# I am new. But am I DP?



## Mariner (Jul 4, 2006)

I don't really know if I have DP or not. I have hovered over this board for a while reading posts and trying to correlate other people's experiences with my own so that I might decide. Now, I almost said "symptoms" there instead of "experiences" ? but that is just it. To me it doesn't seem as if this is something separate from myself (like a cold) but something that is indivisible from my personality. I do often seem to have the depersonalized "sense of things" -- reality being a dream, the lack of a real self to be anchored with, thoughts running parallel with my awareness rather than flowing together with it, the sense of floating inside myself. However, I wonder often (and I am talking about myself here, not other people) if it is not just the way it is and I am blowing it all out of proportion. I have never done drugs, I have never had any truly traumatic events, I have never had any of the other conditions that I hear can lead to DP. What seems to have brought me here is nothing more than personal reflection. 
Am I not just over-examining and over-objectifying my mental and emotional states? Am I not simply observing the normal operations of the brain, but because I look at them under a microscope they appear differently? If I could back off a little bit, would I be able to settle back into a less anxious state? The harder I poke at my sense of myself, try to formulate the experience of being into words or concrete thoughts it all becomes very two-dimensional and terrifying. 
The solution seems simple enough. Don't try to objectify everything. Relax and let reality happen. But of course it is not that simple. You can't really turn off the mind like a faucet. One can distract oneself but not at every moment of the day. Besides, do I even want to? If I feel that I am simply ignoring an unpleasant reality -- the mind as nothing more than the vapor of a machine brain -- then is it better to look away? Or is this weakness? The succumbing to an illusion?
In some ways I feel like I must press on through the muck so that I might find or forge the truth that redeems it for myself, that makes everything, in spite of everything, okay. Sort of like one of those people who make an unfunny joke over and over in hopes that the repetition itself will become funny. 
Sigh. I sound really pretentious. Well, I don't mean to. Let me assure you that I am not very intelligent and that I do not here claim to be. Though I am nonetheless very intellectually vain. Sometimes I describe my sense of things to my friends and they just say, "Yeah. Well that is just the way it is. You take it and you move on." 
Hmmmm...thinking back on what I've just written -- maybe I am more obsessive compulsive than DP. I don't know. Well, I wrote all of this. It would be a waste not to at least see what someone else thought.


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## Epiphany (Apr 28, 2006)

Firstly, I can relate very well everything you have written here. 
I had / have a lot of the same thoughts...I think you may have hit the nail on the head when you said,



> maybe I am more obsessive compulsive than DP


Not that I am trying to label you with OCD, but these thoughts are obsessive...I have them myself. Obssessive rumination was what I found the most debilitating experience of my dp (if indeed that is what I had...self-diagnosed...think I have a tendency toward OC thoughts). If you can relate to a lot of the other experiences that others have posted here then dp / dr is a possibility.

Mine was not drug-induced, I have not grown up with any traumatising events in my life, and I have never been diagnosed with any other conditions that could lead to dp (although I know I go through phases of anxiety as I have a tendency to have panic attacks at times).

However, I believe my problems were caused by numerous stressors building up around the same period of time and my obsessive over-analysis of everything.

Have you always been this way or was there a defining moment that you suddenly felt different?
Do you find it is affecting your everyday life?
Is it getting worse?
You obviously feel there is something not quite right or else you would not have found this site...am I right?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we may or may not have this condition but if you feel you need some assistance and advice then this can be the site to find it. It can also become an obsession in itself for some, but I have found it very helpful. Hope you find the same. Welcome to the site.


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## Mariner (Jul 4, 2006)

Definitely you are right in your assumption -- something often feels not quite right within myself. When I try to think how to convey this feeling usually my mind shuffles up a few familiar images. Having browsed this and other DP sites, I know that my images are not at all dissimilar to a lot of the images people commonly use to express the feeling of DP. In my mind I see (usually in extreme close-up for some reason) flourescent bulbs, carpet yarns, and ventilation ducts. I see murky gray shadows. I see old grainy photographs of myself as a child. Why these things, these, really, rather boring things? I don't know -- they do have a certain inhuman quality to them. I think if I could just ease off a little bit and not push so hard maybe I would snap back into myself. 
The worst part is that during the bad times, the times when it seems like my intuitive self has been removed from me, I begin to suspect that it was never really there to begin with, that all along I have just been proceeding by some purely mechanical process. I search my memories in vain for some proof of a time when I could feel myself there (whatever that means) and I come up empty. Again, this may be more a problem of framing the issue than anything else. Why should I get so anxious that I can't touch something which is by its nature intangible, something that, if I could approach it in mere words, would be paltry indeed. 
Well, it seems I have been rambling. 
To answer your questions.
It definitely affects my everyday life, though not every day -- if you take my meaning. Sometimes it is a lot worse than other times. To some extent it does seem tied to situations in my life. But at other times, it seems that I instigate it within myself. 
However, on a happier note, it does not really seem as though it is getting worse. For a while it did seem so. I am not sure when it started, but I know it kind of peaked a couple years ago. I still have it, though not as bad as I did at the time. If it is DP that I have, I am probably not a particularly bad case. Though, I don't know. Ask me again in a week and I might reverse that judgement. Tee hee. 
Thanks for the welcome.


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