# Doubting your own existence?



## RainyDaze (May 5, 2014)

Is it common in DP to doubt your own existence? But not anything else. I had been having an okay week, am on second week of zoloft and noticed some reduced anxiety yesterday. However this morning I just suddenly felt hollow and began to wonder how I could know if I exist. I know I do since obviously my family talks to me and all of that, but I just have this uncanny feeling that I am a ghost or a thought and nothing more, that everything I ever was was a lie or a story and I'm suddenly realizing I don't exist at all. I can handle feeling a bit out of body or emotionally numb, but is it still DP to doubt your own existence? Will this doubting ever cease?


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## RainyDaze (May 5, 2014)

Like it seems around the forum that it is really common to doubt the existence of outside world/people/things but is it common to doubt your own existence? Beyond just feeling like I have no self, it just feels like I have evaporated. But I don't doubt the existence of anything else, just myself - I keep thinking obsessively that I have somehow ceased to be.


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## marry1985 (Dec 1, 2013)

That's dp. Depersonalization is related to everything you are, to the way you perceive yourself, your life, your past everything.


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## katiej (Jan 21, 2012)

yes thats defo dp


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## Meticulous (Jul 30, 2013)

Doubting the existence of external elements is the derealization. Doubting your own existence is the depersonalization. Majority of the time they go hand in hand and are directly related, although many people disagree.

However it is completely normal to question these types of things with DP/DR. Just know that whatever uncomfortable sensation you may get when it comes to absurd thoughts, is 99.99% of the time related to DP/DR!


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## bluecanary (May 2, 2014)

TheMessenjah said:


> Doubting the existence of external elements is the derealization. Doubting your own existence is the depersonalization. Majority of the time they go hand in hand and are directly related, although many people disagree.
> 
> However it is completely normal to question these types of things with DP/DR. Just know that whatever uncomfortable sensation you may get when it comes to absurd thoughts, is 99.99% of the time related to DP/DR!


I completely agree. I believe they're the same fear, just pointed in different directions. DP is centered on thoughts and feelings about yourself, whereas DR is focused on the people and things around you. They're both terrifying in different ways. I often have difficulty believing that these thoughts are part of DP/DR, but logically, I know they are. It's a tough thing to know what's true and what's not when your mind is playing these sorts of tricks on you. I don't always feel human. Most day, I wonder what humans are, as weird as that sounds. I could sit and explain who and what we are all day long, logically speaking, but it's like my brain can't process it. So I know how you feel.


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## RainyDaze (May 5, 2014)

Is it normal also when doing anything, to be obsessively thinking like, who is seeing this? Who am I? Because I feel in some ways I am so hyper aware of existence I have somehow moved beyond myself - like rather than just *being* I am trying to distract myself but can never be fully distracted because I keep thinking, who is doing this? Who sees this? How am I speaking? Where is my personality? Etc round and round.


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## katiej (Jan 21, 2012)

i know exactly what you mean. its gotten to the point for me that im scared to even think. How do i know things (logically i know i have learned them) . but its like im so overly aware of this.

i dont know if its that i feel i dont exist. its just that i dont really believe what i know. i feel like my reality is only normal to me because i was born here and seen these things, but its like im overly aware of this now and i cant trust my own thing. Cause i feel because i am human i am conditioned to think a certain way. And now i feel detatched from this.

anyone else understand me ?x


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## Erik197834 (Jul 5, 2013)

I am also hyper aware of existence. It is freaking me out!! It is like I found the boundary and limitations of my senses. I experience the world

at an other level so it seems. Things that I did not notice before, stare me right in the face now.


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## katiej (Jan 21, 2012)

i dunno if anyone feels this. but feel like when im sitting here now its a memory and its not something that is happening now. things are familiar but theres this wrong feeling about them. like i was never human or here before. yet ive seen everything around me before.


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## bluecanary (May 2, 2014)

RainyDaze said:


> Is it normal also when doing anything, to be obsessively thinking like, who is seeing this? Who am I? Because I feel in some ways I am so hyper aware of existence I have somehow moved beyond myself - like rather than just *being* I am trying to distract myself but can never be fully distracted because I keep thinking, who is doing this? Who sees this? How am I speaking? Where is my personality? Etc round and round.


Rainy - you have just described, verbatim, how I'm feeling at the moment. My DP/DR shifts its manifestations and focuses periodically, but I think the most disturbing is this exact feeling. Most times I feel like two people - the one who gets up in the morning, drinks tea, eats breakfast, makes the bed, goes shopping, etc. etc. etc., and the one who lives deeper inside my own head, trying to understand it all. I feel alienated from my body, and I'm struggling to try to reunite my emotional/intellectual self with my physical self. I've noticed that this is worse when I'm out in public on my own among strangers (as opposed to my fiance or other people I know) or at home by myself. It's almost as though I'm hyper-aware of my own presence, as weird as that might sound. While part of me is very afraid that I'll be "stuck" in this thought pattern forever, I take solace in the fact that there are times when I can just forget it and enjoy whatever moment I happen to be in (just today, I was singing in the shower - I can't tell you how long it's been since I've done that).

Dr. B - thank you for mentioning nihilism. I actually wasn't familiar with the term and looked it up. I've had inklings of these sorts of thoughts from time to time - I figured I was just an oddball. It's interesting to know it has a name!


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## Tigerangel (Jan 1, 2012)

I feel the same way about doubting my existence even though I know I really am 'me' and exist. Most of the time I had regular DP/DR, but since 2011, after an episode with looking at a lamp, I got 'blind spots,' and couldn't think what to speak for a 1/2 hour, and had a panic attack. Ever since this time terrible thoughts of 'me' existing has obsessively got stuck in my thoughts over and over again. Of course, when I'm extremely busy or/ occupied deeply with worrying about something, it seems to go into the background, until my mind gets all 'empty' again. The thoughts cause an uncomfortable feeling like something is repressed or/blocked, and thinking them causes a bad episode of DP/DR to worsen. I'm looking for a therapis,t but not sure yet who I should go to since the obsessive thoughts have entered the picture.


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