# 666 Words About Me--to Those That Fail to Understand



## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

Assume--in an entirely hypothetical sense--that you start to feel like this:

One day you wake up to a fog. Not a real fog, product of vaporous condensation, but a sensory haze that blocks all will, thoughts, and actions. You start to get mildly concerned. This change in perception cannot be real! This burden and thwarting force follows no logic or reason?

What if you woke up to a dream? Even better, what if your life suddenly became a dream? Surely, that mysterious haze that veils your surroundings is starting to become bothersome. Maybe that fog does not exist. Maybe I do not exist. Should I panic? Should I scream for help?

Why should I scream for help? I'm having irrational thoughts. I can handle irrational thoughts, can't I?

What if you gradually felt weaker and weaker--vulnerable to the point where your world seemed to collapse on top of you? Ah, I need some grounding! Maybe if I get in touch with myself, or maybe my family, I'll feel a bit better. In search of something familiar, you only find a peculiarly foreign face clumsily moving in the mirror. Even more frightening, the faces of others seem more alien than your own. Yet, you know it's them. Of course it's them. Who else would they be?

Well, it must be a nightmare? But, you cannot wake up. Well, I must be going crazy? But, you are painfully aware of it!

What if panic struck? One, two, three breaths desperately seeking some reality in each shallow inhalation. And, if tears struck, clawing down your face in search of feeling and identity?

What if your futile cries were answered by puzzled looks and unsympathetic sighs? No one understands. Will anyone ever understand?

Then, you begin to feel the bidding of despair. Tugging on your soul are two competing forces trying to rip it apart from your body like skin from an over-ripened fruit. One of the forces wants you to give up. The other force wants you to fight back and survive for what your values and identity (though foreign to you) are worth. You have a past! Where is it? You have an identity! It's gone. You have a family! Who are they?

It must be schizophrenia, or a dissociative disorder. But the impending psychosis never comes. Or will it? It only gets more frightening when reality begins to crumble in front of your eyes, and textures disappear, and colors lose their brightness, and the atmosphere its contrast.

But you keep fighting, giving life the benefit of the doubt. You learn to live in hell.

Hell's not that bad. Until you begin to see floaters in your vision. Or, maybe hell would be better if those dime-sized tongue sores would disappear. Would it be better if the hellish nightmares didn't disturb me at night? And if I didn't wake gasping for breath and wanting to rip my skin off? What about all the nervous twitching and the paranoia? And if my hair stopped falling off like brittle autumn leaves?

You had a happy childhood. You graduated on top of your class. You have a beautiful girlfriend. Hell, you've done nothing to deserve hell. Well, you smoked marijuana once or twice. Maybe those commercials on TV are right. Drugs are bad.

What if your family stopped caring about you because they don't understand? What if your beautiful girlfriend called you selfish and also left your side? What if you saw no future, no goals, no hope amid your turbulent struggle for survival.

What if you contemplated suicide several times a day--not wanting to end your life but to get it back? And, if you fell into a Chinese finger-trap. And if you forgot it all. And if you cried. And if you died. Inside.

What, if I may ask, would you do if one day you woke up to a fog?

What if--in an entirely hypothetical sense--you suffered from depersonalization/derealization? Like I do?


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## Epiphany (Apr 28, 2006)

Wow felimz...what a well written insight into your experience.

It gives a very captivating account of your own personal hell and experiences that many of us here can relate to so well.

Have you shared this with your family / friends? How did they respond?


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

This is a letter I wrote to my girlfriend a few days ago after she kept insisting she could not deal with the frustration of having a boyfriend that looks and reacts normally but says to be "going through hell."

I have not shared much of my experience with my family. I just speak to them in terms of how well--or not--I feel. But to my mother (a pathological psychologist), I am just suffering from lots and lots of anxiety. She does not even care that my psychiatrist has already diagnosed me with derealization and a panic disorder. "The meds will do it." Yeah.


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## JohntyRhodes (Jul 18, 2006)

Very well written Filmez!
When I was reading your story there were times when I thought you were talking about me. Not really mentioned this before but I noticed that you get floaters in your eyes, I seem to get these floaters when I feel at my worst but have never mentioned them to anyone. Is this common as it only makes me even more anxious when I start seeing loads and it does my head in!!!


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## snrpro (Jun 16, 2006)

Very well thought out. I have been hearing a lot about the "eye floaters" and it seems that alot of people have them. In terms of the tongue sores, I have exactly that and it looks awful. I don't think it is a symptom of DP/DR, as it is more physical than it is mental. Please correct me if I am wrong.


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

I think it's a psychosomatic symptom of acute anxiety. I really do not know. Same with the presence of eye floaters. I have dozens of them on my right eye.


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

It's so hard to read things like this when you're almost out of this whole ordeal. Bad days make me come back to this forum...In a way, it was kind of the keystone I needed to find enough grounding and courage to fight this cruel fate.


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## invisible.ink (Feb 2, 2007)

This is frighteningly accurate! Your words flow so eloquently when you describe this condition.


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2007)

Was there really 666 words written about yourself?

It's all "me me me me me" =P


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## Pollyanna 3098 (Dec 12, 2006)

AH, I believe that was only 660 words :wink:

3098


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## Guest (Feb 6, 2007)

Well felimz is a big lair!


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

... I apologise in advanced for my opinion... but trying to get your girlfriend to understand you in this way. I don't think it's right. It seems like revenge for her not taking you seriously.

I know how frustrating it is to have a partner who discounts your suffering.
In my case, that actually led me to dissociate more. The fact he was telling me my perception of reality was wrong ie that there was nothing wrong with me, actually made me feel out of touch with reality.

The solution isn't to have someone understand how all these things feel - You know how you feel, and there is no question of the validity of your suffering - It is to have someone there who _cares_ about you, no matter how abstract and non-discript the thoughts and feelings that make you suffer are.

Someone that doesn't argue with you over whether you are unwell or not, but respects that you feel the way you feel, and it disturbs you.

But you have to offer the same in return. And that means respecting peoples' normality, and that they don't suffer in this particular way.

...But we all do suffer, so don't think you are the only one in that, we just suffer in different ways.

Your suffering is dp/dr/floaters. Your girlfriends' is different...that she has a boyfriend who is suffering. She probably doesn't know how to deal with it that is why she won't give you the benefit of the doubt.

We all have a different load to bear....but we are all carrying loads, that's one thing we have in common, humanity.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

Here's a little poem you might relate to, Felimz:

Messy Cogs:
http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/viewtop ... 7522#87522


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## Lynch_mob (Jan 10, 2007)

Indeed, very well done.

The nervous twitch's....How bad? lol... I had time's where i would just lose control and just have mad body twitchs


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

Pollyanna 3098 said:


> AH, I believe that was only 660 words :wink:
> 
> 3098


My word processor counts 666. It's done for the sake of symbolism, anyway...

I like that poem miss_starling. =)


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

Not really poetry, just a stream of consciousness.


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

miss_starling said:


> Not really poetry, just a stream of consciousness.


Free verse is still poetry... I guess anything that you organize into stanzas is poetry. 

I still like it.


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## closetome (Nov 16, 2006)

I don't know whether this helps but I've recovered from psychosis so even if you were about to have a psychotic episode would it really be that bad?
:roll:


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## IMSojourner (Nov 4, 2006)

Depersonalization disappears when anxiety is under control -- or when it disappears.

I really experience it as a by-product of anxiety, another facet of anxiety, if you will.

All experience is on a continuum.


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## felimz (Jul 4, 2006)

Just wanted to let everyone on here know that it has been over 5 years. I'm 95% better, and it DOES get better--trust me.

Hang in there.


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