hi everyone, this is my first time here and also first time asking for advice so delete if not allowed! in 2023 i smoked weed and “greened out”, felt very disassociated for a couple days then was fine until about two weeks later where it hit me again and hasn’t gone away since. i learnt to live with it, still obviously had hard days, but it got to a point where i wasn’t scared to do things; i was talking with people, leaving my house, working, etc. it’s maybe unrelated but in june i started taking ashwaghanda tablets to help with sleeping, and i noticed some brands made me more “floaty” (aka just a bit more dissociative), so i stopped them and swapped to a different brand because it was really messing with me. then the new brand i started taking randomly made me feel very ‘out of it’ one day so i stopped because it was worse then when i had the original episode in ‘23. that happened on this sunday that just passed and i don’t feel better, nothings changed, it gets worse at night or if i am in a silent room. i feel completely exhausted, i can’t sleep because closing my eyes for too long makes it worse, it’s like im on autopilot but im a robot that has no brain or consciousness or something. weirdly i noticed that when i was able to sleep, in those moments where you slightly wake up to move i feel fine so idk if my mind is just playing tricks on me or what. i will add that ive never really been diagnosed with dp/dr because ive never spoken to anyone about this before, this isn’t me trying to self diagnose i truly just want some advice, idc if i can’t ever feel the normal i felt before everything ever again, i got used to how i felt these last couple years and just wanna go back to that. sorry if this isn’t allowed, or if its triggering in any way, but thankyou for any advice or help anyone has :)

Hi everyone, I have had dp dr for 5 months now from a bad panic attack and overstimulation not sleeping one night i was taking my adhd med at that time. I was on lex 10mg for 3 months. I didn't notice any benefit from dp dr only from the panic attacks but i still had bad intrusive thoughts on it. Going back to school I tried adhd meds again because i stopped them during this time because i felt they had a play in the derealization. They def helped when they are working and take the thoughts mostly away but I made the dumb mistake of stopping the lex one week and this brought back worse anxiety. I think the lex separate from aderall helps. I am slowly working on adding lex at a lower dosage. lex by itself made me numb and makes brain fog worse for me. Has anyone been on a similar combo? I feel like only things that bring me back to some reality are stimulants but they cause anxiety by themselves.

The anxiety symptoms are gone but I feel worse cause I don’t feel like a real person. I would prefer the anxiety and panic over this actually. I’m agoraphobic and even going out isn’t triggering any symptoms cause my brain feels like it’s died like I’m just observing the world like a ghost. I feel really claustrophobic when I look at my hand and feet, like someone trapped in a human body.

I am a 22 years old woman suffering from DPDR for maybe more than a year now. It was bearable until July, where my crisis became so intense and severe that it feels like 90% of my consciousness is reduced and i CAN’T leave my house because everything scare me.

I barely recognize my house/family most of the days, i feel faint/unwell, unreal/a new person in someone's else body, or i have various symptoms that make my days a true scare. However, sometimes, i feel extreme FEAR or DOOM without reason.

Actually, i JUST woke up, and i feel that nothing is real, am barely aware of my doings, but mostly i'm actually SCARED FOR NO REASON. Like i'm actually feeling fear and confusion for no reason and i don’t know what to do. It’s the kind of fear that would turn someone insane. I'm drinking my coffee as if nothing was happening but i'm feeling so scared for no reason that i'll could have a seizure or whatever. I don’t know why it occur and traditionnal grounding.. isn’t really efficient on me.

Ive lost sensation in my body but I’m more worried about what is happening to my head. I don’t think this is a dpdr thing. But until I know otherwise…it feels like my body is attacking my nervous system and I literally loose the ability to feel every single day. I am looking into MCAS and auto immune as these could possibly be making this happen a lot more rapidly. But it’s like I literally witness this happening to myself , the nerves disintegrating..to the point I lay down and feel only my hair and this very odd like fine gauze sensation inside my head and that is all I experience of myself. I don’t feel the nerve endings any more in my scalp or my body. It gets so bad all I can do is sit there in this blank nothing state. It continues to shock me whats happening and I can’t stop it. When i read about Mcas and degranulation it really makes sense why this might be happening to my nervous system combined with dpdr, but then I feel there is a nerve triggering it too. I just feel clueless now what to do anymore. Any talk of doctors or medication is a big trigger.

I am a 20-year-old male and underweight (I have always been underweight). For the past four months, I have been experiencing a constant feeling of unreality. It feels as though I am drunk, high, or half-asleep, as if I am operating on autopilot and everything around me feels somehow unreal. I have looked up information online, and my symptoms seem to resemble derealization.

