# DP and masturbation / anxiety



## mg93 (11 mo ago)

Hello everybody. Before telling to you my story, I prefer say that I'm a non native english speaker guy and english is not very easy for me so if you see some errors / weird sentences, I'm sorry.

Firstly, I'm 18, gamer (lot of time with screens) and I'm very anxious. Since my childhood, I'm anxious for anything, and since many years, I am a bit hypochondriac, I think that my problems, when I have one, are for my whole life, that I will never get out of this.

2.5 years ago, during summer 2019, my parents divorced. I had a long period of stress, and in september, an inexistant noise in my ears (that you call "tinnitus") appeared. At the beginning, I was not very stressed about it, but 2/3 weeks later, the sound intensified during a week, so I was very very anxious. The friday, the evening, I felt weird, I had dizziness, feeling of not really being there, sleeping upright. So I had DP or derealization, I don't really know which one I have. (this shit appeared in october). One month later, in november, my stress / anxiety / anguish gave me a new gift, visual snow. Litteraly it's the feeling of see like a snow, 24h/7d, especially in obscurity. I want to say that this snow appeared after 2 weeks of "Attarax", an anxiolytic, the day after stopping treatment, so I guess that stress, without Attarax, came up suddenly and caused this symptom of visual snow. After that, I lived in a depression during 3/4 months and I stopped to have attention to these symptoms (tinnitus and visual snow. I don't knew what was DP so I wasn't concentrating on it, I hardly paid any attention to it. After the winter (beginning of 2020), my life was better. With covid and lockdown in march in my country, I was in my house with my family, far from school, in countryside, with my friends on Discord, with the sun that comes after a long winter.Tinnitus decreased, visual snow too, and DP too but not completely. An MRI showed everything in my brain to be normal

My last year in high school (sept. 2021 to june 2022) were beautiful. I was happy, I had some stress and anxiety but I don't had health issues. I noticed that when I was stressed / hyper anxious, all my symtoms (DP / tinnitus / visual snow) were stronger, but only during these short periods of stress.

This year, my problems came back. I'm in "preparatory class for schools", a rather elitist training in my country which prepares me for a competition which would allow me to enter what is called a "Grande Ecole", the equivalent of the best universities in the USA / UK. I'm in the middle of town (which I hate), and moreover in boarding school, so full time. Due to the party for the new year 2022, I had covid and tested positive a few days after the beginnig of this year and just after the end of my lockdown / end of my illness, I had a very very very weird thing that happened in genital zone, that is called "hard flaccid". I'm a man, and for a man, see this part of his body have a problem and moreover little known by doctors is very anxiety inducing. So during 3 weeks, stress was present, and I felt that visual snow and DP came back a little more than before. For some ppl who have this it's caused by excessive masturbation or techniques to enlarge their penis (I am not al lot concerned by the first and absolutly not by the second). So, during the last week, I was stressed cause sometimes I wanted to masturbate but I knew that it's probably the thing that caused this hard flaccid.

And one time, during the end of last week, I masturbated but in the fear of make worse my symptoms of hard flaccid. Some minutes after finishing, I felt really weird. I had dizziness a lot, headaches (DP/DR but a lot). Two hours after, I tell to my family that I felt strange and we then measured my blood pressure, which was 17 (I'm normally 11). I don't told anything about masturbation, I was really too ashamed and you know that with DP, you don't have any control on anything. You are just here, in mode spectator, in /gamemode 3. After some hours, my blood pressure became normal, I had less dizziness than before and a scanner said that all in my brain is normal (the doctors were probably afraid of a blood problem in the brain, because of my headache).

Since this episode, my DP/DR is very strong, I feel like asleep, 70% asleep. I can't have a normal conversation without concentrating. My visual snow came back more stronger than before in my life and I have like photophobia, light is like my ennemy sometimes. I want to sleep all the time.

So this is my question, do you think that this back of DP/DR is due to stress/anxiety or this episode of masturbation or anything else (or the both) ? How can I feel better ?

Sorry for this long text, and thank you for your possible answer !

If you have any question, I will answering with great pleasure


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## Trith (Dec 31, 2019)

Salut ! I have never heard of any link between masturbation and DPDR. But there is definitely a strong link between DPDR and anxiety, this is for sure. It sounds like you are going through a shitload of stress, and I know that these "classes prépas" are really hard, almost like an abusive experience. I had a colleague who went into deep depression because such a school, and today I was just listening to a woman online who made a suicide attempt because of a serious burnout during the same thing. All of this is really hard.
I have been stressed about potential sexual problems for a while, it happened like around 15, and it did feel like my whole world was collapsing, because I thought this could affect my future sexuality, or I thought, my ability to be in a relationship. It turns out that for me it was absolutely not the case, what I thought was a sexual problem is something real but it never was an actual problem and I have never met a girl/woman who cared a single bit about it. But still, that anxiety was there for real.
You might have had a look at the recovery stories here already, I think there are a lot of experiences of people who suffered with anxiety or panic attacks, and for a lot of these people, their DPDR symptoms subsided when they solved their anxiety or panic attacks. If you are like most of them, it means you might find some relief by just focusing on solving the anxiety problem and all your DPDR symptoms could go away without you having to do anything about them directly. DPDR symptoms are weird and they can easily put people in an anxiety loop, because they feel crazy, they feel impossible to understand, and people feel they should figure them out in order to fix them. But this is all part of the symptoms as well, and fortunately there is no need to "find the way out of the maze". The maze usually dissolve when people find a way to treat their anxiety.
Have you ever been to therapy for that? I heard that cognitive behavioral therapy works really well for a lot of people dealing with anxiety, (and psychoanalysis only usually doesn't - I'm saying that because there are still a lot of psychoanalysts in France).


