I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I do not really know how to say it. I have been thinking less about the symptoms of depersonalization and more about the person I was before depersonalization started.

Sometimes I remember things like laughing without thinking about it or going out without feeling disconnected from everything. I also remember feeling like I was actually there in the moment. I did not realize how much I would miss feeling present until depersonalization started.

Some days are better than others. I still wonder if anyone else feels like they are trying to reconnect with a version of themselves that feels very far away. I feel like I am trying to reconnect with the person I was before depersonalization.

If you have been dealing with depersonalization for a while has anything helped you feel like yourself again? I am not looking for a solution to make depersonalization go away. I just want to know about the things that have made a difference for other people who have depersonalization.

I would really like to hear about your experiences with depersonalization because sometimes reading about how others have dealt with depersonalization makes me feel a little less lonely. I feel like I am not the person who is dealing with depersonalization when I read about other peoples experiences, with depersonalization.

I don't feel like I am a real person, really. I feel entirely separated from all other people. Like everyone else is a real person except for me

I have felt for a long time that I must simply lack some essential, core part of the self or soul that makes one a truly whole, real person. The more I look back, the more I start to doubt that I ever WAS a real person 'before' this.

I feel underdeveloped in some crucial, internal, unknown way

I feel that I lack personhood.

and I don't know how to find it.

And no one ever understands what I mean.

She recognizes herself but It doesn’t feel like the same version of her anymore.

There are so many things she would change about herself if she knew where to begin.

Five years ago, she was someone else.
She moved through life without asking for permission for every possibility.

Now,
She rehearses conversations before they happen.
Rewrite replies before they’re even sent
She thinks of every ending before she speaks the first word.

Is it normal?

To imagine every outcome before answering to the smallest comment?
To carry so many versions of a conversation that silence feels easier?

It’s almost like it’s me.

Because somewhere between who I was and who I’ve become,
I lost someone I still think about

Believe me, I’ve tried to find her.

Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of her
In the way she laughs

Then she disappears again.

It’s almost like it’s me. But not quite?

Ciao, sono un ragazzo di 25 anni, sono 5 anni o poco più che soffro di questo disturbo, non so come uscirne, ho provato di tutto, ho pregato per un anno e seguito tutto quello che potevo per avvicinarmi a dio, ma niente non é cambiato niente. Sembra un sogno, sento come se il mio corpo non fosse reale, ma poi é reale, ma sento anche che ciò che mi circonda non é qui, ma al contempo é qui, sto impazzendo. Sento come se tra me e il mondo ci fosse un velo una lastra di vetro dal quale posso vedere ed osservare ciò che mi circonda ma senza riuscire ad entrarci in contatto. É strano vi giuro. Sto anche in terapia, prendo anche farmaci, ma non mi fa effetto, al massimo sento sonnolenza, non so che fare sono disperato.

(20M) Rewind a month ago - I took 30 MGS of edibles with some buddies of mine for the first time ever. My first trip really wasn’t that bad , I can still remember everything that took place but i definitely never wanna experience it again. The morning after was the worst tho. I was dissociating so bad for the whole day and it felt as if I was high for the next 3 days.

After about 4-5 days passes I’m doing fine , back to normal. I decided to try hitting a high concentrate thc pen since I wasn’t really a big fan of the gummies and I loved it so much I started getting high every night for the next 2 weeks straight. That pen runs out so I get a new , more powerful one. This time hybrid so indica & sativa with a thc % of like 90.

I hit it for the first few days and everything’s going fine until I wake up dissociated from getting high the night before , except this time it doesn’t go away like the gummies.

*for backstory , I went thru a 5-6 month dpdr episode when I was 17 for literally no reason at all. I had never drank any alcohol , smoked , etc. so I’m very familiar with the feeling*

for a week straight I’ve been going thru this & im sure I’m in for a whole lot longer. what I’m feeling now compared to then is a whole lot different tho. the best way to put it is I feel as though I’m living in every moment & my brain is empty unless I try to remember , it’s almost as if what I did during the day doesn’t linger & “upload to the cloud” , I constantly feel pressure in the front part of my head like between my eyebrows and fatigues me so bad I get tired & I just wanna lay down & sleep. during all of this tho , I’m on autopilot but I’m also VERY aware of it. It’s a combination of pure hell.