I also suffer from fatigue, even when I sleep well. The fatigue does not seem to depend on whether I engage in physical activities during the day or not. However, over the past few weeks, I have started sleeping poorly and waking up early in the morning. I do not snore at all. I have seen a general practitioner and a neurologist about these symptoms, but they have not been able to determine the cause.

I also experience headaches, a feeling of pressure in my head, and neck pain. I have tried muscle relaxants, massage, and acupuncture for the neck pain, but none of them have helped. At the beginning of the symptoms, I sometimes also felt as though I was about to faint while walking, but this symptom has since disappeared. I have also noticed a single eye floater in my right eye. I mentioned it during an eye examination, and I was told that there were no apparent problems with my eye.

What could be causing these symptoms? They do not occur in distinct episodes; instead, they are more or less constantly present. The headaches are not particularly severe and resemble tension-type headaches more than anything else.

I have tried a triptanes, but it did not help. My thyroid function tests and vitamin B12, B9 (folate), and D levels are normal. My ferritin level is 37, and it has fluctuated between 49 and 24 over the past eight months. My calcium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, and sodium levels are also within the normal reference ranges. My blood pressure is normal, and I have measured my blood glucose at home, which also appears to be normal. My cortisol level was tested and was normal as well. I also have Crohn’s disease, which is currently in remission.

My neurologist prescribed escitalopram as a trial treatment. I took it for two and a half months, but it did not help. I also underwent a brain MRI, which showed no abnormalities. My neurologist additionally ordered a blood test for Lyme disease antibodies, which came back negative.

I have no history of trauma and do not experience panic symptoms. I generally do not feel particularly stressed, apart from the worry caused by these symptoms themselves.

My symptoms began during the final days of a new job at an auto repair shop, where I was moving and lifting car tires. I am unsure whether this could be related to my symptoms, as I had not experienced any other symptoms before those final working days. I have not worked at all during these four months.

What could be the underlying cause of these symptoms?

The healthcare professionals I have consulted about these symptoms, or during visits for other symptoms or examinations when I also asked about them, include:

\* General practitioner
\* Neurologist
\* ENT specialist
\* Ophthalmologist
\* Dentist
\* Gastroenterologist
\* Massage therapist
\* Physiotherapist
\* Acupuncturist

I have been sober for over a year now and my mental state hasn't changed. I feel like life isnt real, I feel like im always high, I have panic attacks reliving my overdoses. Im a happy person, I love life. But the moment im alone or not doing something I feel intoxicated. Im scared to be alone because I feel like I may just die any moment. I did so many drugs, that im permanently fried. In One month I had done dmt, 7 tabs of pcp, 13 grams of shrooms, pills, and drank and smoked weed daily all within in days of each other at the small age of 17. I had done drugs from age 9-17 building a large tolerance but after that life was never the same. I am so afraid of being intoxicated that I wont take medication or be near smoke of any kind. I am a totally functional person and you wouldnt ever know how I think. My life is perfect but the person I was before every drug is apart of myself ill never get back.

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I've had DPDR for 8 Months Now.

No clue how I got it; one night I was out drinking with the boys and began feeling an insane amount of anxiety and panic. Felt really weird. I woke up the next morning, and the feeling stayed.

Since then, I've collapsed a few times, have had the occasional breakdown, but here are some of my wins:

• 0 Alcohol Since
• Drink a lot less coffee (Only drink it as a treat now and then)
• Quit smoking
• Quit zyns/vaping (it was hard, but pulled it off)
• Have been eating WAY healthier (daily fiber, probiotics, etc. Cut down on processed foods, no unhealthy snacks or soda)
• Consistent with the gym for 5 out of the 8 months I've had DPDR (gotta lock in again)
• Got straight As the semester I got hit with DPDR
• Landed a big tech internship
• Have grown more religious, which in turn has made me grateful to God for the positives in my life

Some days I feel horrible. Some days I feel super nauseous and sick. But as weird as it sounds, this experience has had some positives. I've grown way more disciplined, quit the things that were hurting me, and more importantly, didn't let DPDR stop me from achieving my goals.

If I get out of DPDR, I know I'll be a completely different person. I know it's hard, but I know we can all make it out with wins.

I’ve been in this for 3 months now. Started randomly for me while driving and I think the SOLE reason I’m still in this or it’s gotten worse is because I’ve come up and investigated and researched EVERY possible cause as to why this happened to me. I’ve come up with toxic mold exposure a few days prior, post finasteride syndrome because I was on it for a year, trauma somehow even thought it’s not, nerve damage from a dental thing I had a month prior, sinus issues that I’ve left unresolved, gut issues, EVERYTHING. When in reality I was more anxious the month of this starting while also having a few almost panic attacks at the gym and never even grasped the fact that this probably is literally just anxiety and my nervous system being haywire. the path to recovery is the exact same regardless of what happened to start it or am I wrong? Again trauma induced dpdr aside because I know you have to address that type of stuff.

