# My Experience with Chronic Derealization



## avidguy84

Hey everybody out there. I wanted to share my personal experiences with depersonalization and more particularly derealization with everyone. I have struggled with derealization for over four years and have had an extremely difficult time describing how I was feeling or figuring out exactly why I was feeling the way I was. It seems like I can draw an exact line between what I call my "present life" and my "past life," which was my life before I began feeling this way. In all honesty, the events of my life before this started happening grow fuzzier and fainter by the day, and seem more and more like a fictional account of my life or a film than my actual life experiences. I have pictures and faint memories that tell me these things happened in my life. These are really the only things I have to go on to remind me that I even had a past life. Other than that, it really, truly seems that I just wasn't there to experience those things. Like they happened to someone else, not the person that I identify myself as today. 
To describe how I feel everyday in the simplest way possible, it is like I have a veil over my eyes 24/7 which for reasons inexplicable does not allow me to truly acknowledge or interpret what I see with my eyes as reality. I see things with my eyes, and they are clear images. Yet, something in my mind is forcing a sense of disconnect with what I am seeing. I am a perfectly functional, normal human being. I have no problem functioning socially, in society, at work, school, etc. I live my life. I graduated from college, have great friends and have had many pleasant and enjoyable life experiences. The problem is though that while I go through these experiences and react emotionally and situationally, I am completely incapable of living in the moment. Rather than truly appreciating and experiencing life, I am simply going through the motions of life, as if my mind is incapable of picking up and maintaining the moment by moment experiences that my body is going through. It seems that my mind cannot process what I experience in life fast enough, so instead of gaining the insight or enjoyment one gets from truly being in the moment and experiencing life as it happens, my mind is always moving on to the next thing. As a result, I find myself trying to recollect things that have happened, after the fact. Examples of these things can be a conversation with someone, a long car ride, or watching a movie. 
What I experience is a severe compression of time, in which the time that has elapsed during a certain experience just compresses in my mind so that something which may have taken 3 hours seems to have taken 15 minutes or so. What I am trying to say without getting too much into it is that my mind is like a sieve, dropping memories, experiences and information constantly as time goes on. It is not like I have a lapse of memory and completely forget the thing I just did, but it is really more the sense of going through these experiences and, though you may remember bits and pieces of what transpired, just not feeling like you were actually there. This is what life is like for me. My body takes me through every day, to work and back, day in and day out. Yet my mind is always somewhere else. 
If I had to pinpoint the exact point in my life when I became aware that I was feeling like this, it was almost five years ago, when I got a mild concussion. Ever since then, I don't feel like I have ever been the same. People may not realize it, but in my mind I just felt different. There was also a short period in my life when I smoked alot of marijuana, and I know from reading people's strories that that can cause derealization over the short term. The problem is that this has been going on now for almost five years. I really cannot remember now not ever feeling this way. It just seems like this feeling has always been with me, even though I know that there was a point in my life when I was able to truly experience life and live in the moment, where I had no sense of disconnect between the experiences and actions my body was going through and what my mind was also experiencing at those times. However, I have definitely been able to live my life without constantly dwelling on feeling this way. It has just been such a constant presence in my life for so long now that I tend to just take it for granted, like it is almost normal for me to be feeling this way. Even so, I always find myself coming back to it, wondering what this disconnect is, what is causing it, and why it has been going on for so long. The utter emptiness I feel. The sense of not feeling human, feeling dead inside. This is what I always come back to. 
I moved away from my family in May of last year, and even though I think of it as a major accomplishment in my life, it has been almost ten months and I still have not truly grasped the concept that I am living on my own, tremendous as it may be. This realization, like most things I experience, is fleeting. What I have realized is that ever since I have moved away, the derealization I have been feeling has grown exponentially worse. I walk around everyday in a complete mental haze. I wake up in the morning, get on the train and go to work. Ten hours later, I am back in my room, and I feel like what I experienced that day never really happened. My body has dragged me through another day. I have had significant lapses in short term memory as well. For example, I may forget what I had for dinner on a particular evening. I tend to recollect these things quickly, but the feeling of not being able to readily recall simple things like these is jarring. In some instances, my mind-body disconnect and derealization has affected certain experiences so much that it really seems like I was not there to experience them. I spent an enjoyable weekend with some friends from college last month, and I had a great time. When I got back however, this overwhelming feeling really just hit me out of nowhere. Was I really there for 3 or 4 days? I'm pretty sure I was, I have my bus ticket and my bag that is still packed. Yet it really, truly seems like I never left. Like my mind was on complete autopilot for 3-4 days, so much so that when I got back, I actually felt like I had not been there at all. This really frightened me. The fact that I could go through an experience and just not even truly experience it. Not just not experience it, but actually feel like it didn't really happen, like I wasn't ever there. 
Things like this really make me think that something has got to give. I really just feel completely dead inside. I am not suicidal, but there just doesn't seem to be any point to living if you cannot truly experience life. This is not the way that life was meant to be experienced or enjoyed. Quite frankly, I cannot continue living my life day to day like this in complete automation. I have fears that I will be an old man one day, whose life has comletely passed him by. I will have nothing to recollect or draw from. I will feel like my life never really happened. This, more than anything else, really, truly scares me. I want so much for this not to happen, though I feel that it just may one day. Fortunately, I was blessed to finally disover that what I was feeling was an actual disorder. That other people like me were experiencing the same thing. To be able to put a name to it was extremely cathartic for me. For so long it seeemed like I was the only one alive who felt like this, and that I could not even begin to describe how I was feeling to someone. It seemed that no one would ever truly understand how it felt to go through life like I do. 
If you took the time to read all of this, then I truly, truly appreciate it. This has been an honest and wholehearted attempt to articulate how I feel and how I live. This is my story, and I would love to hear other people's stories and experiences with derealization, so that I really can feel like I am not alone. Thank you.


