# Need help, Im scared, new symptoms i never had before!



## Anxious123 (Jun 7, 2020)

Hi everyone, so this is likely going to be very long because i dont even know where to start. I remember at age 14 scrolling endlessly through these forums and having an explanation to my symptoms, now i am 21 and I practically considered myself an expert on derealization and depersonalization after going through a horrible bout at 14 for 4 months straight, and then feeling it at different periods, in varying degrees of intensity, coming and going. I had stopped fearing it quite as much and had learned a lot about how to deal with it. 
The reason i have these feelings is because i have really bad OCD and i have for a long time, and when it gets really intense and panicky, these feelings come more.

Anyways, like i said, i had recovered from the really bad bout of it and i didnt even think of it, i never imagined I'd be scrolling endlessly through this forum again because i had understood the feeling and it never came as intensely. Now this has me questioning everything. I got this really weird new symptom out of the blue that i dont even know how to understand and it had me fearing now that its not even dp/dr, that something is horribly permanently wrong with me or something.
For context, my country has been in lockdown for 3 months now due to the coronavirus, and my lifestyle has changed drastically and my anxiety started getting super strong: panic attacks, diziness, intense unreal floating away feelings , more intense obsessions, etc, but these all made sense to me, as uncomfortable as they may have felt.
3 weeks ago, i was finally able to see my boyfriend again after all this time, but i had been putting it off because i was so terrified of giving him the coronavirus even though i didnt have it, i hadnt even left the house, but as my ocd tends to do, it likes to create symptoms it fears, so i started feeling like i had a sore throat, and even my body temperature was higher than usual but no fever, but i started checking obsessively and got such intense anxiety it was insane. Basically, when i got to his house, i started feeling so insanely unreal, and he did too. It was surreal to be out of the house and to be there again, everything felt odd, but i didnt think too much of it, it made sense that it was odd, just it was EXTREMELY unreal in a different way, but again, i was like ok just ride it out.
Fast forward, i just felt loads of anxiety and uneasiness, shock about being there, worried I was sick and being very much a hypochondriac about it, having intense obsessive fears, and then suddenly i started feeling extremely weak and lethargic. It was like this feeling i have never felt before, i cant even explain, it was like i was exhausted and drowning and i felt this intense doom. Usually, my fear centers around an obsession, but now, it was like no fear seemed to be landing. Was i afraid of death? Sickness? Nothing landed.
I suppose I did feel depersonalized, but it was just this intense fear to where i almost didnt even notice, idk, so many varying levels of feeling unreal that i just didnt know what was wrong.

Here is where it REALLY got bad and what has me stuck: i started feeling like i was unreal in a different way, it didnt even feel unreal anymore honestly, i thought it was something odd in my vision, but my vision was perfectly fine. I felt like i couldnt focus, even though i could, like i had to really stare at each word, like I couldnt see it all at once, even though i could, just a bizzare feeling! Ive had migraine with aura in the past, and i thought maybe it was that, like having a blind spot in th middle of my field of vision, even though i didnt. This feeling started driving me mad, and then i noticed an odd feeling in the middle of my forehead when i tried to focus on the middle of my field of vision, like an empty feeling and yet full and mushy at the same time. Then it started feeling like i wasnt seeing reality "right" like i couldnt process everything at once, and like my thoughts were racing so fast that i didnt know what i was rven thinking. Usually distraction helps, but ever since this happened, nothing even distracts me.
That night that i got this feeling, before sleep, i started really analyzing this feeling. Usually I understand my feelings so very well, but this time i couldnt! I feel this weirdnesd in my head, as if everything is narrowing in on me, sometimes it feels tight, but it doesn't even feel like a headache, it feels like its not in my head, but almost above my head! I got this fear that i had a hole in my consciousness! And this intense feeling of "nobody has ever felt this before, it cannot even be explained"
The feeling seems to morph into feeling like my brain is vertically split in half, or like theres chaotic noise around my entire field of vision, even though i dont have visual snow, its just this ambiguous feeling. It has me feelin completely and utterly alone. I convinced myself nobody has ever felt this before and this isnt dp/dr. Usually people are scared its a brain tumor but im not even scared of that, im scared im the only person in this universe who has a "damaged psyche". I know it doesnt even make sense but i worry "the laws of this universe dont apply to you maybe its only you and you will forever be warped"
So it makes me feel lke nothing will help, like i am doomed, like even when i die i will somehow be "warped" and miserable. Even when i dream i check to see if i felt the "hole" feeling or "blind spot"
It doesnt make sense because its not even my field of vision, its so ambiguous. If i woke up tomorrow and didnt feel it, i dont even know what that would be like, i don't understand this

I feel so alone in this. I do have the other classic feelins of dp/dr but its like i havent even noticed them, or worse, i worry im "faking them" just so that i will think i have dp/dr and not a permanently warped soul.
Also, its accompanied by this feeling of my arms and upper body feeling odd, like intense energy all around them, not quite like they dont belong to me, but just a strangeness i cant explain. As if my limbs were flying around or i have this mass around my upper body that feels physical but not quite i know its not there.
I think "even when im distracted i still feel this and its agonizing " but tbh i havent even been distracted lately, i dont even know what "it" is that i feel, im so confused and just wanna know im not alone!!!
This also caused extreme existential thoughts and i dunno, i frel like my reality is a broken glass, like i can see everything just fine, but it feels like maybe the roof is on thr cieling or like my bottom right field is on the top left, like a jigsaw puzzle where nothing is in the right place. Nothing seems to explain this, its not just usual unreal feelings and it feels "different" than it did years ago.
My body has been under immense stress but i even doubt that, its total irrational like ive stepped into another dimension where nothing makes sense. I thought it was something jn my third eye this "hole" feeling. I try to ignore it but sometimes i notice it more but maybe its just my tired mind seeing reality weirdly and me overthinking it???? I just needed some help and to let it out. Is this dp/dr???? How can it feel so different than before!


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## AnnaGiulia (Feb 4, 2020)

Hey Anxious123,

People experience DPDR in different ways, and there is no way of knowing whether we are experiencing the same thing, even when we are using the same words...they just sometimes do not convey everything, and DPDR is damn sure a difficult thing to describe.

You are not alone in what you are going through, though, as for most people who have been DPDRd it is perfectly understandable how difficult it must be for you rn.

What you describe is somewhat similar to how DR felt to me, when I had it. But then, some people would not even call that experience DR. For me, DP was always related to how I felt inside, in relation to my sense of self, and DR was everything that had to do with my perception of the world and me - my body - in that world. I also had sensations of being weightless, or that some parts of me are weightless, or that I am taller than I am, I had distorted visual and sound sensations, feeling of disconnectedness from the world and from everything that was known to me or felt familiar before, etc.

However, the feeling of dread, doom, sinking and weakness that I had was not DPDR as such, it had to do more with anxiety, as well as depression that was not primary in me, it was more of my reaction to feeling overwhelmed. I needed professional help in tackling those first, in order to be able to deal with DPDR. I hope you will find way to make sense of what is going on with you.

Take care,

A.


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## Guest (Jul 26, 2020)

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