[spidernonsense]

Hi!

I alredy had DP/DR in quarantine brought by anxiety, i was obssesed with existencial thoughts, i wasnt feeling real or myself, i question everything, things like why humans lives in "houses" (i dont feel my house like before, i feel desconected from it) i was googling 24/7 and can stop reading on dp/dr. I remember had feeling like i was going crazy. desconected from my dad and constantly crying.

But when the quarantine lift up i continued with my live regardless of the feelings and eventually it got away, now i am going throught a rought patch, i am in treatment for testicular cancer, in the treatmen i received prednisone wich trigger massive panic attacks,

I know feel anxiety all day again, and i dont feel derealized but i feel weird like i am not the same as before, i also had obsessive thoughts, (what if i have ocd, what if i become depresssed and tried suicide -i dont want to die.-, what if the mental condition get so worse that i cant function and have to live in a mental hospital and cant hold a job) i also read online about chronopobia (the fear of time) and in the clinic (i do impatient treatment) i experienced something like that, an irrational fear of the time, what to do with my time and how inmense it is (i recognize this a weird existencial thoughts again)


Before the treatment i was a normal person and know i dont know what i have, ocd? dp/dr again? anxiety? panic attacks? I seek all the time reassurance that i could live a normal life and be happy
Thanks for your opinions,

 

[NoDevils]

Yeah sounds like a pretty normal anxiety-depersonalization experience. I'd recommend not obsessing about it and report any symptoms to your doctors. Do you have a psychiatrist and a therapist?

 

[Trith]

About "why do humans live in houses", it's not a question I had, but I definitely felt some weird things around that occasionally. The best way I can describe it is that I feel we have different modes of considering space around us. When we are outside we have a wide space around us, kind of without limits, and when we are in a building space seems to stop at the exterior wall and we do not consider what is outside at all, except for what we see through the window directly. And these two worlds collide when we see a house being demolished for example, and the exterior walls and removed and we see an interior of a house that is also part of the exterior world and it feels a bit weird. And occasionally I have seen the interior of my house with exactly that weird feeling. I felt kind of conscious of how high I was above ground, and how there was empty space behind the exterior walls. When it happened it made me feel very uncomfortable, like I was a homeless person living in an abandoned building. Fortunately this impression faded away after a nap and left the room for other weird impressions I am more used to.
Sometimes we can also look at things from a more functional way, or from a purely visual way. Once I remember I read something I had written by hand and could really see the words, and when I came back later with stronger DP (after having obsessed over how to decrease my DR and tried some tricks that didn't work...) when I look at my handwriting, what I saw first was the quality of the curves, and the quality of the ink color on the paper and not the words themselves anymore. Interestingly I have this too when I am on the phone with someone. If I hold the phone on my right ear I hear the meaning of the words, and when I listen with my left ear the meaning is much harder to get but I hear a lot more the quality of the sound, it's smallest asperities. It's very interesting. I didn't find anyone with the same impressions, but at the same time maybe people don't pay a lot of attention to this sort of things. And this last thing seems independent of any DP or DR, it seems to be normal for me. (edit: Ok, I just read it is related to the brain's functional asymmetry, which could have been expected, because these are really things that are "lateralized" differently, which also shows that it is probably true that most people just don't pay attention to these things although they have them too).

But in general I want to say that perceiving things is not just one thing, and that even for non DPed people they use different modes of perceptions, paying attention to different information, even if they are not aware of it. And sometimes I think part of the strangeness of perceptions in DPDR seems to come from using the wrong perception mode, and things feel different but we can't put the finger on anything. And perhaps none of these perception modes are necessarily abnormal per se, but we are just using the wrong one, or the ones we use keep changing, giving different impressions and feelings of unfamiliarity.

Another one I actually do intentionally sometimes, is when I am walking in a street I look around me while trying to forget the information about location, and focus only one visuals. I actually manage to "forget" where I am or how this place is related to what I know of the map of my neighborhood, and for a second it feels like I am in a totally different place I don't know, and I pay attention to details differently. It does feel a bit like a DP experience. But of course it's all fun and games when we do it intentionally (but not too much...), but it can be very distressing when it happens on its own and we don't control it. I have had really bad experiences too when this was happening and I did not know if it would stop. But it always did at some point, even without my intervention.

