# My theory on loss of self



## Punno (Jun 10, 2012)

Hi all,

I've had quite some time to think about this, and as I'm slowly recovering it seems to become clearer by the day.

The most common feeling that we suffer during depersonalization and derealization are loss of sense of self, the feeling that "you" are drifting away and becoming non existent. Having dealt with both disorders over the course of ten years, and more recently the most brutal of all bouts of DP I believe I have come to a conclusion as to why this happens.

Our sense of self, major parts of our personality, these are fueled by our working and short term memory. The way you feel right now, your "awareness", is a combination of feelings and memories. It may be the way you felt yesterday when the sun touched your skin, remembering something funny that happened at work last Friday, the taste of the food you ate 15 minutes ago.

When DP/DR set in, sometimes even before, you begin to spend more time inside your head than outside. I have had DP/DR triggered two ways, first after smoking weed which was immediate but was also a result of underlying stress and anxiety that I didn't realize I had, and secondly 10 weeks ago which I could actually see coming and was a result of anxiety and hypochondria. The common factor, regardless of how I got it, is that I began to spend more time inside my head than outside. Every waking moment was spent with my mind spiraling out of control, constant analysis of my body and mental state, constant paranoia, and as a result of this I was not observing and taking in the world around me as usual.

Getting to the point, the longer I spent inside my head the less I absorbed, as this happened I felt progressively worse. It got to the point where I felt my brain was "resetting" every minute, that each minute was my first in existence and I began to completely lose touch with my surroundings. Being able to look back on this now I can see exactly why this occurs, your brain can only store so much information in its active and short term memory, once these fill up your short term memory gets transformed into long term memory and makes room for the storage of new information.

Now I'm no rocket surgeon, but if you are totally consumed by DP/DR to the point where you no longer absorb information around you there will come a point where you are completely void of short term memory which is coincidentally a major symptom of DP/DR. As your minutes, hours, days and weeks become nothing but 24/7 thought circles the pieces that made up your short term memory disappear, eventually those pieces that formed your "active self" are pushed completely into your long term memory and feeling normal seems like it was a lifetime ago. This would have an extremely large impact on your perception of time as its perception heavily relies on your observation of the world around you, which is again coincidentally a common symptom.

There is another part to this puzzle, while being in this state we remain completely in control - we can even pretend that we are normal and fool others. Deep down we know that we are still the same person no matter how bad we feel or how close we feel were are to having our minds snap. This, I believe, is our long term memory. Once our short term memory is no longer storing our experiences and the information we're absorbing from one moment to another the only fallback we have is whatever is stored in our long term. This in turn would explain why we feel constantly on autopilot (and yes, once again a common symptom), it's like being really drunk and driving and having no idea how you got home safely. For me it seems that anything I did repeatedly before my DP set in I can manage without even thinking about it, however taking in new things is nearly impossible.

My mind up until a week ago was completely consumed by the thoughts of dying and my symptoms of DR/DP, I felt completely alone and that time and on the verge of just disappearing into nothingness. I faced my fear at the doctor, 5 years of procrastination and hypochondria and beat it. One short week later I now spend large chunks of my day not thinking about DP/DR at all, I remember parts of my day and even parts of yesterday and that makes me feel so much more like "me", I use these small memories to focus on when feeling hints of dp during the day and bit by bit my sense of self is rebuilding.

Anyway let me know your thoughts, I'm sure I'll get trolled but this makes a lot of sense to me.


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## Guest (Jul 9, 2012)

This was something I was pondering the other day and I don't think your that far off. Even my doctor said my recollection is so poor because the anxiety is keeping me from focusing on my surroundings.


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## PositiveThinking! (Mar 5, 2010)

This makes absolute sense in my opinion, after 3 years struggling with this I can totally support this idea. My short term memory is horrible, and that makes it impossible to gather up new information such as how to get somewhere, I can never remember the way and many other stuff related to that, so it would make a lot of sense that I don't feel like I'm "here" because as you said, short term memory affects what you are and how you're feeling, also when I'm feeling really bad, I notice that I can't remember anything the past few hours or so, it's like someone messed with my head, so taking supplements that help you out with memory would help I'm guessing?

I'm currently taking Omega 3 , I hope it helps (even if it's just a bit)


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## Punno (Jun 10, 2012)

I'm taking fish oil, magnesium and vitamin b complex. One thing I will say is that unless we each attend to the things that fuel our anxiety (for me this was hypochondria) then no supplement on earth will give us relief. I found that be getting rid of my anxiety I felt more in control and my mind started to slow down, I began to have patches of an hour or two where I would go without thinking about anything and the more this happens the more I feel things coming back.

On the plus side, now that I'm recovering and thinking about things less I can really notice what taking supplements and quitting smoking/drinking have done for me over the past 10 weeks - its quite amazing. Usually when we're suffering through chronic stages of DP/DR we are too introverted to notice any changes in our bodies apart from the ones we subconsciously put on ourselves through paranoia.


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## PositiveThinking! (Mar 5, 2010)

Well I've been trying to get rid of my anxiety for quite a while now, I was extremely anxious ever since I was a kid, it's only gotten worse until now, and ended up in a huge crisis 3 years ago and that's when my DP started.
I get anxious over everything its crazy, but it's mostly my fault anyways so I'll have to solve this mess, a few years ago I managed to get rid of some anxiety, I actually felt "normal" back then so I'll just figure out what happened and do the same, because in my case, I'm pretty sure that anxiety triggered this crap :/


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## sunyata samsara (Feb 18, 2011)

I agree.


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## torturedmind93 (Jul 18, 2012)

I completely agree. I don't know how exactly I got myself into this mess, but I can't stand it. I have the exact same problem of being stuck inside my own mind, over thinking about how I feel and fearing that I have no emotions etc...

Sometimes I'm just so scared of my own mind and can't comprehend that I'm the one doing this.

This all started back when I highschool ended last year for me. I had panic attacks and boom, all this happened.

Time sometimes feels really slow, at first when I first got DP, time went extremely fast. So far, this summer has felt like 10 years. And the summer is only half over!

This is obviously a subjective experience that a handful of unlucky people somehow get into (including myself).

DP is essentially a Psychological condition involving the self, short term memory, our emotions, our experience of life, the way we perceive time, etc...

I just want this to end...


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## PositiveThinking! (Mar 5, 2010)

torturedmind93 said:


> Time sometimes feels really slow, at first when I first got DP, time went extremely fast. So far, this summer has felt like 10 years. And the summer is only half over!


Exactly the same here man! Time feels extremely slow, unlike when I first got DP, also I lose track of time like so many times that it ain't even funny :/


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## torturedmind93 (Jul 18, 2012)

The biggest part of this I hate is the constant panicing and fear and fear of people getting angry at me/yelling at me.

If I could have one wish, it would be to rid the world of all mental disorders.


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