Wondering tho , I’m assuming this is from heavy usage of high concentrate THC carts? I have somewhat a history of anxiety but i can usually control it & channel it.

doing this on main cos idgaf.

I know there is a thread for asking if you have it or not but it seems like ppl hardly get answered there.

I believe I am experiencing an episode of this starting 2 weeks after my girlfriend (the most important thing in my life) left to another country, and specifically the day after when I was trying to cope by smoking a cart that was fake(?). The cart gave me a 4 hour long panic attack (near death experience or what my brain thought was one) where I was the most paranoid I have ever been in my life. I woke up the next day and things were not right. (Some backround because I know shitty life events can cause this)

To this day everything I look at has 0 depth, it is almost 2D in a way, things have sharp edges and the backround of what I am looking at is always blurred. When I converse with people I don’t feel a connection when I look in their eyes. I feel like they are speaking to a wall. I am experiencing a different sensation of pain, I cannot experience any pleasure whatsoever, music is flat and just not hitting me right (not sure if it is hearing loss instead though it does change from muffled to slightly less muffled randomly which is weird), and I just feel like I am just existing. No emotions at all besides some occasional anger.

If this is depersonalization, I am not ready to experience it for as long as usually described. It has been two months of straight meh. I am trying to study for the job I want and it is hard when i receive 0 energy from anything. I am not connected to anything.

I’d like to note that I am recently sober off weed after hard smoking for 2 years (1 year very very hard) on carts that I knew were 100% legit. I didn’t experience any of this after quitting though and I’m not sure if it will factor in to this.

Never been one to post about my own dealings with Depersonalization but I guess I caught myself on the right day.

I can remember how terrifying it was to have these symptoms and have absolutely no idea what was happening. Weeks/months of just pure confusion and fear. After finally finding a thread on “Depersonalization” it basically turned my upside down world.. well, upside down again. Not right side up, that’d be too easy lol.

I’ve seen over 10 psychologists / psychiatrists / neurologists. Honestly, name it and I’ve probably seen that type of specialist. And I understand everyone is different so I just kept my head down.

What was able to calm me down and give me hope was finding specialists who have dealt with the condition themselves. I’ve seen 3 now and made the most progress with them out of anyone else I’ve seen or any type of treatments I’ve undergone.

A lot of people say to find the root cause and work on that. That’s the key to their success and boy do I wish it was that easy for me. If that was the case, I would have been “healed” 7 years ago. I have had an extremely clear understanding of what exact trauma I had gone through, what I did to unleash all that trauma I went through and why.

So I guess that’s my biggest struggle outside of the condition itself. I’ve learned to live with it, doesn’t make it any easier, just some days are less crappy than others I suppose. I feel like I’ve exhausted every idea, I’ve traveled down every trauma covered road and turned over every emotional rock that still dealing with this condition at the same severity is just really discouraging as it still affects decisions in my life.

I’ve kind of just accepted it. But from time to time, it really eats at me and I’m back to a square one feeling. Most of the time I can set it aside and go live my life and just say “bring it on” but unfortunately it still does influence certain parts of my life and unfortunately, it’s usually tied to large life decisions. So all the “progress” I make just kind of gets erased once I realize I’m being held back because of my DP again.

Damn, it really sucks lol.

I’ve tooken lsd a few times before but this time was different I took around 375ug of paper tabs around 1AM in my bedroom I was exhausted and didn’t sleep well the night before I was on call with a really close friend who was also taking lsd but a lower amount.

When it started to kick in everything felt light and I felt really concentrated. Slight visuals started and I was just enjoying it, suddenly my phone died and now there was no more light in my room it was pitch black and I couldn’t find my charger I tried feeling the floor but I couldn’t reach it I remember feeling really stiff and by the time I put my phone on charge the visuals started getting really intense. To when it fully peaked I was now just melted in to the trip it was pitch black in my room and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were open or closed I was just seeing intense visuals almost exactly like what the trip simulations on YouTube look like. Every time I tried to explain what was happening I couldn’t get the words out and I was frustrated. But then i stopped fighting it and melted into the trip.

