# derealization effecting me for 3 years yesterday...



## AIDANWM3 (Dec 23, 2012)

hey guys im aidan, im 18, and ive been having derealization for three years, atleast i think it is, the definition for derealization is kind of ify i suppose. it was december 22 2009 when i was performing something in front of my entire school, all of a sudden i get this sensation where my vision started getting funny, like when you take too many deep breaths, and your vision starts getting blurry, i had this confused feeling, everything looked so alien like, but i was in a very famliar place. Everything was just weird but at the time i thought i was just tired, but for the rest of the day everything looked alien like. The sensation i had that day went away until march of 2010, when i had been up for over 24 hours, and i was about a mile away from my house and all of a sudden i got hit by this wave of confusion. i had forgotten how i got where i was, i started panicking, my heart was racing, everything looked so weird! That was just a bad day at the time, but for the rest of the year i kept having this unreal sensation. i saw my phycologist and phyciatrist towards the end of 2010, and they both said i have derealization. I looked up derealization online and the symptoms up there were the same symptoms i was having, but i started to wonder what an unreal feeling really was? maybe i was just confused! i dont know. anyway lets fast forward to now 12/23/12 im still being affected by this, currently on a daily basis im having problems leaving my house because when i do i start to panic and get confused about where i am and how i got here. it was only once and a while where i would have a bad experiance. normally i dont have problems, like 3 weeks ago i walked 3 miles away from my house and i was fine. but recently i had to drive 2 hours in the middle of the night by myself and i had a bad experiance, i didnt know where i was, or how i got there, i couldnt pull over because of how narrow the road was, i was in the middle of nowhere! I had no clue what to do! i couldnt focus, i was confused, everything looked almost sharper, yet blurry. i was just so scared! Thats when it started happening again, and now i just get this unreal sensation with a little confusion! i cant do anything anymore. i havent been able to focus lately. Whats weird however is my derealization went away for most of 2011, but in early 2012 i started questioning the meaning of life. like god, and the big bang theory. i started to wonder if were all real or if this is like the matrix or something. idk ever since i questioned life, i felt unreal, which lead to this now. sorry if this is so long but im new here, i dont know how this works.


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## JuliaM (Dec 28, 2012)

Hi Aidan, thanks for posting this. Sounds like classic derealisation to me. It's a very scary experience. That feeling of being completely lost is the worst. Sounds like you experience it in a very acute way. It's interesting that your DR was triggered by a performance at school. Never heard that before! Were you anxious about it?
I've always found performances/theatre/cinema would make my DR worse, but it's often drugs or trauma that trigger it in the first place. That's lucky the doctors picked up on the DP/DR. You may find that your symptoms come and go for a few years and then eventually disappear completely.
Have you had other stressful things going on in your life that could have triggered your anxiety? Questioning life was always a trigger for me. Try not to let yourself get carried away and panicked about them (I know that's hard). Always do things that bring you back down to earth and engage in your surroundings.


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## emjmoorXJ (Oct 22, 2012)

keep stress on a low and do at least one thing a day that triggers it, you will feel rrelived u were able to get thru it and feel stronger next time ur put in that situation cuz u got thu it fine b4. i hope this helps it seems to work for me. the thing about dp is it in general sux its a barrier you carry allong with u for a very long time and takes just as long to treat, hold on and b strong ull get thru it


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