[Guest]

At least I think It is DR..

what are the main differences? how do you tell them apart?

does anybody else with DR feel how I feel? which is like you can see, but it just all looks weird, almost like its hard to focus, not blurring, but coupled with tiredness because I cant sleep well at all, I find it almost a strain on my eyes, sometimes I cant figure out if I am seeing double, yet I am told if I was, I would have trouble catching etc, I just feel like my eyes are really tired of seeing the world in this strange fashion.

anybody else feel like this? or am I in the wrong place, and I should be in an about to go blind forum, due to brain problem.

I am really worrying so much because I have not had my neurologist appointment yet, I feel almost goggle eyed!

I went to the optician yesterday and he said I have a slightly near sighted left eye, but that eye still reads the 20/20 line and he thinks I don't really need glasses, even though they would bring my left eye back up to the standard of my right.

When I look in the mirror at myself, its like how it looks after I have had a few drinks, its clear, but almost indescribably weird, I just feel kinda goggle eyed, I feel its kind of a relief when I close my eyes, but I am also VERY tired, because I cant sleep due to worrying so much and having such an active mind that will simply not shut down to rest, last night in bed, when I turned my TV off my room was very dark, and it seemed to really relieve my eyes/mind a bit.

Any feedback would be appreciated, am I alone in this? Does being very tired make DR worse?

I feel like I have a pressure in my head, almost like my brain is swelling too big for my head, its not painfull it just feels funny and odd, it causes strange dizzyness thats hard to describe, not proper dizzy like I am gonna fall over, just kind of really odd sensation, kind of pressure or something, and i feel like my jaw is kind atense and there is a sort of pressure/discomfort in my ears sometimes, anybody else get this?

 

[bat]

in my experience dr and dp get worse when tired.
for me dr is when everything looks surreal; colours etc look like when i have taken rec drugs.
dp is the fearful awareness of not existing only to observe. i find dp much harder to bear.

 

[bat]

also i have had the pressure thing you mention but it has lifted as have the dp/dr. hope things start easing for you soon

 

[Sojourner]

You have anxiety, also called stress:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/stress.html

 

[Martinelv]

A lot of people don['t distinguish between DR and DP, but for me they were very different beasts. I had chronic DR for about a year - the feeling that the external world was 'weird', 'bizarre', 'unreal', with that nasty foggy head feeling. Fortunately I only experienced DP when I was in the throes of a panic attack..and for me, DP is much, much worse. I could just about handle DR because I was 'still me', but with DR and DP, everything was lost. It's horrific. I really don't know how people cope with it.....and I salute each and every one of them.

 

[Guest]

Well for me I the world does not FEEL weird, its just the way it looks, kind of detached, its all visual for me, I just cant seem to see it right, not focus, just weird, as I have said many times, kinda like I have had a few drinks, surreal.

 

[Martinelv]

Yeah, perhaps 'feel' is the wrong word to use. The external world looks weird, alien, like you've just set foot on the planet. That's DR, and it stinks.

I've always thought of the experience of DR and DP like this, in stages:

Trigger/Cause -> Anxiety -> Depression -> DR -> DP (with OCD rearing it's ugly head at any stage)

This doesn't mean that you go from anxiety to depression, say, without experiencing both. It's probably too simplistic though, but that's how it seems to me.

 

[Guest]

Slightly different for me, that is if DR IS what has happened and not a Brain Problem of some kind.

I had Stress, and lots of it, and a series of bad events, and then more stress, and that's when it happened, I seemed to quite suddenly slip into DR, and have been seeing the world in a strange detached way ever since, 24/7, like my eyes have been replaced by somebody else's and it all looks strange, and it was since that happened, and before I found the possibility of it being DR and NOT a brain problem, that I started to worry, ALLOT, I was waiting for blood test results for 2 weeks almost, and Anxiety cut in heavilly, then depression about it all, and all the symptoms of Anxiety and Depression, Depression for me lingers because if it is not a physical problem, its a mental one, which is depressing as well, but nowhere near as scary or depressing to me as a physical one. All my blood tests were fine though.

So I have everything crossed that my neurologists appointment is going to turn out OK, and that I can finally be sure that it was stress/anxiety/depression that caused my symptoms and that it is DR that I have, and not oncoming blindness or something worse.

 

[terri*]

Hi SBE,

I have suffered from DR mainly for quite a period of time. As some others mentioned, and I believe you are saying in your own way, it is like seeing things in a surreal fashion. Nothing looks right. Things can look far away or too close up. Hate looking in the mirror or watching water run out of the tap. It all just seems to not look right and it gives one a very anxious feeling inside. It also, in the beginning, can bring on all types of wild imaginings as you think your brain could not possibly be doing this. After a gazillion test and bloodwork out the wahzoo, I have found, this second go round, that it is indeed DR. Thankfully I am out of the severe anxiety phase as I have learned to live with it after therapy and some light meds.

I wish you peace of mind as you go about finding out if DR is indeed your problem. I hope that once you get a diagnosis you are able to work your way to coping with it.

Most sincerely,
terri