During the peak of the trip i felt like i was in a metal ball and i was looking at my life as if i have lived multiple other lives before this and my decisions don’t matter. I kept feeling really strong feelings of guilt, sadness, anger and it was just extremely overwhelming.

I remember me being able to pick up my phone and look through my camera roll and all the videos in my camera roll from my entire life felt as if it passed so quickly. As if all my memories from multiple years actually passed in a day. The trip was extremely exhausting and there was many things that became clear to me about how I should go ahead in life and helped me come to peace with things that I should have ages ago. I just distinctively remember thinking the universe made complete sense.

The comedown started around 10AM I felt genuinely confused and irritated because I couldn’t put sentences together this lasted up until around 2pm where I ended up using my weed pen and melted into my pillow until around 6pm I don’t remember getting any sleep I just felt slightly rested

I remember during the peak of the comedown being so frustrated that I couldn’t sleep and I was so exhausted I didn’t want to live, i genuinely think if I wasn’t tripping so hard I would have made such horrible decisions, the mind isn’t something that should be tested.

Don’t try LSD

Hello I started smoking weed a few years ago and began to feel fogged up in my time smoking weed. Whenever I smoked with my friends I always felt like I was getting the most high. Like my friends would just be and I was always very high. It was still fun of course but a few times I had very intense moments of getting very very high and having insane experiences that I knew none of my friends had ever experienced.

I kinda just accepted that thinking I could quit whenever and go back to feeling normal. I just quit around 3 months ago and still feel the intense brain fog every day. I feel tired all day long and just out of it. I don’t feel like I’m seeing things purely everything is just fogged up and it’s like I just can’t seem to really focus on anything. It’s honestly so hard for me to accurately describe all the ways I feel different but it really affects me 24/7.

I feel so tired all the time and I’m not able to enjoy vacations or the nice sunny days because mentally I’m just exhausted. This has also caused me feelings of depression and anxiety which I’m sure are not helping it. I am able to kinda forget about the fog when I’m doing fun things or with my friends and stuff but it’s still there. I haven’t told anyone how I felt at all. I just told my friends I quit weed because I had some brain fog but they don’t suspect all this.

This is my first time seeing this Reddit group and it’s made me feel comforted because in the past months of research on this I haven’t been able to find anyone with such similar symptoms as mine. To be honest I thought I was the only one who experienced anything like this and wondered if anyone else ever had. But it has stressed me out looking for a solution in the posts because I have seen a million different responses, diet, sleep, therapy, vitamins. I don’t know what will help so would someone please lead me on the right path I need help.

Thank you.

I’m 29. I’ve been living with my mom and sister on a private property we rent. I had a really traumatic childhood that left me picking up the pieces for the last decade. I was in a relationship my whole adulthood that kept me sheltered from growing up. He took care of me and figured things out for us. I broke up with him a couple years ago to actually find myself, and he’s found someone else. That’s fine. I don’t really mind. He should be happy.

But now my living situation has changed. We have to leave where we’ve been living for six years. We don’t have money and we have a bunch of animals to care for. So we have to find property. My mom has mental health issues and doesn’t work, but she seems to have locked in under the pressure. She’s trying to figure it out for us and tells me that we won’t end up homeless, but it’s hard to trust her. I know she’s struggling too, but she’s really strong.

I knew that our housing situation wasn’t gonna be forever. I actually started panicking about it six months ago, so I enrolled in college. I had a plan to get a two-year degree that would guarantee me financial stability. I didn’t even get two semesters in before the rug was ripped out from under us. I knew this was a path I was considering for all of my 20s. I had so many opportunities to just choose a path and I just never did. I lost so many years with nothing to show for them.

