[dontgiveafuck]

I always try to figure out what happened in my life to make me feel like this, but i dont know i feel so disconnected so my self that i dotn know. Idotn know what i am feeling, I dont know what i have to do to feel safe. I t feels like I am floating through life without taking part of it. I dont know anymore, I dont know what is me and what is not me. Any tipps on how i possible can remember stuff about my life that can help me get over this issue. I really dont know what the issue is. I feel like my personality is broken, I dont feel like a normal human being, it feels like i have to pretend all the time and i am always thinking about what i say and how i say it and nothings feels like me just being me and living life. I 20 years old from norway oslo and i dotnt understand how my life would turn this way

 

[AnnaGiulia]

Hey dontgiveafuck,

Do you feel there are some things in your life that you do not remember?

From what you are saying, at this moment some therapy could bring you some relief, did you try any?

Best,

A.

 

[dontgiveafuck]

I feel like I remember most of my life, but I feel zero connection to my life. They are only thoughts. I have tried therapy but it didn't really work. I am gonna try it again soon. I try to analyse my problems but it's very difficult when I don't feel like a person. I know anxiety is somewhat an issue regarding my depersonalization, but i know it's not the entire reason. And also find it impossible to relax with this constant feeling of dpd. It has gotten better though. I always feel the need to protect myself, to hide, and i don't know why. I remember before my dpd started i was not very in touch with myself. I think there was alot of issues with stress and anxiety that I didn't address and didn't talk about because I felt shame in talking about it. So i felt the need to push my anxiety away and hide it. Whenever i embarassed myself I always continued on like nothing had happened. I remember not being able to read in front of my class either and whenever it tried I would just panic so much and feel so deeply ashamed about it. I think I also controlled my personality alot, controlled what i said, what i did so that i was the person i wanted to be. I felt the need to push it away because no one saw me as an anxious person but i did not even know who I was. When someone said something like you are that and that, I would be so happy because then i knew a bit more who i was. I think expressing myself and trying to reslove issues that cause me stress will help me overcome this issue

 

[AnnaGiulia]

Well, what I found helpful about communities such as this one, is that you have to explain yourself to a bunch of strangers, who never met you, and probably never will; in order to do that, you need to think hard of how to articulate everything that is going on with you, and in this process of looking for help, you are actually helping yourself. This is what I can read from your last sentence, as you have already given yourself the best advice possible, lol: express yourself, and resolve the issues that cause you stress.

I can identify with a lot that you have said, especially the anxiety part. I always had it, and it made my life really difficult, trying all the time to behave and look as if I were fine, while in reality I was constantly hyper-alert to everything around me. It was freaking exhausting, doing that all my life, and I was really good in covering it all up...and I am twice your age, so look at it from the bright side - it is better to resolve it in your 20s than your 40s, lol...It sucks, but hey, that's life...

I was also deeply convinced that anxiety is not the (only) cause of my DPDR, but that these are related in some other way. It turned out that I was right, but that is another story - I did have some unresolved issues underneath all that anxiety and DP, and I had to go really way back to unearth them and face them.

 

[dontgiveafuck]

Have you recovered?

 

[PerfectFifth]

You don't find the cause because the way you are is the result of interactions too many to count. Of course, with DPDR or a mental problem, in some cases there seems to have been a clear precipitating event, but even then you're only speculating because you can't determine its impact accurately.

 

[Saschasascha]

Hey, dontgiveafuck

you already mentioned a lots of things that I am sure are causes for your DP. It is hard to pinpoint an ultimative root cause but reading your description what catches the eye is the anxiety, the feeling of low esteen, underlying pervasive shame and forming of a "false self". Those are all typical experiences of people with DP and here in Germany we have a professor who even says DP is often times the result of narcissistic conflict. So basically they are underlying feelings of being shameful/different that you were trying to hide by developing that kind of mask. Often times people with DP have suffered childhood abuse and stuff like that but I think that this feeling of shame for your core self can also develop over the years because of peer pressure, not fitting in because you are highly sensitive and so on. Just let me know if any of those things ring true or resonate with you!

Stay strong

Sascha

 

[forestx5]

I solved the riddle of the origin of my mental illness, but it took me a while. I experienced powerful temporal lobe seizures, preceded by an epigastric aura, during my 1st cannabis intoxication.

Since I had no prior experience with epilepsy or cannabis intoxication, I couldn't figure out how a part of me died that warm December night in 1971. I was 17 years old and

a junior in high school. I was in the top 10% of my class and had earned the president's all American physical fitness award. I barely made it back to school, and barely made it to graduation.

I experienced frequent spells I assumed were panic attacks. Frequent ocular migraine auras. An episode of major depression about every 8 years, which lasted almost 2 years in duration.

By the time I reached age 57, I had spent 25% of my adult life battling recurrent major depression with horrible insomnia and anxiety, the focal temporal lobe seizures and the rest of it. Then I

found a case history that matched my own in every detail in a British Neurological Journal. I learned I was suffering from a rare epileptic syndrome whose worst case scenario was when

"the post ictal psychosis segues into an affective disorder of major depression". I was a worst case scenario.

It explained everything I had experienced in the 40 years of my adult life. I contacted a neurologist who specialized in epilepsy and had an MRI and EEG. The EEG verified my self diagnosis.

