# The Zombie State



## university girl (Aug 11, 2004)

DPers often say they feel like a zombie. I too use this word to describe how I feel at times. I am wondering if you guys can describe to me what feeling like a zombie feels like? Just wondering if it's the same type of feeling. Today I was without the zombie feeling for a few hours and then it rather suddenly came over me with no obvious trigger. I hadn't felt it in a while so I really wasn't expecting it. I'm not going to describe how it feels for me because I want to see what you guys come up with first.


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## Scattered (Mar 8, 2005)

The zombie state for me is what is commonly described as being on "autopilot" mixed with the other common description of feeling as if I am intoxicated. I feel as if when I walk there is a haze that surrounds me. Not a literal one but a mental fog that clouds my perceptions of reality. I have a more difficult time with cognitive tasks like remembering things, reasoning, or figuring out complex problems.

Life is something that I have been thrust into but I'm not actually actively living. Just existing. Its a lack of clarity and an overall dullness that seems to me most like the zombie state. Everything is confusing and nothing is clear. Because of this I mostly sleepwalk and go through the motions instead of taking an active role in day to day life.


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## Lilymoonchild (Jun 18, 2005)

Just an observation: I find it interesting that we feel the need for descriptions of descriptions of how people feel just to check and see if we feel the same way. 

Feeling like a zombie for me is like I'm half asleep, running on auto-pilot. It's similar to a vivid dream, where I'm aware of what I'm doing, but it's not like I'm really choosing to do it. It just happens. This happens at work sometimes, and sometimes I'll fight it, but I still find things later that I usually do all the time, and somehow missed while in "Zombie mode."
That's not a completely accurate description, but it comes close.

And after writing the above, I went back and read Scattered's description (didn't want to taint my own first) and I can say that his is pretty dead on to what I think it feels like (intoxicated, why didn't I think of that?).


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## Sojourner (May 21, 2005)

I only felt it briefly a couple of times during the panic I had in May and June of this year, and it was definitely a major part of the panic attack. When I say briefly, I mean the length of time it took for the onset of what I knew to be a panic attack, the point at which I decided to take an ativan, and the length of time it took the ativan to restore me to "normal."

I would apply the word "zombie" to the feeling of *extremely tense alertness and dread accompanied by a sensation of enormous heaviness and a cotton-head*. It was the feeling of being on a leash, like an animal, that was held by some unseen monster until the ativan brought me back.

My zombie may be different than your zombie, just as my DP seems to be different than other people's. I don't have any symptoms at all now, either of depression or panic (which is so weird -- three weeks of no drugs at all).......Hm. Maybe God *did* heal me after all.

Anyway, for me at least, DP doesn't exist or didn't exist as anything but a component of panic. In fact, it was secondary only to the sense that I was going to die in each successive second that passed. For me, I think the DP was a way of at least for a few minutes dissociating from the fear that the panic brought. Horrible terror, just horrible. Made me want to die while I was at the same time afraid of dying. When I think about what I just wrote, I have to shake my head in disbelief. I said I experienced an intense and ongoing fear that I was going to die in each "next second," and that fear was so horrible that I wanted to die to escape it. :lol:

Crazy? Nah. Normal as a sunny day in summer.

I think all of this is normal, included screwed up brain chemistry. Do you think your brain chemistry changes when your child has a high fever? Or maybe when you have two-hours until you have to sit for a very important examination at school? Or when you walk down the street not thinking about a particular problem that you have not had the strength to face and solve -- and BOOM! Here comes the DP, or the panic, or the anxiety, or the fear, or the depression, or the BDD, or the <name-your-monster>. Is your brain chemistry changed at that moment when, ostensibly for no reason at all, you are attacked by DP? Sure, it is. When there's no *apparent* trigger, you can be sure that there is *still a trigger* to be found. It's just that it's way, way, way deep inside you, exactly where you consciously chose -- yes, consciously --- to stash it away, out of sight. That's called _repression_, and it never works.

I think we are all normal, actually. I think mentally ill is a term that should be applied to those conditions in which reality testing does not occur. That would be schizophrenia, bi-polar, and probably some forms of depression.

But anxiety? I realize that classifying it as a disorder makes it possible for people to afford treatment by having insurance cover the cost of drugs and some therapy, but I just don't think it's a "disorder" of the same calibre as those others, in which reality testing does not occur.

That's why, in spite of all the stuff we experience and in spite of it's being in the DMR or whatever that book is called, I just don't think anxiety "disorders" are anything more than an intense form of the normal anxiety everybody experiences. But maybe that's the definition of the disorder, in which case I will go to bed -- ach, its almost 6 a.m. Well, I woke up at 1:30 yesterday afternoon, so I haven't been up all that long.

Bon nuit!


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## whiterabbit (Aug 16, 2004)

The zombie state is for me being empty of thought, blank and not able to engage with anything without an enormous amount of effort to pathetic results. Not having any real reactions to anything, everything is false. Its being aware that I have no feelings or thoughts, other than the observing of the absence and that other people around me are not like this - a bit like peaceboy describes elsewhere I become obsessed with what it is to function normally what do other people do - they walk, they talk, they respond, they are focused, they think each other are there, they take for granted that the world around them is here. Its very monotonous and boring and it is actually quite painful, I realise afterwards when I come out of it, it doesn't feel painful at the time exactly, because there don't apper to be any feelings.


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## Brainsilence02 (Jan 29, 2005)

*university girl*,

The way I understand the word "zombie", is a person who has been brought back from the dead. His mind is a pulp, so his body isn't in what we say "full control".