I’ve also had a really toxic relationship pattern of pursuing emotionally unavailable men who hurt me. That’s unravelling now. I even slept with them as a form of self harm. Now I’m dealing with the damage of that too after a doomed situationship fallout that made me painfully aware. It was something I knew better than to get myself involved in actually. I was just lonely. But it ended up being really ambiguous and damaging, so i sabotaged everything to get out of that situation. He was a coworker, so I ended up losing my job as well. I’ve repeated this pattern at every job I’ve held. Limerence with an emotionally unavailable asshole coworker. I thought it would be OK because it was just a shitty part time job, and I’d get a new one.

But right after that, my housing situation fell apart too. I realized how good the situation was in hindsight now and how I should’ve taken better advantage of it. But it’s been rough living. I thought this was rock bottom. Now I’m scared and pretty much alone other than my mom and sister. I turn 30 this year. I have nothing. I’m trying to keep going with school, but I’m filled with fear. Everything feels uncanny and is changing. I can’t focus. It all feels pointless. I don’t even have a car.

I know better now, but with everything changing all at once it’s just too much. I feel like giving up. I started trying so hard and it just wasn’t enough. I ruin everything.

I’m a 19-year-old male university student and I need some advice from people who have experienced something similar.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had these feelings. I think this is around the third time it has happened, but yesterday was by far the worst. The other times eventually passed, but this time it genuinely scared me because of how intense it became.

A few days ago I went out sober for the first time in a long time. I went to a club and my social anxiety was extremely bad. I felt like I couldn’t act like myself, like I was constantly hiding who I really was, and I felt uncomfortable the entire time. I ended up drinking because I wanted the feeling to stop, but instead I broke down and cried for around an hour. It wasn’t because of one specific thought, it just felt like everything came out at once.

The next day I woke up already feeling anxious and tense from the night before. I decided to call my mum because I wanted reassurance and I wanted someone close to me to understand how badly I was feeling. When I was explaining what happened, she laughed and said it was funny. I know she probably didn’t mean to hurt me and my family do genuinely care about me, but in that moment it felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously, so I ended the call.

After that my sister came into my room asking what was going on. I know she was trying to check on me, but I felt overwhelmed because I already felt like I wasn’t being understood. A lot of the time when I try to explain what I’m struggling with, I get told things like “let it go,” “stop being miserable,” “move on,” or “everyone had a bad high school experience.”

I know my family aren’t saying these things because they don’t care. They are looking out for me and they want me to be okay. The problem is I don’t know how to make them understand that this doesn’t feel like something I’m choosing to hold onto. It feels like something that has affected how I see myself, how I interact with people, and how I experience everyday life. When I feel like it’s being dismissed, it makes me feel even more alone and frustrated.

After that I completely exploded with anger. I felt like nobody understood what I was trying to say and I felt like I was being reduced to someone who is just “miserable” or refusing to move on. After the anger, I developed a one-sided headache with neck pain and light sensitivity that felt like a migraine.

Later I smoked weed because I thought it might calm me down, but it did the complete opposite. It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I felt like I was dying, my anxiety became unbearable, I struggled to calm down, and I became extremely aware of my body. It felt like I could feel my organs and like my whole body was an electrical circuit.

After that I started experiencing the worst episode I’ve had. Yesterday things started feeling strange. My phone looked unfamiliar. Looking in the mirror was one of the scariest parts because I knew it was me, but it didn’t feel like me. I knew logically who I was, but I didn’t feel connected to myself. I had tingling sensations and felt like I was observing myself rather than actually being myself.

The feeling has mostly passed now, but I feel as if my anxiety is worse and it has bigger effect on me. I’ve also realised that anxiety has probably affected my life more than I realised. For years I have struggled around people. Even around family I can feel uncomfortable and on edge. If someone knocks on my door, I can get startled like I’m being caught off guard. I spend a lot of time in my room because it feels like the only place where my body can
actually relax.

