[ReiTheySay]

Hey there,

As we all know, one big symptom of DRDRD is not recognizing your reflection/feeling disconnected from it.

I'm curious, what habits have you adopted/gave up due this symptom? Especially, if you've had it for years now/are coping with it.

I've had periods where it's less alienating and weird to look in the mirror. But for years now, I'm no longer 'weirded out' by it. I've quite got used to it. But I haven't gotten back the normal connection you have to yourself when you look in the mirror.

Generally, I avoid looking in the mirror unless I need to. Sometimes, though lately, I look almost compulsively do when I want to feel more.. real (ironic, I know). It usually makes me worse with a few exceptions, but it's like I never learn..

The main reason is that it overwhelms me mentally, it's like it overstimulates me, and I get dead exhausted sometimes when I use it for too long and have to retreat to a dark room and ground myself.

The mirror in my bedroom is covered because it catches me off guard and throws me off, it's like I lose balance but mentally. So that's one habit I've adopted.

 

[forestx5]

It's been so long, I wouldn't recognize myself if I did show up in the mirror. I'm actually beginning to be more concerned about how the face in the

mirror is aging. It's a slow process, but when you think about how you looked a decade ago, the changes are obvious. My hair has a lot of

grey in it, and I have a few more creases here and there. Lucky for me, I took a really bad photo for my driver's license several years back. It should be a good

while before my reflection in the mirror looks worse than that photo. lol

I came to terms with not recognizing my mirror image. I understand that my Temporal lobe was damaged by a powerful seizure at age 17. I had about 30 epileptic

discharges during that seizure. I was probably supposed to be unconscious, but I was undergoing my first cannabis intoxication and I think that mitigated things a bit.

I got to be awake for the whole show! Epileptic discharges are when the neurons in your brain act like plates in a capacitor. One side charges up positive, while the

other side charges negative. When the voltage rating of the dielectric between those plates (your tender brain tissue) is exceeded, the plates arc over and discharge.

It feels as if your inner brain has contacted 110V AC. My discharges gave me dolly zoom hallucinations. It was if I were suddenly looking through the wrong end of binoculars.

It only lasted a second, but another discharge was only 4 or 5 seconds away. And, another dolly zoom hallucination! After 3 minutes of discharges every 5 seconds, , my capacitor

was fried and the discharges stopped. My temporal lobe was also fried as evidenced by EEG some 40 years later. For 40 years I could find no information suggesting what happened

to me had ever happened to anyone else. Now, I can go on hyperleap.com and search on epigastric aura, temporal lobe seizure, migraine aura, dollly zoom hallucination, epileptic discharge,

depersonalization and derealization, and learn as much as there is to know about my own experience so long ago. Experts supposedly have theories as to why these events happen,

but I can't find where any of those theories have been published. I have my own theory as to why they happen, and also as to why the experts don't publish their theories. My event was a self destruct event.

If I had been an animal in the wild and had incurred this neurological trauma, I could not have survived on my own. I barely survived with what little assistance I received

from my family. Research experts don't want to make these opinions public, for obvious reasons. I don't recognize my image in the mirror, because I'm no longer who I used to be.

 

[Laurany152]

Simply put I don't look at myself in the mirror if I can help it. I get obsessed with small little things about my appearance looking for some resemblence to what I thought I looked like, because what I see in the mirror is not how my minds eye sees myself. So I just don't really look in the mirror. I currently have a three mirror sort of vanity in my bathroom and if I look to long at the 3 separate images of myself I begin to feel like I'm being drawn deep into the mirror. I don't know why but I feel like I would be lost eventually. My DR/DP is pretty bad at times. So I assume that is just part of it.

 

[C8H11NO3]

I'm curious, what habits have you adopted/gave up due this symptom?

I stopped looking in the mirror most days and grew a beard. I hate beards, but prefer seeing myself with a beard rather than not recognize my face. It isn't even that i don’t recognize myself, i kind of see it as visual semantics: akin to distinguishing “me” from “I.” I expect to see myself when i look in the mirror, but things are off that I can’t quite place.