[bluecanary]

Hey all,

While I often feel the "physical" symptoms of DP/DR, such as feeling my head get heavy, getting exhausted, and other anxiety symptoms, most of the time my symptoms revolve more around my thoughts. I think the big existential thoughts about what life is all about, what we are as humans, all that sort of thing. I think about every little facet of the things people do, think, and say, and it overwhelms me. I analyze little things about existence like thoughts, speech, and language - how and why we're able to understand it all. I even look at technology and I'm baffled at how people were able to come up with it. I feel like I can't grasp it, and that always scares me. I overthink things to the point where they don't seem to make sense anymore. Everything about the world and life and all of it just overwhelms me.

I feel almost as though I've cracked some kind of "code" into the world that I wasn't supposed to, and now that I've seen it, I can't unsee it. I have in the past when these sorts of thoughts have come up, but I'm always afraid that each time it comes up, it won't go away like it did the last time. Can anyone relate?

 

[bluecanary]

Thanks to everyone for the insightful replies.I feel as though the thoughts I'm having are probably similar to thoughts that most people have, but they just don't let it bother them. Me, on the other hand... when these thoughts come up, the anxiety compels me to try to decode them to make sense of them, and when I can't, that's when I get scared. I still feel pretty disconnected from my body, and from other things around me. It's scary when it feels as though I can't even understand who *I* am, what my own personal identity is. How do you define something so basic? It frightens me that I don't have an answer to this.

I've had these sorts of feelings before, as I mentioned, and I was able to move past them. I guess as time moved on I just forgot about them and got on with my life. It's no easy task, though, and it's good to know I'm not alone.

 

[bluecanary]

That's interesting, Mike... would you say that DP is in a way like "coming into the light," seeing things as though they're there for the first time (this is what it feels like to me?), or going back into shadows after having seen things more clearly? I could see it either way.

I had a very hard day today. It started off okay... right now the DP/DR is 24/7, but for the past couple of days it's been in the background and only been slightly distressing. I had a few errands to run, and I was determined to do them, so I did. I had anxiety about it, but I went, and the whole time, I was narrating and overanalyzing EVERYTHING in my head - every movement I made, every word I said, every interaction with another person. It was as though my mind was on overload from all the stimuli. I kept asking myself questions like, "Why are things this way? Why is this happening? Why is the world this way?" ...etc. etc. etc. I literally analyzed every single thing that happened to the point where nothing made sense anymore. I can't make sense of anything at all, and it's scaring the living daylights out of me. I'm not even sure if this qualifies as DP/DR anymore, over just relentless overanalytical thinking. Will I just "forget" this, or am I doomed to live with it forever?