# Depersonalization - my story!



## SirDickens. (Dec 14, 2010)

Hello everyone!

For me, living with DPD is like living in some non-materialistic world. Something like a video game. Just lurking around, thinking but not thinking, speaking but not speaking, walking but not walking. Many of the time I feel like I 
don't actually exist. This is probably contributed by this big city I live in, where people are not paying attention to other people much, since they have enough of their own problems to carry on - but I feel like I'm carrying...nothing.

It's not just city that is reason for my "non-existance". It's my constant failing to reach the answer for what is wrong to me. Ever since that panic attack, caused by second and third (out of three) times smoking pot, I feel as
if everything before my DP/DR started was vague and dream, and that now when I know something is wrong, is actually right, right world, my true life.

I know that doesn't make sense, but when I somehow menage to recall some memory it doesn't feel like I experienced it. I can put it in time and space but I can't attach any of my feelings to it. So my goal of finding what is 
wrong to me, makes my mind go from present to past instantaneously in searching for answer.

And just when I'm about to grab that Pandora's box containing my answer, myself - it just slips through my fingers and falls deeper into my mind and drifts to future - into this big void, emptiness.

Like it's awaiting my new coming and yet like it wants to trick me again.

My thinking is different if that is what I do. When I recall memory of myself before DP I don't "feel", but I can clearly distinguish, let's say it, what was before and now - and before I would just think and do things,
those things were coming naturally and tedious, but now my thinking overtakes me and I feel like I'm paying to much attention to my every single thought which makes them intense,loud and much time - intrusive, unwanted. 
I can by my symptoms clearly put myself in the boxes of both anxiety and depression disorders, but I don't feel depressed (usually) and as well not anxious much of the time - but I whole time, in bigger or smaller dose feel detached.
I've red few books about DPD and that is the place where I can put myself. I'm somehow happy about belonging to DPD, no matter how much Ironic that is; I found where I belong - it helped a bit on retaining my ego, let's say 
my purpose and my path as well and helped me against my fears - fear of going crazy, which I will talk about lately why this helped me really much.

I don't have out of body experiences (I did have them but by that time didn't even know what they are and they didn't scare me - happened before using pot), neither I look at myself while not doing my own thinking (had those as well, but really rarely), but my existentialist questioning (What are we? Why are we like this? How do we think? How do we feel? Why are we here and not somewhere else? Why did we born? etc. this list goes infinitely) makes me swirl in my mind detaching my mind, body and feelings. And by all those it would say that even before my experimenting with pot I had some DPD symptoms.

Many times I feel like "I" am running three different paths. One is this world, where I guess *material and touchable ego* of myself is walking, talking and interacting with other people and world, other path is my mind's path, which is in some great philosophical 
world placed in big *temple* like the ruler of it's own world *shaped by my imagination*, and the third one is my feelings' world, I'd rather use term *prison* - feelings imprisoned by don't know who or what, making "me" dull,numb,emotionless.

I did have other symptoms of depersonalization like microscopia, like looking through veil or some thick glass, depth perceptions feels wrong - stuff too distant or to close to me, many times sounds sound distant and like machine made, my thoughts sometimes feel like they were outside my head, loud and almost clear as external voice of myself, many times I hear a funny joke, but I feel like I needed to force myself to laugh, it doesn't come naturally, other feelings are also usually forced. I used to be probably the most empathic person in the world, and yet now many times I must force myself to feel others' emotions as if I'm apathic and I know I'm not. My time sometimes seems altered as well, especially when I take daily naps, when I woke up I feel like I just arrived at the planet and don't even know what era is and this can last, then deja-vu appears and feelings like
everything starts to have no meaning - time tends to slowly go on, turning sometimes in the feeling of nothingness as if I have no thoughts at all.

If I could speak of the intensity of my detachment I would say that the most severe, 100% depersonalization, was when I was high for the 2nd and 3rd (my last times using pot)..continuing being that severe for 2-3 days where I felt like everything is dream and my experiences of past, present and future through these days were mixed and repeating them self in some never ending strange and uncanny deja-vu.That few days and almost 2 weeks after pot "incident" I got insomnia, which came as severe anxiety's and depersonalizations' friend, which brought her children shallow sleep and nightmares with her. :/

All that subsided by time. Like it went away, only occasionally returning but not as severe as it was, but I'm afraid it will come again, full-blown like it was the first time - living vivid deja-vu nightmare. Even when I have depersonalization episodes they don't last long. For a moment I would feel like everything is unreal, flat or two dimensional, or I became really detached from everything, but I try my best to snap out of it, cause I know it's DP/DR when it kicks me and by forcing my every cell and will, it usually stops. My longest episode, after those pot induced severe and intense first ones, was microscopia. It lasted about three days, where my cellphone and other familiar objects would be so small and diminished in size to the point I wouldn't feel it anymore, like they were atom size. And that macroscopia was about 40-50% intensive. Never, after that most intense depersonalization (Mary Jane's one) it returned in intensity bigger than, I dunno maybe 60%. Even in most stressful, anxious and depressed periods while it is most intense it doesn't go over that line of 60%.

Now that I think about, only emotion that never fully left me is - fear. From the beginning I was afraid the things and feeling I'm experiencing is schizophrenia. To this day I menage to convince and re convince myself that it is some mental disorder - scaring myself each time.
However this fear withdraws to it's burrow lately, where I hope it will stay for as much as possible, when I read in Daphne Simeon's book that if anything depersonalization is just the opposite of mental illness. That helped me a lot.
Even though I've read that on other sources as well, this time it really stuck in my mind and helped me.









Hello everyone, my name is Bruno and I think I'm suffering from depersonalization. I'm 19yo, Mechanical Engineering student and before my DP/DR hit me was always the funny and "wanted" guy.
I've read much on this forum, but didn't responded much cause I had a need to firstly introduce myself.
This was long. But I know that there are people who read my post and are experiencing the same things. That's why I came here. To get helped by those who can understand me and to help others I can understand.

Best regards,
Bruno. xoxo


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