# "Brain Fog" for 4 years



## Eclara (Dec 17, 2012)

Hello! I'm 20 years old (21 in a few days) and I've had "brain fog" constantly for about four years. Nobody is able to grasp what I'm saying when I describe my issues, and it's been very isolating for me. The last straw was this past week when my therapist told me that she had no idea what was wrong with me, that what I had was "sort of like dissociation, but not". Losing the definition of DP/DR made me feel even more isolated, so I'm posting my experiences here for opinions or advice, and maybe to feel a little less alone. So here's how it is for me:

I have a very strong, dreamlike feeling all of the time, and I always feel very, very far away. I sometimes try to describe it as feeling like I'm behind a foot of glass. I sometimes feel that I'm standing a few feet away from the glass, and when it gets particularly bad I feel that I am floating in space behind the glass, and I am watching what I see through "my" eyes projected through it from lightyears away.

I have a lot of trouble remembering things. I lose words midsentence or stumble over them, I forget concepts I understood half a minute ago, I lose my train of thought constantly. I don't feel very in control when I speak, and I always say things I don't mean to and ramble on endlessly. Then, when I've stopped, I question whether I said anything at all. I also have trouble concentrating much of the time. I always feel like when I complete something I do it by the skin of my teeth, like I managed to scrape by on sheer luck and I don't really know what I'm doing.

When the fog feeling gets very bad I lose track of whether I have actually done something, or if I only dreamt it or thought about it. At one point a few years back I literally could not tell when I was dreaming and when I was awake.

I don't really feel human anymore. I'll look at other people and just feel like I'm observing a whole other species. It gives me a weird feeling when I am called girl, daughter, sister because I don't feel human enough to even have a gender. I don't know if that makes sense to you.

Movies and pictures seem more real than looking at the real world. I could look at a sunset, and then at a photograph of the same sunset and the photograph would look much more real.

I have a LOT of time distortion, where something that happened 4 hours ago might feel like it was 3 weeks ago, or something that happened 2 weeks earlier might feel like it had happened the day before, or an hour might feel like a day or a day like an hour. I get the distinct feeling that I am 'outside time', especially when it comes to day and night- like if you were to watch a day pass from space, all you'd see was the Earth turning and it wouldn't ever really feel to you like morning or afternoon or midnight.

Sometimes I feel like I don't have a body at all, that I am made of dust or light or air that is constantly in danger of drifting apart, across the Earth and out into space. Then, when I look at my body, I get the distinct feeling that it isn't mine. Those are not my legs. These are not my hands. I also feel like I'm floating at times.

I am very disconnected from my emotions, and I have a lot of trouble identifying what I'm feeling or telling emotions apart- they tend to feel the same to me, apart from anxiety and frustration. The more physical the emotion, the better I can identify it generally.

I have some trouble with memories, where things from my childhood and adolescence seem very vague- like I'm watching just the silhouette of them. As far as I remember I had a pretty average childhood, I was a bit of a loner but was very sheltered and never really experienced anything traumatic.

Everything looks blurry and yet I can see perfectly fine. It's like there's a disconnect between my eyes and my brain, and everything gets jumbled. I have visual snow and I see things move out of the corners of my eyes when nothing is there.

Sometimes I look at the ground and I feel like I'm 20 feet tall, or I'll look at a piece of furniture or a car on the street and they will look small, like toys. Sometimes the walls and the furniture look flat, like they're made of cardboard and I could just push them over. Sometimes fabric patterns and edges of objects look too sharp and focused to be real.

I have a lot of issues with faces as well. When I talk to people I often have to look away because their faces look distorted somehow. I've always described it as looking like "a collection of parts" rather than a whole, single face. I also sometimes get the impression when having conversations that people are talking right through me, that I am invisible and they are talking to the wall behind me. When I look in the mirror it always seems like my own reflection is a different person, and I halfway expect her to move or morph into something else.

I feel like a ghost. Like I'm on another plane, invisible here, and I could walk through the wall or right down into the Earth if I knew how. Sometimes I have to talk myself off the ledge of actually believing that that is true because nothing in my life makes sense if I am actually still alive.

That's as well as I can explain it, I think. Does it sound like DP or DR to you?


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## Hosscat (Oct 23, 2012)

From what i've read on here and experienced myself it does sound alot like dp/dr in many ways. I wouldnt worry too much about it 'not' being dp, i've seen many a post about the time distortion, emotions, viewing world through glass(experienced that myself a time or two), unhumanlike feelings etc.


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## Dan27Brazil (Nov 1, 2012)

I have a lot of trouble remembering things. I lose words midsentence or stumble over them, I forget concepts I understood half a minute ago, I lose my train of thought constantly. I don't feel very in control when I speak, and I always say things I don't mean to and ramble on endlessly. Then, when I've stopped, I question whether I said anything at all. I also have trouble concentrating much of the time. I always feel like when I complete something I do it by the skin of my teeth, like I managed to scrape by on sheer luck and I don't really know what I'm doing.


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## Dan27Brazil (Nov 1, 2012)

A lot of it happens to me. Especially this one I quoted.


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

I had an EEG which showed significant abnormality in my brain waves. (delta/theta). The neurologist stated that it indicated dysfunction in my temporal lobe. The temporal lobe is where sensory input and emotions are integrated. There is not much to be done about it, but I was glad I referred myself for the diagnostics. Knowing that my symptoms are physiologically based, rather than completely psychological, was somehow comforting to know.


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## eddy1886 (Oct 11, 2012)

Eclara I have every symptom you have described...You are describing classic DP...I wish you well...I can tell you from experience that it improves with time


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## forestx5 (Aug 29, 2008)

_Susto:"_ how could your brain function changes without any reason? "

There was a reason. I was smoking cannabis and had a temporal lobe seizure with 2 minutes of epileptic discharges. I don't know why. I do know, my symptoms began with that seizure and are with me 40 years later.


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