[SamBrown]

A little background is that I have severe anxiety disorder and have been dealing with dp/dr on and off for a few years. Recently I have become insanely depressed and dissociated about existential what ifs to the point where it's making me suicidal. What if I'm a Brain in a vat and the only conscious one and thinking what if this is all one big dream or coma and at any minute all my loved ones can be gone. I tried to go on philosophy arguments and the ones that frightened me the most was that "you can never know" which send me into a spiral of even more what ifs. I don't know what to do I just want to KNOW my family and friends are all real. I feel as if I've probably past a point of going crazy and I have an appointment with a physiatrist today so I pray I find some relief. Any reassurance is greatly appreciated but please don't tell me "who cares if it's all fake" cause I can't handle reading any more of that.

 

[ThoughtOnFire]

There's no evidence of being just a brain in a vat.

 

[SamBrown]

There's no evidence of being just a brain in a vat.

There's no evidence of being just a brain in a vat.

Yes I know that but the thought of it keeps giving me what ifs that deep down I know are illogical but they won't stop Like I've "awaken" to something

 

[ThoughtOnFire]

One time during a psychotic episode I thought and legitimately believed that the earth was a mother dragon that had been chained down by all the concrete sidewalks and roads and that the Sun was it's baby dragon and the light was it breathing fire. What if?

 

[SamBrown]

One time during a psychotic episode I thought and legitimately believed that the earth was a mother dragon that had been chained down by all the concrete sidewalks and roads and that the Sun was it's baby dragon and the light was it breathing fire. What if?

That actually helped me a little believe it or not. I just get so fucking mad when I see philosophers argue over stuff like that. Like you guys are sitting there having a debate about something that is ruining my life and relationships. Any advice on countering those thoughts or what ifs?
(I apologize I know I sound desperate)

 

[Trith]

That actually helped me a little believe it or not. I just get so fucking mad when I see philosophers argue over stuff like that. Like you guys are sitting there having a debate about something that is ruining my life and relationships. Any advice on countering those thoughts or what ifs?
(I apologize I know I sound desperate)

A few weeks ago i wrote the following thing. I hope it can help you but if you find it triggering, of course don't read it all.

Solipsism in a “non falsifiable claim”. Which means it is a claim that cannot be disproven, but in no way it means it is plausible. One example of that is “Russel’s teapot hypothesis”, which is a hypothesis saying that there is a teapot flying in orbit between Mars and Jupiter and that it is impossible to detect it using our current technology. If it’s impossible to detect it it means we cannot prove this hypothesis is right. But at the same time, if we don’t detect it it doesn’t mean the teapot isn’t there, because our instruments don’t work anyway.

Solipsism is very similar to this, you cannot prove it is right but you also cannot prove it is wrong. But does it mean this has any chance to be true? If you think it does, for consistency now you should perhaps also believe that Russel’s teapot exists. You can make infinite unfalsifiable claims, the only limit is your imagination.

Creationism can be formulated to be unfalsifiable. Young Earth creationists say that the world is 6000 years old, and you think you could prove this wrong by showing dinosaurs fossils that have been proven to be much older than that using radioactive decay. But some creationists will reply that dinosaurs never existed and the fossils were planted by god 6000 years ago with some radioactive elements mimicking what millions years old life should have, just as a trick from god who wants to test our faith. If you point out that stars can be observed more than 6000 light years away (meaning that light was emitted more than 6000 years ago), some creationists will reply that the stars were created during genesis, and some light was also created already on the path between the stars and our eyes so that upon creation we should be able to see them already. So even though their claim is very unlikely, there is no way to prove them wrong.

Some skeptics made fun of this claim by making their own, saying that the world was created last thursday (independent of the current date), everything was created at the same time, dinosaur fossils, buildings around us, everybody, and all our memories are fake and have been planted in our minds last thursday during creation. And you can still claim this is true next week, and that today’s memory was planted in your head next thursday, and it is impossible to prove this wrong. But this doesn’t mean it is any likely.

A colleague of mine told me that he thought the moon physically existed only when we looked at it. I think he was just messing with me and was proud to present a hypothesis that could not be disproven just to see me try and struggle with it. He wasn’t talking about “the image of the moon in our minds”, he was talking about the physical moon itself, that it disappeared everytime we didn’t look at it. But he is right, it cannot be disproven. But if this is true, it means that there is a kind of sensor that knows where everybody on the planet is looking, even through a mirror. And it knows when a camera is looking at the moon, or if someone in the future is going to look at the moon on the film. And when the moon disappears, something has to keep in memory the position of all atoms of the moon, to make them re-appear later on the trajectory of the moon and at the correct position and with the correct speed. And also when the moon disappears something needs to fake the moon’s gravity so that it doesn’t mess with the tides and with the trajectory of other space objects that we might be looking at. So it gets extremely complicated, and for no purpose at all other than making an unfalsifiable claim true, just for fun. So it is unfalsifiable, but at the same time extremely unlikely. You can also try to do the same with solipsism and think why there would be any chance solipsism could be true.

