[whiterabbit]

If you experience detachment what do you mean by that? for me, it is a feeling of not being able to grasp or respond to my surroundings - I can see them but I have no reaction to them. If I am with people, this feeling becomes more intense because they are responding and I can't. I feel I have no words with which to react to things. Nothing is available to me.

 

[yesemina]

Detached?

For me it's that when I imagine my friends going out to do fun things like going ice skating for example, and I just don't care to participate because to me they are just games which for me have no deeper meaning.

I guess that's one of the upsides of detached. For me, at least.

Sometimes I feel detached similarly to the way you described, where people will be talking and I'll just feel too out of this world to participate in a conversation.

Other times I feel detached when I am typing on a keyboard or I'm writing something down on paper and I know that the person writing it isn't me, it's only a form of me or something like that and I'm just currently putting one of my tools to use but there is something else there that is more completely me that isn't being fully brought to awareness.

Basically I have purposely and willingly detached myself from anything devoid of deeper meaning for me in order to obtain greater satisfaction out of life. But, other times I get detached just when I am in some other state of being that is above ever having a conversation with anybody or being able to participate in normal every day things that humans do. That only really happened during the peak of my meditation/DP experience, though.

 

[Guest]

I think that is a difficult one to answer because everyone's answers are probably going to differ slightly. I feel like I can't connect to anything anymore. When I talk about things I have done in the past, it is like I don't feel like I am the one who did them. I don't know if that makes any sense or not. This is a hard disorder to explain because sometimes there are no words to truly explain how out of it you feel.
Kate

 

[Sojourner]

I think that is a difficult one to answer because everyone's answers are probably going to differ slightly. I feel like I can't connect to anything anymore. When I talk about things I have done in the past, it is like I don't feel like I am the one who did them. I don't know if that makes any sense or not. This is a hard disorder to explain because sometimes there are no words to truly explain how out of it you feel.
Kate

Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate, Kate!

It not only makes sense, it's entirely and boringly normal.
That is how I feel sometimes in therapy, and I tell my therapist while it's happening, and I know it's totally normal. There's not a thing in the world abnormal about that sense of our present day view of the past. The feeling of disconnection from the self that lived before today can be remarkably reduced, though. In just the last month, I have started to feel more connected to myself as a child. That was me. But until you do real inner work in psychotherapy, you cannot know this. Not that feeling separate from our past is not normal. Most of the population of the earth doesn't have "mental illness" and most of the population would say that it feels what happened in the past was "someone else." They just do not do what we do -- that is, they do not think about it. Do you hear what I am saying? The thought never occurs to them whether they feel they were the person who did the things they know they did in the past.

 

[Guest]

Sojourner,
I am going to be honest and keep in mind that I am seven months pregnant and a little emotional so be nice LOL. When I think about being real and actually alive, it scares the hell out of me. I don't know why it does. It is like I get this surge of panic because I truly cannot connect with how I felt and thought before this descended on me. Does this make any sense?????
Kate

 

[danilee]

Kate, I feel the same, however for me to describe "detachment". I feel as if, I am not in my body, not here at all. Nobody is, and I question life, until I feel like I will be insane at any moment. I havent really seem many people on here feeling the same way. I just think life is so strange, but it goes beyond that, like why are we here? are we? whats next? all the questions that remain unanswered FREAK ME OUT BAD, sometimes I think the only way out is to kill myself , but then whats next, and I have a good family so I dont want out, It hard to explain. Ive rambled.

 

[RedCaineForNova]

whenever i try to describe the disconnected or w/e feeling, people think its like being emotionaly detatched or somthing. but for me its a sensation and its not a feeling like when someone gets really really depressed.

 

[Sojourner]

WhereamI,

Oh, yes, it makes sense, all right.

I think it's all on that one spectrum that runs from

• peace :arrow: jump-off-the-roof terror

I'd say "detachment" is not all that close to jump-off-the-roof terror.

-------------------

I think the anxiety spectrum is similar to the electromagnetic spectrum that runs form

• gamma rays :arrow: radio

[/list]

 

[peacedove]

Danilee... you describe what I feel very well. Infinity, space, God... it all terrifies me. And I have thought of killing myself also, but I don't because of the fear of what will come after that. I am trapped.

 

[whiterabbit]

for all your responses - I am always preocucpied by that feeling of not being, I hate it. I feel fake and disconnected and not real. And maybe that is how it will always be, it has been this way for long stretches for years...it almost feels unbearable to live with sometimes.

Thanks everyone

Sarah x

 

[gem]

Detachment to me means feeling miles away from everything and everyone. Even though I am right there with people I feel like part of me is miles away. A lonely,lost feeling. I feel numb inside. I function very well and keep busy but it is like I am in a world of my own. It is a very strange feeling to be in the grips of dp/dr.

gem.

 

[Sojourner]

Take a look at what Jake wrote in the thread "Answer in the Problem?"