Is there a sure way to know if you have dp/dr?

I believe dp and dr are themselves symptoms. Sometimes they can be symptoms of a serious underlying illness. Other times...not.

Which is why I recommend having an EEG to help sort it out.

There is no test to establish you are experiencing symptoms of dp/dr.

My dp/dr stemmed from an epileptic syndrome. Yours might stem from Lyme disease, or some other neurological illness.

Or even emotional stressors which are beyond your coping capacity.

Brain doctors have "bigger fish to fry", as one neurologist put it to me. His personal opinion didn't offend me, but his

failure to order an EEG to establish my epilepsy cost me many years of life.

ophthalmology or Neurology? What's the argument here.? I didn't know much about anything at age 17, I didn't know I suffered brain damage after smoking cannabis and having seizures. But, I would figure it out over the next 40 years.

I studied electronics and learned how cathode ray tubes, using either a raster or vector mapping, could paint a picture on a TV

Video modulates a carrier frequency, vestibular side band transmission occurs and the receiving antenna

rips the video off of the carrier and separates the red blue green signals and routes them to separate cathodes from whence they are projected through a triad mask onto a phosphorous screen. Viola! A moving picture appears!

Of course, this got me wondering about the similar biological system that was responsible for creating a moving image on my brain. A process that had been affected by the seizures I had, in a way I would come to describe as DR.

The eye is a camera with a lens. The retina converts the signals from the rods and cones and sends them into the brain for processing. Unlike the image on a TV, the image in your brain will not be complete until it has been "colored"

with emotional context, after memory has been accessed to see how relevant is this thing we are viewing. Neurology would work the channel from the retina into the brain. Short of seeing a lesion or tumor, what would you expect from neurology?

Not much, I would think. So, there has to be some software in chemical and electrical form, that accomplishes the processing of your eye's image. These processes occur in the temporal lobe of the brain. Scientists state that the temporal lobe

"is exquisitely prone to insult". In other words, you can screw up its operations rather easily. Ingest toxins, screw around with psychotics, or allow yourself to suffer extreme abuse, and you can insult your temporal lobe.

Insulting the temporal lobe can cause significant dysfunction. I lost my emotions. Without emotional coloring, my family seemed alien. My dog seemed alien. I had a picture, but it was bland and empty. It was also jumpy like a slide show for

a good while following those seizures. They had no idea how to fix a problem in neurological processing of your video information 40 years ago, and I bet they have little understanding of this process today. I got about 80% of my emotions back,

and my DR either went away entirely, or got significantly better until I no longer noticed it, or most likely a combination of the two. Lucky for me, I kept plodding along and allowed time to do what it could to heal me. If I had allowed myself to

lay on the couch, I would have been there for 40 years. The brain has plasticity. You're young and otherwise healthy. Stay on the horse if you can and hope for the best. What else can one do?

"So, why on earth would you question things?" Consider that what you "see" is actually a composite....an integration of several processes. The seeing just gives you video, as would a video camera. By itself, the video is just meaningless video. (ophthalmology). It's a biological and technological feat of the eye to create the image, but it is still just an image. (neurology) Your mind has to access memory and ask "is it a friendly image, or a threatening image. How do I feel about this image, based on my experience with this specific image, or similar images". If you only have the seeing function, then you are left wondering what the image should mean to you. I explained that my parents and dog seemed alien. Intellectually, I recognized them, but I didn't "feel" like they were my parents. My perception of my parents lacked emotional context. That was missing because my temporal lobe was dysfunctional at the time and could not integrate the emotional into the purely visual. And, yes. I had to question why my parents didn't seem like my parents anymore. I had to question a lot of stuff. I finally resolved to rely on my intellect and I said to myself that I have to go forward without the emotions. I was a Vulcan for a long time until my brain slowly shifted back to 80% normal.

But, things are different when you are missing something from the composite visual package, and it will cause you to question what you are seeing. IMHO. And, you should see some of the problems you can cause in a video picture by tweaking seemingly very minor things. lol

That's a very interesting question. I was heretofor unfamiliar with the existence of such a disorder. So, a Capgras delusion is a psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, or other close family member (or pet) has been replaced by an identical impostor.

If you are missing the emotional component of the "visual package" I refer to, then everyone you meet will be much more a stranger to you than before you lost that component. In other words, it wouldn't be a selective condition where you might assume your mother is a replicant, but your brothers and sisters are not.