 

[Pendragonart]

About "why do humans live in houses", it's not a question I had, but I definitely felt some weird things around that occasionally. The best way I can describe it is that I feel we have different modes of considering space around us. When we are outside we have a wide space around us, kind of without limits, and when we are in a building space seems to stop at the exterior wall and we do not consider what is outside at all, except for what we see through the window directly. And these two worlds collide when we see a house being demolished for example, and the exterior walls and removed and we see an interior of a house that is also part of the exterior world and it feels a bit weird. And occasionally I have seen the interior of my house with exactly that weird feeling. I felt kind of conscious of how high I was above ground, and how there was empty space behind the exterior walls. When it happened it made me feel very uncomfortable, like I was a homeless person living in an abandoned building. Fortunately this impression faded away after a nap and left the room for other weird impressions I am more used to.
Sometimes we can also look at things from a more functional way, or from a purely visual way. Once I remember I read something I had written by hand and could really see the words, and when I came back later with stronger DP (after having obsessed over how to decrease my DR and tried some tricks that didn't work...) when I look at my handwriting, what I saw first was the quality of the curves, and the quality of the ink color on the paper and not the words themselves anymore. Interestingly I have this too when I am on the phone with someone. If I hold the phone on my right ear I hear the meaning of the words, and when I listen with my left ear the meaning is much harder to get but I hear a lot more the quality of the sound, it's smallest asperities. It's very interesting. I didn't find anyone with the same impressions, but at the same time maybe people don't pay a lot of attention to this sort of things. And this last thing seems independent of any DP or DR, it seems to be normal for me. (edit: Ok, I just read it is related to the brain's functional asymmetry, which could have been expected, because these are really things that are "lateralized" differently, which also shows that it is probably true that most people just don't pay attention to these things although they have them too).

But in general I want to say that perceiving things is not just one thing, and that even for non DPed people they use different modes of perceptions, paying attention to different information, even if they are not aware of it. And sometimes I think part of the strangeness of perceptions in DPDR seems to come from using the wrong perception mode, and things feel different but we can't put the finger on anything. And perhaps none of these perception modes are necessarily abnormal per se, but we are just using the wrong one, or the ones we use keep changing, giving different impressions and feelings of unfamiliarity.

Another one I actually do intentionally sometimes, is when I am walking in a street I look around me while trying to forget the information about location, and focus only one visuals. I actually manage to "forget" where I am or how this place is related to what I know of the map of my neighborhood, and for a second it feels like I am in a totally different place I don't know, and I pay attention to details differently. It does feel a bit like a DP experience. But of course it's all fun and games when we do it intentionally (but not too much...), but it can be very distressing when it happens on its own and we don't control it. I have had really bad experiences too when this was happening and I did not know if it would stop. But it always did at some point, even without my intervention.

Such interesting experiences! I relate to some of the focus on noticing certain things in unusual way. Not suggesting anything... but have you researched OCD which you mention (check NOCD) or schizophrenia? Hope it's OK to ask.

 

[leminaseri]

schizophrenia

what?

 

[Trith]

Such interesting experiences! I relate to some of the focus on noticing certain things in unusual way. Not suggesting anything... but have you researched OCD which you mention (check NOCD) or schizophrenia? Hope it's OK to ask.

I think I definitely have a way of thinking that is obsessional, and I have had many times when I was fighting with my thoughts and they felt intrusive. But I don't think I have clear OCD, like with checking things or having rituals. But when I "study" my perceptions like this I don't think I worry about anything at the same time, it's more like I am genuinely interested. But who knows, maybe there is some impulse to control something.
And I don't think I have schizophrenia. I think schizophrenia does have weird symptoms that could look like this, or people with schizophrenia can also have DPDR, as far as I know, but also some other much more recognizable symptoms. I am not a psychiatrist but I think that saying you might have schizophrenia when you have DPDR is a bit like saying that your fever could be a sign of meningitis. Technically it's true, but if you don't have any more recognizable symptom, it's much more likely you just have the flu. Maybe you know, but worrying about having schizophrenia is very frequent in people who have DPDR.