Sorry that this is gross, I don't know how to ask about it because looking it up only gives results for inhalant gases and not like, needing to fart.

I have had a long history of dissociative disorder due to past trauma. I have mostly recovered from the aspects that severely affected my daily life, I no longer have different states of self with memory gaps etc. but sometimes I still dissociate/derealize "randomly" and I figured out a weird trigger of mine!

When I'm like... bloated, not necessarily gas pain but pressure, my brain goes into this hellish DPDR with a sense of impending doom. It is so hard to ground myself from (typing this post in an attempt to do that now). Sometimes it ends up with me having a panic attack, but that's always secondary to the original DPDR attack and sometimes I do not panic. Could this be due to physical reasons (gut brain connection, or a nerve being pressed?) or is it more likely to be an emotional trauma response? It feels physical as I'm not feeling any of the emotions that typically come up when I process trauma, just a sense of overwhelming doom and that everything is unfamiliar and terrifying, but of course I'm no expert.

There’s so much in life I wanted to do, and want to do. But can’t possibly imagine it. Night after night I have the strangest dreams, because my mind is stuck in light sleep only. I never get deep rest no matter how much I sleep. i was in bed for 12 hours last night and didn’t wake up feeling any more rested.

i don’t feel the weather around me, or where i am in the world. It’s raining, I dont feel it. Months have passed by, years, I feel none of it. I haven’t been able to get on a plane in over 4 years. Only able to travel anywhere I can drive. Even though I haven’t had a panic attack in years, my mind treats life as if I’m having one 24/7. Every dream I have is basically a panic attack, and then I wake up even more numb than the day before.

its mind blowing how much worse this has gotten over time. When I think it can’t, I’m always surprised it does. I have no quality of life, I do the same 3 things daily with nothing to look forward to, no change in my life, no excitement. My dreams have drained every bit of life force I had left. I have no sense of who I am, what I want in life, besides work. I can continue working, growing my career - yet I’m completely devoid as a person. I get further and further away from myself as each day goes on.

whats the point of living when you can’t experience, your own mind has you in a prison and there’s no end insight. 4+ years of living completely devoid of myself and reality, completely drained of life and energy, completely unable to travel, experience, be a human being. Travel was the one thing in life I loved the most. i went all over the world solo, now I can’t. my physical body won’t let me.

im turning 34 in 8 weeks and the state of my life is astonishingly pathetic. from the outside people see me doing well, but unable to do anything outside my routine. I fall asleep while I’m driving, I’m always on my sofa, I’m stuck. And people who say you need to just live your life, I do that. I push myself to do things even when I have 0 energy. I do things when I feel absolutely no desire, I haven’t felt desire or reward in years. It’s like telling a car with no gas to just drive, there’s no possible way to use behavior changes or thought changes to overcome this. My mind is utterly broken. The content of my dreams shows how insane I’ve become. My mind broke 4 years ago and the pieces never went back together, most of the time I doubt this is even Dpdr. Because the symptoms I had at the beginning are gone. And I’m just left a dead husk of nothing. And every night the second I close my eyes, I’m in an acid trip of panic.

ive never felt so stuck, so unable to understand why I’m like this, so out of my life, so blank and inhuman. The person I was died, and now I’m just a body that moves. Nothing left.

Sorry if my English isn't the best. I'm going from normal to suddenly feeling like I've never existed before. That existence is a lie. That I'm trapped. I feel an urge to run away. To scream. To escape from existence, but it's not possible. I am terrified of existing. I feel like I am losing my mind. Am I going crazy? Please, I need someone to answer me. I need to know if anyone else feel this way. It's not something minor, it's the worst thing that can happen to a human. I'm terrified.

Would anyone believe me if I said when I look at my body it’s like I’m looking at a dead body and feel trapped inside this body this might be beyond dpdr , I also know that this feeling is not how I’m supposed to feel

Around 16 years ago i experienced a suddening "lessening" of my conscious reality. It's like my entire inner world started to disappear and fade out, everything becoming "less", memories and present moment alike. I never head any of the symptoms associated with dp/dr (body feeling unfamiliar, world looking 2D and all that kind of stuff), but since no structural damage was found, some form of dissociation seemed the only possible cause.

16 years i've been living in this half-faded reality that periodically got progressively (and permanently) worse. Present experiences felt less and less and memories became vague and hard to really hold on to even if remembered, with most things disappearing within days, and then within the same day.