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## mg93 (11 mo ago)

Trith said:


> Salut ! I have never heard of any link between masturbation and DPDR. But there is definitely a strong link between DPDR and anxiety, this is for sure. It sounds like you are going through a shitload of stress, and I know that these "classes prépas" are really hard, almost like an abusive experience. I had a colleague who went into deep depression because such a school, and today I was just listening to a woman online who made a suicide attempt because of a serious burnout during the same thing. All of this is really hard.
> I have been stressed about potential sexual problems for a while, it happened like around 15, and it did feel like my whole world was collapsing, because I thought this could affect my future sexuality, or I thought, my ability to be in a relationship. It turns out that for me it was absolutely not the case, what I thought was a sexual problem is something real but it never was an actual problem and I have never met a girl/woman who cared a single bit about it. But still, that anxiety was there for real.
> You might have had a look at the recovery stories here already, I think there are a lot of experiences of people who suffered with anxiety or panic attacks, and for a lot of these people, their DPDR symptoms subsided when they solved their anxiety or panic attacks. If you are like most of them, it means you might find some relief by just focusing on solving the anxiety problem and all your DPDR symptoms could go away without you having to do anything about them directly. DPDR symptoms are weird and they can easily put people in an anxiety loop, because they feel crazy, they feel impossible to understand, and people feel they should figure them out in order to fix them. But this is all part of the symptoms as well, and fortunately there is no need to "find the way out of the maze". The maze usually dissolve when people find a way to treat their anxiety.
> Have you ever been to therapy for that? I heard that cognitive behavioral therapy works really well for a lot of people dealing with anxiety, (and psychoanalysis only usually doesn't - I'm saying that because there are still a lot of psychoanalysts in France).


Merci beaucoup pour ta réponse ! I have not been to see a psychologist or another doctor of mental health, because of the long time to have an appointment (covid created a too big demand) and 2 weeks ago, all my symptoms were livable. I know that it's stress. Almost all of my problems since years are caused by anxiety. I will call a psychotherapist soon and beat these problems. I nearly beat tinnitus, visual snow, and DP/DR once all at once, and beating an enemy you've faced before is easier. 

Thank you very much for your answer ! This one and recovery stories help me a lot, it helps to keep my feet on the ground, thank you for helping me in my improvement of English, where I also have a long way before majoring in "DS" and I hope that your "préparationnaire" colleague is fine today.


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## Carpacano (11 mo ago)

I can see myself in every symptom you described except for the hard flaccid thing (tho i have practically 0 libido and find it hard if not impossible to even get aroused). I too have, like you, visual snow and tinnitus as well as DPDR, obviously. Just the last week, i had one of the toughest times I had in recent memory and I felt EVERY symptom you described: DPDR increased, automatism became unbearable, surroundings and time started to feel like they were skipping time (especially while changing room/walking down the street) and physical effects became way, WAY worse, with visual snow making it impossible to read or even look at a computer screen. I'm not so sure about tinnitus tho: even i lamented it way more than the usual, i didn't feel an increase in intensity and i think i just lamented it more because i had an harder time concentrating on the world, so it was only me and my conditions.



mg93 said:


> So this is my question, do you think that this back of DP/DR is due to stress/anxiety or this episode of masturbation or anything else (or the both) ? How can I feel better ?


Most certainly yes; DPDR IS caused by anxiety, which is then fueled by stress that you certainly have during your experience. But the only evidence i can give to you between VS and stress is that I live it in first person many times, and it's also a very common condition between DPDR patients. This may or may not do with hyperactivity of certain zones of the brain, which are supposed to be linked to both VS and DPDR.


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## mg93 (11 mo ago)

Carpacano said:


> I can see myself in every symptom you described except for the hard flaccid thing (tho i have practically 0 libido and find it hard if not impossible to even get aroused). I too have, like you, visual snow and tinnitus as well as DPDR, obviously. Just the last week, i had one of the toughest times I had in recent memory and I felt EVERY symptom you described: DPDR increased, automatism became unbearable, surroundings and time started to feel like they were skipping time (especially while changing room/walking down the street) and physical effects became way, WAY worse, with visual snow making it impossible to read or even look at a computer screen. I'm not so sure about tinnitus tho: even i lamented it way more than the usual, i didn't feel an increase in intensity and i think i just lamented it more because i had an harder time concentrating on the world, so it was only me and my conditions.
> 
> 
> Most certainly yes; DPDR IS caused by anxiety, which is then fueled by stress that you certainly have during your experience. But the only evidence i can give to you between VS and stress is that I live it in first person many times, and it's also a very common condition between DPDR patients. This may or may not do with hyperactivity of certain zones of the brain, which are supposed to be linked to both VS and DPDR.


Thank you for your answer ! I hope we will better with time and less stress/anxiety. We mist get rid of this shit.


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