# Another Is this DP/DR? Does anyone relate to this?



## Oek (Jun 16, 2010)

Hi there. I've had my condition for seven years, and I just found out about DP/DR this morning. I've been reading all day, quite natural after seven years of searching without finding anything... The doctors didn't understand a thing, and Christ, what keywords do you use to search for these symptoms?! Finally I found something!

Anyway, I have a question. I've been reading about people's experiences and descriptions, and I relate to a great lot of it. I can't describe how that feels after seven years of living on my own planet and not knowing what was going on. However, there are two important things that I DON'T relate to:
1. The feeling of loosing my sense of self. This sounds so horrible, and I feel lucky to have a strong feeling of who I am. I DO recognise the person in the mirror, fortunately, and my body feels like my body, although it feels like my mind is somewhere else than it.
2. To not feel emotions. I feel great emotions. I can be completely depressed, and I can feel happiness flow through me. I can feel hate, I can feel love, I can laugh my ass off with friends and feel joy. I have just met the love of my life (no less!), and intense love and happiness is streaming through me right now. However, this also gets me depressed, because when I look at him, the love of my life, it feels like I look at someone in a movie, someplace else. The image of him is blurred, unreal, distorted.

These two things sounds like important symptoms for DP/DR. My great worries are, of course, that because I don't have these, I don't have DP/DR, and I'm back to where I was, not knowing what my condition is at all. I ask you because I couldn't get a doctor's appointment untill two weeks from today! After seven years with this, two weeks still feels like forever.
____

Here's, in short (?), some of my symptoms:
- The world seems unreal, like a dream, or like watching a TV screen.
- My mind feels like it is somewhere else than my body.
- Blurry vision.
- Fear of going crazy, fearing that this won't end.
- Distorted vision, visual snow, floaters, flashing lights when eyes are closed, all those sorts of things.
- Fatigue, total lack of energy that lasts for weeks, then the total opposite for some weeks... Like my energy levels have bipolar disorder!
- Periods with depressions and melancholy. Nothing's worth anything, the world doesn't excist anyway. I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of living. I have no energy and I just want to watch some stupid TV show all day so I don't have to think about anything.
- Periods with a LOT of energy, like a couple of months ago when I decided to learn to play the accordion, and rehearsed literally all day (except when I ate) for two weeks.
- Fear of what people think about me. I tend to think that new people I meet are sceptical to me from the beginning, like I have to proove to them that I'm worth something.
- Overwhelmed by all the stuff I have to do, and haven't got done yet.
- "Repetitive thinking or incessant mind chatter" (Got some of these symptoms from a list someone posted, and this one I had to quote word for word!)
- Lately also vertigo attacks.
- And also a lot more, but this might be enough?

I come to the conclusion that it is Derealization and not Depersonalization because it hasn't got anything to do with my sense of self or personality. Any thoughts?
______

EDIT: There's actually a third thing I feel differs from the experience that many others have: I don't get the feeling that familiar things seem unfamiliar. They just seem distant, blurry, unreal, like seen through a glass wall...


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## puppyskin (Feb 21, 2010)

Oek said:


> Hi there. I've had my condition for seven years, and I just found out about DP/DR this morning. I've been reading all day, quite natural after seven years of searching without finding anything... The doctors didn't understand a thing, and Christ, what keywords do you use to search for these symptoms?! Finally I found something!
> 
> Anyway, I have a question. I've been reading about people's experiences and descriptions, and I relate to a great lot of it. I can't describe how that feels after seven years of living on my own planet and not knowing what was going on. However, there are two important things that I DON'T relate to:
> 1. The feeling of loosing my sense of self. This sounds so horrible, and I feel lucky to have a strong feeling of who I am. I DO recognise the person in the mirror, fortunately, and my body feels like my body, although it feels like my mind is somewhere else than it.
> ...


is this a constant 24/7 thing that just came on?


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## Oek (Jun 16, 2010)

Yes, it is. It suddenly started and has lasted constantly since then.


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## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Hrm yeah, its a very subjective thing. I often have a hard time with the difference between DP and DR, so I just say "DP" and kinda group it. Your situation is similar to mine and you said a few key things like "The image of him is blurred, unreal, distorted." Its good that you have a good sense of self, but perhaps for some people any or all of these sort of symptoms of feeling removed or feeling the world is this or that creates the detachement, especially in reference to who they were before. For me I was drastically different before DP. Just invert a lot of what you said your symptoms are, and you have what I was. Now I have the symptoms you do including sitting around, depression, mind issues, odd thinking. These things are enough to not feel myself. I do feel emotions like you do, but its all different. I mostly feel emotions for myself such as worry and sadness. I feel less emotions for other things and people. Things do count. You have attachment to things with memories. And when it comes to people I guess since i'm not happy with how i'm doing I don't do well for others(?) A lot of this stuff could be from the onset of depression a ways after DP set in. When DP first set in I felt like I was having a hard time recognizing people. This could have been because of emotional attachment loss and related to how you see your guy. don't know.