After serving in the military (honorably) and working in industry for 40 years, I was told I was disabled from an event that occurred at age 17. I went to the social security office with the paperwork

and received a check that very month. No hassle. I did undergo ECT in 2014, and that seemed to restore my firmware to factory defaults. I no longer have focal seizures, and do not believe I

will ever experience another episode of major depression. The moral of my story is simple. Get an EEG.

It can be an indicator of several serious neurological conditions and can be critical in sorting yourself out.

 

[AnnaGiulia]

Have you recovered?

I am not DPd for almost two months now, and I resolved a lot (if not all) of my issues regarding my primary family (I fit very neatly into the model that Saschasascha described above, basically to the word), so my anxiety also subsided.

I need to say, however, that although I was anxious my whole life, most of it DPd or dissociated (which I didn't realize until I was diagnosed with DPDR 3,5 years ago, because that was the only reality that I knew), and struggled a lot, I had a number of coping mechanisms that allowed me to be academically and professionally successful, to achieve basically everything that I set my mind to, and to be quite good at it. It would be all just more enjoyable and more fully lived and appreciated if I were able to tackle those issues earlier, and if it wasn't motivated by my attempts to cover up for my irrational sense of inadequacy, and live up to the roles I designed for myself.

I don't know if I will be DPd again, but it is possible, because that switch is so easily turned on in me, especially around stressful moments in life. But now that I know more about myself, and the way that mechanism functions in me - and I need to emphasize "in me", because you will see that people here have it for all different reasons, and it also manifests differently in different people - I am able to have more compassion for myself, to treat myself with more self-love and understanding, and not to be too judgemental about myself and constantly try to "fix" myself so that I fit some imagined ideal of who I thought I should be.

 

[dontgiveafuck]

Saschascha It resonates very well with me. When I first acquired depersonalization I didn't understand the point of it. Why me?. I thought as myself of confident, social, assertive, popular... But the more I tried to figure it out the more I saw who I truly was.

I felt so deeply ashamed in admitting to myself that I was anxious, had low self-esteem and tried to be another person than I was. I am trying to look back and I see that there are parts of myself that I rejected, that I denied, that I felt the need to hide. I think I played with reality and only integrated aspects that I liked into my sense of self. I don't know if that makes sense.

I don't know how deeply rooted my problems are but this makes me happy that I start to see things for what they are.

I used to play soccer but I quit three years ago. I remember some painful emotions from that time, and I saw them popping up again and again in my life. I felt anxious, freezed, hyper-aware, felt like I suddenly lost my sense of self. Everything I said felt awkward and I felt like I couldn't just be me, that I wasn't strong enough, I felt like a looser and I felt so inferior. Everyone around me where interacting and talking and I felt left out, and I was never able to talk with anyone and I never said anything. It was not like that all the time but a lot of the time when had to interact with each other. I felt like an entirely different person compared to who I was in other social interactions. And I remember feeling so deeply ashamed about everything going on there. I couldn't speak to anyone about my emotional problems in my life. I remember thinking that I didn't feel that way when I was at school, so I thought that it was just random and didn't care to much about it. I was an entirely different person at school than I was at my soccer team. And after a while I think I just rejected that part of myself and pretended that it didn't happen and only saw myself as who I was at school where I felt like I was confident, social. But the feeling kept popping up again and again and caused me a lot of stress and caused a feeling of my sense of self being shattered. And having to deal with the emotions and integrating them into my sense of self meant changing entirely so I never did. The more I dig the more I see the problem, I think. And I remember constantly trying to prove to myself that I wasn't that person that I was there. So I tried to control everything. I don't know what the problem was honestly it was just me not liking who I was because I was anxious not very talkative. I think I am the biggest reason behind my depersonalization.

I tried to become more talkative be more social but it caused me a lot of stress because I felt like I could not just be me because then I wouldn't be able to handle some social situations. I always felt the need to become better and speaking so I would be more assertive and able to handle social situations. I think not facing my emotions and facing parts of myself caused me a lot of problems. I remember feeling very empty before dpd, and having a very weak sense of self.

As I mentioned I was not able to read in front of the whole class. And I would just panic the fuck out when I had to. I think I postponed so many anxiety related issues and at the end my brain decided that it was best for me to live in this bubble disconnected from life.

These two past years have been complete hell for me. Not being able to focus on anything and not being able to relax. I always feel hyper-aware around people and always thinking about everything. I had to quite university last year and started going to a folkehøyskole. A school without homework where we did a lot of activities and we had to be very social. I went to Japan to go skiing and we also went to fuerteventura to go surfing, it was cool. I don't know how I managed it. I had people around me all the time. I felt like I a dead rock and extremely anxious. I was not able to communicate with anyone at the start. But I think it helped me. Even though I felt like shit I still managed to do things and live a little. I always panicked when I said something and to be honest I didn't say a lot. Since my dpd started I was always very scared of social interactions because I never felt like I could come up with anything to say. I had these problems before my dpd started to some degree as well. I think I am super scared of just being present with other people. Some periods there at my folkehøyskole where just complete hell. Every time I said something I would just zone out and I was so scare of being judged. I felt paralyzed, and I felt like a mess. I became better though. Every one saw me as a very laid back person but my reality was completely different, I just felt like a dead rock. I did not know what to say to my parents, but it felt like I just pretended all of the time. I did not know what was normal anymore and what wasn't, I never knew what I was feeling. The disconnection from self is much better know because I am able to see what was going one like a person. I don't know it just feels good to express myself as myself.