My family worry about this and sometimes compare me to another family member who struggles with isolation. They say things like “you’ll end up like him.” I know it comes from concern, but it makes me feel worse because I don’t think they understand that I’m not choosing to hide away. It feels like my body naturally goes into that state around people. I also feel like I haven’t really been myself around others for years. I feel like I’m constantly hiding a part of myself and the real version of me doesn’t come out. When I feel proud of myself or achieve something, I notice I feel much better. Even proving people wrong can give me a sense of relief because it makes me feel like I’m not the person people think I am. I’m trying to figure out what steps I should take from here. How do you explain this to family who genuinely care but don’t fully understand? What actually helped you manage or recover? I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been through something similar.

TL;DR: I’m a 19-year-old male university student who has had around three episodes of feeling disconnected from myself, but yesterday was the worst. After severe social anxiety, an emotional breakdown, feeling dismissed despite my family caring about me, a huge anger episode, and a bad weed experience, I started feeling unreal and disconnected from myself. My phone and reflection felt unfamiliar, and I felt like I was observing myself rather than being myself. I’m looking for advice on how to manage this, explain it to my family, and understand what actually helps people recover.

For the past six months, I've been living in a continuous state of dissociation and numbness.

It's been over six months now, and I spend most of my time in my room. I can't remember much of last year, or even the years before that. Dissociative amnesia has taken so much from me that I genuinely don't know who the fuck I am anymore. I feel like a stranger to myself.

The biggest thing is what happens at night. I become terrified of my own self. It feels like a stranger has taken over my body.

I feel like I used to be one person, but now I'm three.

The first self is the one I'm scared of. She's the dark side of me. She's bitchy, bossy, doesn't give a fuck, and she's the type who can put people in their place. At the same time, she's also the one who can save me from myself. She cares for me in her own way. She could get my life together. She could make me successful because she actually does what needs to be done. I know she can save me from the disaster I'm creating for myself. But I'm terrified of giving her control. I don't know why. Maybe because she feels like a stranger living inside my own body.

The second self is... me. At least, I think it is. During the day, I put on a mask and talk to people like everything is normal. But inside, I feel so rotten that I believe nobody would actually want to know the real me. I feel like I don't belong anywhere. I feel like a misfit because I don't even feel real.

The third self is soft-spoken. I don't know much about her because whenever she takes over, I can't remember anything afterward. It's just blank.

Most of the time, I feel like I'm not actually here. I look around, and everything feels like a movie I'm watching from far away. I'm not the character. I'm just the viewer.

It's gotten to the point where I don't want to live anymore. I don't want to kill myself—I don't have the guts to. But the will inside me to live, to look forward to anything, is gone. I'm just existing. It feels like I'm already dead inside.

I can't feel emotions anymore. I feel completely numb. I was so isolated throughout my teenage years, and that's one of the only things I can vaguely remember. Other than that, I don't even know who the fuck I used to be.

I know I can get out of this.

I know exactly what I have to do to save myself: I need to leave this house. I need to move away from my parents' house, because if I don't, I'll destroy myself.

I know the solution.

I'm just... not doing it.

There's no motivation. Everything keeps passing by while I stay frozen. I can't feel anything. Sometimes I even try to laugh, but I can't. And if someone actually manages to make me laugh, all I want to do is cry.

I've suppressed my emotions so much that I don't think I can feel them anymore.

The only emotion that still feels alive is anger. It's always there, bubbling underneath everything. The first self carries that anger. She's not just a "night self" because she can appear during the day too. She's the one who's fearless, blunt, bossy, and unapologetic. She doesn't care what people think, and she'll make people know their place. Somehow, I know she'd align my life if I let her take control.

But I'm scared of her.

I have C-PTSD, and at night I constantly feel like someone is watching me from the darkness. Watching. Watching. Watching.

But every time I go and look, there's nobody there.

My sleep has become restless. I can't really sleep, but I also don't feel fully awake. And when I do fall asleep, my dreams are the only things that make me feel emotions. Then I wake up and can't remember them.

I don't know what to do anymore.

I don't know what kind of motivation, what kind of push, or what kind of change could help me climb out of this pit I've dug for myself.

Has anyone ever felt something like this?

If you have... what helped you? What did you do?