I think that it is a combination: a state of the body and the mind.

Body:

Tired but still able to move and do things. Tirement bothers you, but does not effect (essentially) you performance. Your perfomance is been effected by your mood "I am tired". In other words, the relation between your performance and your body tirement is inderct

Mind:

Intentions (an intention is behind every thought and body-movement) are not clear, but thoughts and body-movement keeps going. The person becomes an observer of him/herself.

"my hands are not mine"
"i am not controling my body"
"i feel like a robot"
"i am not here"

*Scattered*,

I have "borrowed" your description for another post of mine. I hope you don't mind 

*Lilymoonchild*,

We need descriptions of descriptions because the nature of this illness. Since it is the perception that gets injuried, it is hard describing. It's like someone is asking you to tell him what you see when you don't have eyes.


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## Monkeydust (Jan 12, 2005)

UniG, I might just be a cynic, but I think there's a possibility that your current "zombie" feelings are a result of being on anti-psychotic medication. Nearly all reports of people, especially non schizophrenics, who have taken it seem to record feeling "dead" and like a "zombie" as you do. Just a thought.


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## Dreamland (Jun 1, 2005)

To compare your state of conscience to that of a zombie is a fairly accurate decription for DP in my opinion. Having DP feels like a state between life and death. Believe it or not, voodoo priests in Haiti have actually created zombies by giving unsuspecting victims a potion consisting of a neurotoxin(derived from a puffer fish). The victims were then burried in an actual coffin only to be exhumed later and then kept as slaves, and they described being in a dream like state, unable to move their limbs, but still being able to hear everything in their surroundings; incuding their own funeral procession!!! Perhaps something in our body is creating neurotoxins, evoking this perpetual dream-like state of mind.


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## orangeaid (Jun 24, 2005)

Im curious to know university girl's description. If zombie feeling=intoxicated feeling i get that. I feel like I am just slow in general, my mind, my thoughts, my movements, reactions, just everything in general.


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## Guest (Jul 26, 2005)

I identified almost to a t with whiterabbit's explanation. In addition, when I am in the zombie state I am lethargic and everything involving movement and speech becomes a chore. It is kind of like when you fall asleep in the midst of a really loud party. You have an almost heightened awareness of noise and what is happening around you but at the same time you are in a dreamland and wonder if you really exist. With the zombie state, the huge difference is you are actually awake and people have expectations of you to speak and perform like a normal functioning and aware person, which always creates a tremendous amount of anxiety. Basically, it's being suffocated, out of control, and wishing you could wake up but not knowing how because everything you try to do makes it worse.


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## Sojourner (May 21, 2005)

It's all part of the _stress response_.

See *Stress System Malfunction Could Lead to Serious, Life Threatening Disease * at http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/sep2002/nichd-09.htm from the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Note this from the above report:

"The excessive amount of the stress hormone cortisol produced in patients with any of these conditions is responsible for many of the observed symptoms. Most of these patients share psychological symptoms including sleep disturbances, loss of libido, and loss of appetite as well as physical problems such as an increased risk for accumulating abdominal fat and hardening of the arteries and other forms of cardiovascular disease. These patients may also experience suppression of thyroid hormones, and of the immune system. Because they are at higher risk for these health problems, such patients are likely to have their life spans shortened by 15 to 20 years if they remain untreated."


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## university girl (Aug 11, 2004)

OK guys thanks for your descriptions.

I know my tranzient zombie states are not related to my antipsychotic use because I have been having them for ten years and I have only recently started on antipsychotics.

I'll give it a shot at describing my zombie:

My zombie can seem to come about out of the blue. It is not related to anxiety. I will go days with having only DP/DR (which I describe not as feeling like a zombie but more as feeling drugged and drunk) and then the zombie will appear. When the zombie hits it is like a part of my brain has descided to switch off or take a vacation. I feel flat and have a strong urge to lie in bed and do nothing, maybe drift off to sleep. I feel half asleep and notably mentally exhausted. As britters602 wrote, when I am in this state I too feel like moving and speaking require energy I don't have. I feel like I need a shot of caffeine to pick me out of this state but it doesn't help when I drink coffee.


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## university girl (Aug 11, 2004)

**


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## Brainsilence02 (Jan 29, 2005)

I have described the zombie state very differently than me. The thing you are decribing as zombie state is what I call "just tired to do anything and very frustrated with this whole situation".

Your description makes more sense though. Since zombies cannot move well, and seem so tired.


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## Monkeydust (Jan 12, 2005)

> Your description makes more sense though. Since zombies cannot move well, and seem so tired.


I haven't met one personally, so I wouldn't know. :lol:

Seriously, though, these symptoms _could_ just be a form of burnout, depression, and tiredness through anxiety and troubling mental symptoms.


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## Guest (Jul 31, 2005)

my zombie feeling is constant and it gets worse with dp/dr which is also constant but at different levels. ive had this zombie feeling slightly for years just like i had dp/dr slightly for years but anxiety triggered a chronic state in which i cannot function.

anyways i would describe it as it feels like i lost all personality and that im just a body with no soul. like i have no heart or its just very very cold. like i dont care about anything or feel emotion about anything. [when in fact the only thing i truly care or feel about is my state of dp/dr and how it makes me not care or feel]. it makes me feel non-human and like i cant understand anybody at all, or human behavior at all. it makes me even feel distant from my close family and people ive been close with for years. its so very lonely and one of the worst parts of dp/dr. out of all the descriptions on this page its most similar to whiterabbits


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