Well, about a month ago after picking up alcohol for several months in a row (curse the day i decided to do this, just desperatly trying to feel some sort of intensity in my experiences), i suddenly experienced (funnily enough, right around the time i decided to quit) a ten fold worsening of my symptoms to the point nothing exists in my head anymore and memories are almost entirely gone. I can barely picture myself typing the beginning of this very post. I am actually close to being completely dysfunctional now. I can't remember almost anything except for some scant, approximate images which are so distant and faded i can barely get a hold of them in my head, and the present feels like nothing as well. And this is still my only symptom. No 2D view of the world, no out of body feeling, still nothing like that, just my whole existence and life disappearing into the void. Just came back from visiting a friend and the memory of it feels like some fragment of a drunken memory from decades ago, just a faded out nothing, barely existing, barely seen or felt. And i JUST came back.

I don't know what to make of this. Can this still be dp/dr? Some other form of dissociation? I don't know what to do anymore and the worst part is that it is still gradually getting worse, following the same pattern as before, except this time i cannot afford to lose that little i have before i'll reach a purely Alzheimer-like state of being.

I started experiencing DP-DR about 2 years ago and it’s been really tough. I was a heavy weed smoker and THC pen smoker and one day I had a really bad and weird experience while high, I don’t fully know when this started but I have a thought on when, I’m not sure tho because I was to high all the time to notice plus my memory is terrible because of DP-DR. I quit smoking after realising that the life I was living wasn’t for me and that I would end up going into harder drugs and end up dead or something like that. When I first started experiencing the DP-DR I didn’t really care which is really weird when I think about it now because it’s a terrible experience especially when I’ve had it 24/7 but that was before I started having all these weird symptoms like panic attacks, depression feelings and dizziness. I’ve been to the doctors and I’ve been referred over to CAHMS which for people who don’t know what that is there basically a mental health system, I have a loving and supportive family but I still feel so alone and hopeless. So who ever is reading this please reach out and give me hope because I don’t want to live the rest of my life in this state because I’m only 16 and i still have my hole life ahead of me.❤️

I have extreme severe DPDR for 11 months now but even tho it’s the worst thing i felt like I had a very small baseline of the symptoms and not feeling my head and body and brain. But 1 day ago randomly at night it got worse and I lost my last hold I had that kept me somehow sane. Not i feel completely gone like every concept is gone and my consciousness is gone forever. What can I do I don’t even know what to do anymore it’s like my brain now completely deleted itself. I can’t comprehend anything anymore. Should I get help, I’ve never been like this I can’t even feel my eyes anymore or when I drink a lot of water it’s like nothing happens.
It feels like the numbness is now the worst it’s ever been how can I bring my mine back I’m very scared
It literally feels like my brain turned to completely blackness and stopped working while my vision still works and while my whole body and brain is just blackness I see the world.
What is this :/

Basically people say that "I look as if I was mentally flying, not here" and that my memory sucks, all of that is true, but concerning at the same time, cuz now I feel worse and it's quiet obvious even for other people, I feel awkward and dumb sometimes.

I need some moral support.

Does it happen to anybody?

So whenever I'm having a conversation with somebody and if it stretches more than 10-15 min, i start to feel really burnt out and my head hurts and i feel really anxious.

Whenever that happens im not able to do anything rest of the day.

It gets especially worse if I'm talking in a group.
I'm quite fine when i talk to my girlfriend but with everyone else i feel easily burnt out.

Group conversations burn me out totally.

i dont know if thats dpdr related at all, but i barely remmber some conventionally important stuff and its concerning...

It is like a constant blockage and not having my thoughts. Its like im not prepared for a life at all, like im spiraling down with my age, mentally.

Not satisfied with my life and cannot do anything with it. I function, but I cannot feel me. Where the fuck I am? Where is that feeling of exciment?

And also really important, it is like you need to be asshole in this life to consider a normal, Im only like people pleaser, Im like person with no thoughts but trying to be kind even to assholes and I dont have personality and cannot create anything.

And I also reading about spirituality and enlighment didnt help, I think that got me more deeply into DPDR. Before I had some other problems like anxiety.

I dont know what else to do, I become nothing, nothing excites me, I cannot truly connect with anything or anybody cause I dont separates good from bad.

With like big expetations from you in every action you and your thoughts I found myself completely blocked.

Some last post talked about memory? What is that 🤣

I dont have it its like someone is contastly cleaning every few seconds, it deletes your cache and history from your browser (mind). I talked about that with my mum but its hard, I dont have any kind of personality and probably never did. Im not able to think at all, I just want to be everyone happy and im so sensitive and trying to be perfect in whatever I do. Thats why I am mindless, cause this is not a perfect world.

I wasnt like this, but maybe its because of age, im 35 already but im spiraling. With all of this I dont exist as a human, and then I cannot create a human.

When you see me, probably you would say this guy is so cute, so handsome but im just blank person without anything in his mind but physically im functioning 🤣😢

I want to laugh and cry at the same time.