But, if this condition exists, then maybe it is possible to lose a specific portion of emotional memory identified with an individual, such that only that individual seems a stranger. From there, I suppose one could surmise the familiar has been substituted, rather than recognize it is more of a failure to identify than a change in identity.

Right. When I got to the point where I had to choose.....did something happen to the world or did something happen to me, my intellect said the problem was most likely with me. It wasn't so obvious a choice at the time. By making the right choice, I believe I staved off psychosis. Had I decided I was

OK and the world had gone strange, I would have been delusional.

I decided that my severe temporal lobe seizures (over 30 epileptic discharges in 3 minutes) had altered my perception of self (DP) and altered my perception of environment (DR), and that is how I arrive at my definitions of DP/DR.

I haven't been able to find a lot information on the web about epileptic discharges. It is literally like your brain is repeatedly shorting out. I would get a tensing sensation for 4 or 5 seconds in the left rear of my brain. The tensing was like a clock spring being wound.

When it got overwound, it sprang in an electric shock that convulsed my vision as if I was suddenly looking through the wrong end of binoculars. At the same time, my mind convulsed at the shock. What was happening during the tensing was that my neurons

were charging up like two plates of a capacitor. Once the amplitude of the charge exceeded the dielectric, the neurons arc over and neutralize each other. Each discharge is like nothing you've ever experienced before. To have them just keep coming, over and over

was a nightmare for many years. The longest 3 minutes of my life. I would have thrown myself from a tall building before allowing myself to endure another minute of that shit. I should have been unconscious, but I believe the cannabis I had smoked kept me conscious for the show.

My seizures caused a psychosis that segued into an affective disorder of major depression. Following the seizures I didn't sleep for 2 weeks. When I finally did sleep, I had "night terror" nightmares. . I had intense anxiety, dp, dr. I developed a head tremor. I had agoraphobia. I began to suffer frequent ocular migraines which, over the course of 30 minutes, would functionally blind me.

I also suffered frequent focal temporal lobe seizures, which did not render me unconscious. At age 17, I didn't understand any of this. I wouldn't understand any of this for 40 years. Over that 40 years, I made several serious attempts seeking medical help. I saw a neurologist who told me "we have bigger fish to fry". He never offered an EEG which would have shown I was epileptic.

I saw counsellors and therapists who had no clue. At age 57, after taking an early retirement, I discovered language in British Neurological texts and journals which described a case history that matched my own in every minute detail.

So, From high school, I passed a physical for military service. I completed 3 years honorably. I acted my way through my next 40 years of life. During that time, I experienced 5 distinct episodes of major depression which were epic struggles for survival. I would lose 15% of my body weight, and go sleepless for weeks on end, with horrible anxiety.

When I discovered the information which allowed me to diagnose myself, I contacted a neurologist who specialized in epilepsy. I emailed her and she agreed to see me. My MRI was normal, but my EEG indicated I had a history of epileptic seizure. I had "significant" pathlogy in my dominant temproal lobe. I wasn't surprised at the results.

By that time, I knew what to expect. A time study EEG showed that, after 40 years, my seizures had remitted.

I was told I was disabled, and was referred back to psychiatry for treatment of my depression. I had ECT in 2014, which resolved my depressive illness. I still have the occasional ocular migraine, and they are much less intense than they were 40 years ago.

I decided I didn't need an SSRI anymore, and discontinued all psych meds over 2 years ago. I'm fine. It's over, but for 40 years I suffered from a rare epileptic syndrome whose "post ictal psychosis segued into an affective disorder of major depression". My own research has answered every question I ever

had about my illness and strange symptoms. Exploding head syndrome? I experienced it. Dolly Zoom hallucinations? I had them. Intrusive thoughts? Yes. The journal I read suggested I was a worse case scenario.

And yes, a single epileptic seizure can be fatal. A young US movie star just died from one. Epileptic seizures can do strange things. Some idiot-savants claim they are the way they are due to a single temporal lobe seizure in their youth.

It's a brain thing, and medical science is yet to understand it fully. They now understand that epilepsy and migraines are connected. A recent British Research paper is titled "Migraine, the borderlands of epilepsy". My town has a new center dedicated to epileptic treatment and migraine treatment.