Anyways I would say your headed in the right direction if your really into figuring out what you have. It could just be Derealization. Do you ever feel strange in your skin? Do you feel like a "floating head"? I'm guessing not. I recognize myself in the mirror but I also dont. Its so subjective.

"- The world seems unreal, like a dream, or like watching a TV screen." This nearly unites us all. Call "Glass Wall" call it " Fish Bowl"... Eyes behind my eyes. Narrow vision/narrow perception. I never really understood the "watching myself in a movie" type of thing too well. But honestly if you take everybody on this site and had them talk about this in 5 different ways, there is going to be some big overlap!


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## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Oek said:


> Yes, it is. It suddenly started and has lasted constantly since then.


It was a long time ago, but...

Was there a lot of stress in your life?

Drugs (legal or otherwise)?

Panic Attack?

Big changes?


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## puppyskin (Feb 21, 2010)

sounds very similar to mine,only mine started 18 years ago,only recently found this site which sounds closest thing to how i feel.i took lsd and had a bad time on it then a month later bam!!! it hit me.my therapist thinks it maybe some sort of PTSD.have you suffered any trauma at all.?


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## Oek (Jun 16, 2010)

Thank you, BlueTank, for a very personal answer.

I have been thinking about possible reasons why this happened. It occured in the middle of the night, or early in the morning, after way too little sleep. This was a one-time event, though, I slept well other than this night, so I'm not sure if the lack of sleep really had something to do with it (although that was what I thought at first... That I had to sleep, and then this odd feeling would go away. It never did.)

I was really depressed the year prior to this. At the time I had just found out that I would change schools, so the future suddenly seemed a lot brighter. The condition could be a reaction to the awful people I went to school with, that I tried to hide out from them and reality, but I find that less likely because, as I said, the future seemed brighter at this point.

About five years prior to this, I was in and out of hospitals untill they found that I had Epstein-Bahr, and I had a long period of sickness. This was kind of traumatic, I guess, I was seven years old and had suicidal tendencies, but I can't see why I suddenly would react to this five years later.

Other than that, I can't really think of anything...

We ruled out some things some years ago, at least epilepsy, and my pychatrist wasn't able to explain it either.

BTW, I just came to think of something. I don't have the feeling of familiar things becoming unfamiliar either. Things just seem distant and blurry, somehow.

EDIT: And no drugs


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## BlueTank (Jun 2, 2010)

Its hard to say with me because so many things (stresses) happened at once, So I figure the sum of them triggered the DP. One of these was the swine flu (didn't know it was that)... But sleeplessness was one for sure.

I had already been staying up late quite a bit, but the day it started, I pulled a nighter to take a flight. Then after the flight I didn't go to bed because of all that was going on. I was REALLY jacked up and out of it. I just needed to sleep. So I went for like 14 hours of sleep, but I found myself waking up. Each day I thought I just needed sleep, but the vision stuff just didn't go away.

Yeah its just so hard to say. I'm not really the best person to talk to on it







. I found this web site to be the closest thing to whats going on with me.


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## match_stick_1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Oek said:


> Hi there. I've had my condition for seven years, and I just found out about DP/DR this morning. I've been reading all day, quite natural after seven years of searching without finding anything... The doctors didn't understand a thing, and Christ, what keywords do you use to search for these symptoms?! Finally I found something!
> 
> Anyway, I have a question. I've been reading about people's experiences and descriptions, and I relate to a great lot of it. I can't describe how that feels after seven years of living on my own planet and not knowing what was going on. However, there are two important things that I DON'T relate to:
> 1. The feeling of loosing my sense of self. This sounds so horrible, and I feel lucky to have a strong feeling of who I am. I DO recognise the person in the mirror, fortunately, and my body feels like my body, although it feels like my mind is somewhere else than it.
> ...


I can relate to all the symptoms you've described + the ones you didnt have except for the having endless energy - that would be a dream come true. I think that you most likely do have DR and maybe DP but everyone varies, some people have all the symptoms, some only have some..


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