# Almost 40 years of DPDR and counting...



## PassingCloud (Feb 24, 2010)

Hello all...be prepared for a rather long post. But then, 40 years of DPDR is rather a long time too, so I maybe excused.

I am a man, 57 years old, and I suffer from depersonalisation/derealisation since I was 17 years of age. This was triggered by smoking pot. Whatever is said here, I still do not believe it was an anxiety attack, initially: the moment I felt the drug working, it was if there was a wall of glass between myself and the world. One of the symptoms was that the world looked smaller- as if looking at it through strong glasses. Distant, but not only visual: my whole 'self' had been teleported as it were to another dimension through a black hole of the mind. And for some reason I knew instantly and instinctively that there was no going back. For comparison: it was like suddenly seeing the famous transparant cube from a different angle that makes its backside appear to be at the front: you can not undo that 'insight'.If DPDR is not insanity, but an escape route of the mind, it might have least offered me a return ticket.

I must tell you that, when I was younger (from the age of 8 or so) I had already had this feeling of alienation very occasionally, like once or twice a year: when lying in my bed, before falling asleep, I could suddenly find the room, especially the small windows above the door where the light from the corridor shone through, looking distant and unaturally small. Very unpleasant. Upset, I would go to the living room where my parents were, sat for a little while and then returned to bed, calmed down, symptoms gone. Also I remember that the feeling sometimes occurred when I felt ill: voices from other people, other rooms, sounded different, detached, while I was in bed. This detachment wasn't too bad though- it was milder and also sort of explainable: I was physically sick, and the outside world was indeed a world that I did not belong to at that moment. But I am pretty sure that the drug I took when I was 17 simply triggered what was already inside of me, something that was already part of my persona and would have come out sooner or later anyway. It only took one joint.

A shortlist of the symptoms, only too recognizable for so many here: feeling detached, surreal, while the world around me and my own body seem far away and/or belonging to someone else. As contradictory as it may seem, my 'self' seems to be in the unreal, sort of 2D outside world, and cut off from it at the same time as if it misses the other half, being in my body but unfeeling. It has surprised me that the sense of surrounding objects being small & far away is not mentioned more often here, as it is so typical for my experience of DPDR. There are some memory problems too, especially when it concerns people (connecting names, events and faces). I could go on of course, after so many years of dealing with it, but to keep this post readable I won't.

To go back to the beginning: in the weeks and months that followed, I visited a shrink- but he didn't do much besides confirming my personality: adolescent, rather shy and introvert, but to no worrying extremes. Anyway, nothing I did not know already. The valium he prescribed didn't really help. So after a while he sent me to a psychologist, for whatever reason- telling me basicly that he couldn't help me, or that it would probably, or hopefully, wear off in time. Well, it didn't, and after a while the psychologist was history too. The only thing that changed was that I slowly learned to cope with it. In the beginning of course I talked about it with my parents and closest friends. But after a while I stopped doing that, because it didn't get me anywhere, and I did not want them to look at me like someone who was going mad, or didn't live in the same world as they did- which was how I felt. That would be like entering a vicious circle, and make it even harder to 'come back' eventually. If they'd consider me to be 'normal', it would be easier for me to start feeling like that again. If they'd really know how I felt, I'd also have to fight this preconception.

So, is this feeling of depersonalisation and/or derealisation always there? Basicly, yes, 24/7. Let's just say I can evoke it anytime. It does not always bother me as much, and 80% of the time I manage to lead my life around it, accepting it as an handicap- like someone in a wheel chair simply has to adapt to life as it is presented to him. Which means I try to avoid certain situations that either can make the feeling stronger (to unbearable) or more noticable. For instance: I do not fly (to my surprise hardly anyone mentions this at the forums although it can be a terrifying experience), avoid heights and wide or closed spaces, and prefer to be in a situation I can always get away from: like sitting at the end or the side chair of a row in a theatre, for instance. Finding myself on the front row, knowing I can't get away unnoticed, will trigger a real attack sooner than sitting in the back, although the latter gives no garantuee it will not happen either. But the consequences are less dramatic, because I can wait for it to pass without being noticed or at least have the possibility to leave the place- in theory.

The basic DPDR feeling differs in strength, as I said. Sometimes I am hardly aware of it, being busy with something that intrigues me, for instance. Very occasionally it does seem like a severe panic attack, and the feeling of being totally alone, in a far away, unreal, two-dimensional world that I am no part of yet at the same time live in, is very, very scary. But usually, if not in one of these situations mentioned above (and others), I have learned to cope with it because, and that's maybe the clue, I do believe it is part of who I am- as it was always there since my childhood, though hidden most of the time. Or, maybe I should say, it has lasted so long that it has become part of who I am. On the other hand, having said that, if that's who I have become, why does everything still feel 'strange' to me? Maybe you simply can't realize 'reality'. Thinking: at last, this is real, must be some sort of paradox. Realizing reality can as a rule only create a distance, as it makes one the observer of the world one would like to be in. Thinking this through, I'd say DPDR-sufferers don't suffer from a lack of reality, but from an overdose of it. But believe me, in the end, thinking about, endlessly analyzing or rationalizing your DPDR will not make it go away.

