[Pineapplecurl]

I know this may be a little long but i really need some hope, if you can please read. Thanks!

Lately my dpdr has been beyond horrible and debilitating. It’s to the point where I can’t function how I would like too. It’s also to the point where I am having a lot of suicidal thoughts because I just don’t want to suffer everyday 24/7. I don’t feel like I am alive to being with. I feel dead or like a walking zombie. Everything looks fake to me. I also question if I am me. I have no sense of self and fear I’ll forget who I am. The anxiety and panic is almost constant. When I panic I start thinking crazy thoughts about existence and I go down a huge rabbit hole. I am very depressed because of it. I feel like it has sucked all the life out of me. It makes me feel very hopeless about life and the fact that I could ever be happy or somewhat normal again. Basically I feel like my life is over. I can’t comprehend how I function at all or interact with people and I do t know how I keep myself alive at this point. I don’t feel as if I control anything. I get scared I’ll just loose it and have a breakdown or do something I’ll regret. I’m just hanging on by a thread and I am so scared for my life. I don’t even feel human.

Anybody have any insight or advice? Is it possible to even recover from something like this?

 

[forestx5]

I'm replying to this because I had been so sick at times in my life that I didn't think I could ever get better. I had a traumatic neurological event at age 17 that I would not understand for 40 years. It left me with a head tremor, slide show vision, recurring migraine auras, and frequent spells of panic. I also experienced depressive episodes with insomnia, and anxiety so bad I would lose 30 lbs because I could not chew or swallow food. Every 8 or 10 years, I would have another depressive episode. Each was an epic struggle for survival. I once went 52 days without real sleep. I know where hell is, as I have visited it several times in my life. Complete nervous breakdowns. Racing thoughts, every symptom in the book. Then my research led me to British Neurological research papers and I found a case history that matched my own in every odd detail. I realized my trauma at age 17 was an epigastric aura folllowed by a temporal lobe seizure. I had about 30 epileptic discharges that fried my temporal lobe. Destroyed my emotions and libido. Left me with focal temporal lobe seizures and migraine aura. I had an EEG at age 57 and they told me I had significant pathology in my temporal lobe and that I was disabled. Too late, I had already retired from my job. I was no longer having seizures at age 57, but the recurrent depression needed to be dealth with. I had ECT in 2014 and it was a game changer for me. Reset my brain to factory defaults, I like to say. Been living large without medication ever since. Never thought it possible. I only write this to let you know if it was possible for me, it is possible for you. I don't know if an EEG is the answer for you, as it was for me. My EEG explained who I was and put my life in proper focus. Good luck to you..

 

[Pineapplecurl]

I'm replying to this because I had been so sick at times in my life that I didn't think I could ever get better. I had a traumatic neurological event at age 17 that I would not understand for 40 years. It left me with a head tremor, slide show vision, recurring migraine auras, and frequent spells of panic. I also experienced depressive episodes with insomnia, and anxiety so bad I would lose 30 lbs because I could not chew or swallow food. Every 8 or 10 years, I would have another depressive episode. Each was an epic struggle for survival. I once went 52 days without real sleep. I know where hell is, as I have visited it several times in my life. Complete nervous breakdowns. Racing thoughts, every symptom in the book. Then my research led me to British Neurological research papers and I found a case history that matched my own in every odd detail. I realized my trauma at age 17 was an epigastric aura folllowed by a temporal lobe seizure. I had about 30 epileptic discharges that fried my temporal lobe. Destroyed my emotions and libido. Left me with focal temporal lobe seizures and migraine aura. I had an EEG at age 57 and they told me I had significant pathology in my temporal lobe and that I was disabled. Too late, I had already retired from my job. I was no longer having seizures at age 57, but the recurrent depression needed to be dealth with. I had ECT in 2014 and it was a game changer for me. Reset my brain to factory defaults, I like to say. Been living large without medication ever since. Never thought it possible. I only write this to let you know if it was possible for me, it is possible for you. I don't know if an EEG is the answer for you, as it was for me. My EEG explained who I was and put my life in proper focus. Good luck to you..

Thank you so much for sharing and I’m glad things have gotten better for you. As well as these symptoms did you have bad dpdr?

 

[forestx5]

Dp/Dr? Yes. I define dp/dr as a change in concept of self and environment respectfully. I'll explain the Dr first. During the seizure at age 17, I had an epileptic discharge every 4-5 seconds for about 3 minutes. That's about 30 discharges. Each discharge / electrical shock would "warp" my mind and vision. It was if I were suddenly looking through the wrong end of binoculars. Things would zoom away and become very small, as if at the far end of a tunnel. That would last only a second, but then the tensing leading to another discharge would begin and the process would repeat itself. There is a name for this hallucination: dolly zoom hallucination. I don't believe my visual system recovered fully from this event for several years. I lost the abilility to track motion seamlessly. It was if my vision was cut scene after cut scene, more like a slide show than a movie. Gradually over several years, two things happened. My ability to process motion smoothly - improved, and/or I got used to the cut scenes. Now for an explanation of my Dp. I was severely disoriented following the seizure. My positive emotions were dead, and my libido was dead. My life force was severely wounded. The seizure initiated my first episode of major depression. I no longer resonated with my mirror image. My hands did not reassure me that they were mine. Researchers say that if we have a soul, it resides in our temporal lobe. My temporal lobe was trashed. It is also said that the eyes are the window to the soul. That makes perfect sense to me. My eyes are "cloudy" following my seizure. I barely recognize myself in the mirror. Life was confusing enough before this happened to me. I had experienced existential depression before any of this occurred. It only made things worse. It would be hard for me to say that which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but surviving the episodes of depression kept me alive, and where there is life there is hope. Anger can be a great motivator. I sought interventions many times during my illness and I was frustrated at every attempt. I was triaged to psychiatry, which is a dead end. "Try this, try that....does it make you feel better?" That's not what I wanted. I wanted to know what happened to me at age 17, that changed my life and made me mentally ill. To the extent that there is an answer, I found it in a British Medial Journal with a case history that could have been my own. It's been 50 years and they know little more than they did then, because the truth is no one is really looking. The brain is too complex, and there is easier money to be made somewhere else. They do now understand that migraine aura and epilepsy can be co-morbid.. A clinic just opened in my city, and they treat both. But when I presented to a neurologist 30 years ago, with my complaint of severe recurring migraine aura and what I believed to be panic attacks, he didn't even think to recommend an EEG. If he had, it would have shown I was actively epileptic and my panic attacks were actually focal temporal lobe seizures. And epilepsy, depression, and dissociative disorders such as Dp/Dr have a high incidence of co-morbidity. In other words, the root cause of your Dp/Dr could be an epileptic syndrome.

 

[ReiTheySay]

There's hope. I feel you. I've had severe DPDR. I had blank mind. Everything was unreal. Joy was a distant foreign concept for me. For years.
There's an explanation for what you're going through. There's a mechanism, causes, and factors behind it all.
It takes time to be ready to get better, and sometime to understand and start learning and getting better.
I would suggest doing some research on good therapists around you and online. Try one, or two, or a few if you can.

Try not to get too caught up in how awful it is. It's hard, but it only makes things harder to actively despise the state you're in, but don't be hard on yourself when you feel limited and helpless.