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## wmk

Hi,

I experience the same as you. My derealisation also started directly after I fell on ice, so a concussion as well. From that day I am experiencing it every day. In the beginning I have been going to psychologists and took medication, seroxat, but it didn't help. My brain functions were also analyzed with an MRI-scan, but nothin was found. Then I didn't want to speak about it anymore and stopped seeing docters. Now, several years later, I don't want to live anymore like this, so I am going to see docters again. Hopefully it will help.

Anyway, good luck with your situation!

By the way English is not my native language so there will be some spelling errors in the text ; )

Greetings,

wmk


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## Melynt

your definitely not alone in this, Ive felt the same way. It started like a feeling of uneasyness that I could just brush aside, but its gotten so bad, ive felt so out of body and as though reality isnt real that I cant even drive anymore or work anymore. Hopefully that will force me to do something about it and get better. Its a good thing you realized this, me and you both need to just find how to feel real again.


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## Camtosh2000

Ive just started to get this again i got it once when i moved from a small town to a bigger town way uo country i left home with my mum and 2 siblings to live with my grandparents whilst i studied at college ( i live in the uk incase anyone abroad thought of a different college) anyways i started to get dematerialization and depersonalization really bad to the point in which i could go and do a whole day at college get home and feel like id just woke up and then all the things i did in college would be all hazy and blured i losr appatite and intrest in all my usual hobbies. I bearely left my room had no joy from anything and was unsuasually emotional over things id usually not care about. Ive allways had anxiety and thouvht thats what originally set it off but juat never knew. That all settled down after a while and i began to be normal again untill only a short time after i devolped really bad depression. Although i feel like this burden will be with me for a while yet as it seems to come in waves. Sprry for typing the longest response but i felt i needed to tell someone and that this sorta helps if abyone could help me with any coping techniques then that would be much appreciated as i feel it just keeps coming back worse. Many thanks cameron


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