Still, in spite of everything, DPDR has not crippled me mentally as bad as I would have expected when I was 17 or 18. I am still amazed that it has not had bigger effects on my personality than it did (though I may not the best judge here). I don't think I could have written this if it had. Apart from my obvious 'phobias' (fear of flying, heights), which they aren't really that but only unbearable because of the DPDR), I guess that I come across as quite a normal person to most people, who seem to respect the fact that I accepted these phobias. Well, sure. I really accepted something else but they do not know.

I have given up hope it will ever disappear completely. The best way to cope, in my experience, is to let yourself be so distracted and absorbed by something, (this could also be fysical hard work) making you simply forget about the DPDR: your mind can only fully concentrate one thing at a time. That's easier said than done of course, and sometimes the symptoms are just too overwhelming. It is like telling someone not to think about a broken leg that's obviously there. But I am sure that everyone suffering from 24/7 DPDR, will have moments, hours, or days without being bothered too much about it.

Perhaps my story, in spite of it all, still has given some hope to others: if you don't recover (which some people apparently have done), at least you can learn to live with it, in the end. My biggest personal concern is now how it will develop when I get older. What will happen when for instance I have to undergo surgery and need anasthaetics? I dare not think about what the effect of drugs might have on me now (though alcohol goes down without any major problems). Anyway, finding this forum gave me strength, although not the solutions I had hoped for as I am not going to experiment with meds/drugs again- ever. But for many years I could only suspect I was not the only one with this state of mind. Knowing that other people feel this way too, is not a real comfort, for I pity them as well, but still it has given me a sense of being less alone in this terrible and amazing world.


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## codeblue213 (Feb 15, 2010)

You are a very brave person to have lived with this so long. And I thought 18 years of this was a long time! Welcome to the board.


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## berdecamer (Feb 25, 2010)

PassingCloud said:


> Hello all...be prepared for a rather long post. But then, 40 years of DPDR is rather a long time too, so I maybe excused.
> 
> I am a man, 57 years old, and I suffer from depersonalisation/derealisation since I was 17 years of age. This was triggered by smoking pot. Whatever is said here, I still do not believe it was an anxiety attack, initially: the moment I felt the drug working, it was if there was a wall of glass between myself and the world. One of the symptoms was that the world looked smaller- as if looking at it through strong glasses. Distant, but not only visual: my whole 'self' had been teleported as it were to another dimension through a black hole of the mind. And for some reason I knew instantly and instinctively that there was no going back. For comparison: it was like suddenly seeing the famous transparant cube from a different angle that makes its backside appear to be at the front: you can not undo that 'insight'.If DPDR is not insanity, but an escape route of the mind, it might have least offered me a return ticket.
> 
> ...


Hi. I, too, am a long time sufferer of this condition, 38 years, and know the pane of glass very well. I will say that I have had times (some rather long periods) when I felt "normal" or at least DP/DR seemed negligible. So, maybe I have been more fortunate. I have been going through a difficult time in my life the past 3-4 months and I have had a few weeks of intense symptoms, but in the last couple of weeks things have settled down significantly. I don't really have much to say that might help, except that having felt pretty much normal at times in the last 38 years, I have not given up on returning to normal again. I also think that there will eventually be medicine to reverse the process. It seems that it has only been the past 10-15 years that DP/DR has been taken more seriously in the mental health field, and some research is being done now to find medications that will really help, such as the research of Dr. Daphne Simeon (Professor of Psychiatry) at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. If you have not read her book, _Felling Unreal_, I highly recommend it. If you are like me you will be marking many pages because you know exactly what she is talking about! She seems very down to earth and does not offer any secret miracle cures. She is very up front about the limited success mental health professionals have had at this point in time in trying to treat this disorder. Well, I don't want to ramble on. It's nice to know I am not the only older person on this website. All the best to you!


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## Guest (Mar 3, 2010)

deleted


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## PassingCloud (Feb 24, 2010)

I think many people, not just the ones with DPDR, question their existence- one way or another. They have always done so, in all times. The trouble is, that for some reason this existential question has become almost physical and claustrophobic for people like us, who experience their surroundings (and often themselves) as unreal. Our brain simply plays a mean trick on us. We know, rationally, it is very unlikely we will suddenly vanish into nothingness, but our senses tell us something else. We know the world is all in 3D (if not more) but our senses only allow us 2D. Still, as long as we see unreality for what it is, we're OK. Only if we'd consider this appearance to be normal, we'd be in real trouble. But until then, it is just damned uncomfortable.


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## Fabricio (Dec 22, 2010)

"And for some reason I knew instantly and instinctively that there was no going back"

I felt the same !!!!!!!!!!

and i have dp/dp since 2005


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## Walkingzombie (Jul 7, 2011)

Well can't say that seeing this really is encouraging for my future with DP. Forty years is a retarded amount of time.


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## Joshu (Nov 10, 2011)

Welcome to the place. I am older, have had this for years and just "realized" what I have.


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