctuations that happen between states and what you're left with is just a constant, oppressive feeling of being out-of-sync...
The other explanation I give is it's like when you've been roller skating, and you take your skates off, and for a moment you feel much shorter... Except you know, having that feeling all the time...