So if you think that the fact a hypothesis is unfalsifiable means it has any chance to be correct, if you believe in solipsism you should also believe in Russel’s teapot, in lastthursdayism, in the disappearing moon and in anything you can make up, like the theory there is an invisible imaginary animal in my garage that nobody can see including me. But I guess you don’t believe in these things, you only tend to believe in solipsism. And I guess you do so because something in solipsism is attracting you. And it’s a little paradoxical. Because I think you tend to believe in solipsism because you experienced DR, and you wonder if things could be flipped around, that you could have experienced reality (that solipsism is true), while the non-DR experience could be an illusion. So it’s your experience of DR (past or present) that makes you think that solipsism could be true. And it’s paradoxical because solipsism is all about doubting everything you experience, and yet you are attracted to solipsism because of an experience of DR. I don’t know if this helps though. Not that it is a good thing to doubt everything you experience, but just that solipsism is self-contradicting.

Perhaps you could imagine an unfalsifiable claim that goes the opposite way. Perhaps you are indeed imagining people’s minds and everything, but perhaps something is causing you to only imagine things that actually do exist around you and are real, and to imagine them

 

[Chip1021]

I’ve never had an issue with those thoughts like you do. I mean, I have them, but they don’t frighten me, in fact, I personally don’t mind all that philosophizing (except that it sucks that I do it all the time and have no life to speak of).

However, and maybe this will help or not (and if it makes it worse, I sincerely apologize), but at the end of the day, instead of going back and forth on all these hyper-intellectualized ideas, I arrive at the conclusion that the world is real because:

1) I perceive it to exist. Even through this weird foggy DPDRed lens, I can still see, hear, and feel things coming from outside of my self, and:

2). I don’t have a particularly good reason to believe that it does not exist.

When it comes to DPDR though, I understand that it can be very difficult to reason or rationalize your way out of all of this thinking. So my second suggestion to you is to just find some way to spend as much time as you can thinking about something else. Play an engrossing video game. Watch a silly movie or tv show. Talk to your family and insist upon keeping the conversation light and focused on worldly things. Or simply fantasize about some person, real or fictional, that you might want to bang. Whatever it is, find something else that you take some interest in, and place as much energy as you can in it. For some people, that alone is curative. But even if it is not, it can make life quite a bit more tolerable.

 

[coolwhip27]

I’ve never had an issue with those thoughts like you do. I mean, I have them, but they don’t frighten me, in fact, I personally don’t mind all that philosophizing (except that it sucks that I do it all the time and have no life to speak of).

However, and maybe this will help or not (and if it makes it worse, I sincerely apologize), but at the end of the day, instead of going back and forth on all these hyper-intellectualized ideas, I arrive at the conclusion that the world is real because:

1) I perceive it to exist. Even through this weird foggy DPDRed lens, I can still see, hear, and feel things coming from outside of my self, and:

2). I don’t have a particularly good reason to believe that it does not exist.

When it comes to DPDR though, I understand that it can be very difficult to reason or rationalize your way out of all of this thinking. So my second suggestion to you is to just find some way to spend as much time as you can thinking about something else. Play an engrossing video game. Watch a silly movie or tv show. Talk to your family and insist upon keeping the conversation light and focused on worldly things. Or simply fantasize about some person, real or fictional, that you might want to bang. Whatever it is, find something else that you take some interest in, and place as much energy as you can in it. For some people, that alone is curative. But even if it is not, it can make life quite a bit more tolerable.

It probably depends on the severity of the mindstate. For him, he may either be in a very fearful state like in the post all the time, or else he’s just recalling the memory of it when he was messed up, and he’s dealing with confusion from the aftermath. I call that shattering, into millions of pieces and not knowing where to start. You feel like your mind is broken apart and you’re figuring out how to use it again.

But for the OP, it sounds like he’s dealing with a lot of fear and irrationality. When you think thoughts are so important that they could affect the reality around you. That’s magical thinking. You’re in a state of fight or flight and even thoughts look dangerous. Been there done that

 

[SamBrown]

It probably depends on the severity of the mindstate. For him, he may either be in a very fearful state like in the post all the time, or else he’s just recalling the memory of it when he was messed up, and he’s dealing with confusion from the aftermath. I call that shattering, into millions of pieces and not knowing where to start. You feel like your mind is broken apart and you’re figuring out how to use it again.

But for the OP, it sounds like he’s dealing with a lot of fear and irrationality. When you think thoughts are so important that they could affect the reality around you. That’s magical thinking. You’re in a state of fight or flight and even thoughts look dangerous. Been there done that

Yeah it's pretty much in a constant state of fear like I could wake up any moment to this being all an illusion plus more thoughts

 

[SamBrown]

A few weeks ago i wrote the following thing. I hope it can help you but if you find it triggering, of course don't read it all.

Thankyou for the reply I still have a lot of fear but some of those comparisons helped helped a little

 

[drew-uk]

You sound like you are in a GAD cycle, I understand that when your mind is going a million miles an hour you will latch to worries you can't possibly process.

If you think of it logically and try to follow a simple series of questions, I'm not saying it will be easy but it's a start

1. What are you worried about? Say it out loud
2. Can you do anything about it right now ( if yes go to step 4 if no go to step 3)
3. Can you ever do anything about it? (If yes go to step 5 if no go to step 6)
4. Make a plan, acknowledge, accept and solve the issue causing you to worry
5. Set a date, then make a plan, acknowledge, accept and solve the issue causing you to worry
6. Accept that you have no control over the worry, and that this may be a reoccurring intrusive thought your worries mind can't let go off as it can't fix it. If so everyone it pops in you mind say the word worry and complete a grounding excersize. You need to train your brain that the worry is not a threat to you otherwise it will keep reoccurring so that you can fix it.