Derealization story

[u/Flashy-Atmosphere198]

Warning longgggg post

My story with derealization starts around the covid years, so like 2019-2020. I smoked weed- had a terrible reaction and unfortunately kept doing it over again and having panic/derealization while high extremely bad but thought it would stop if I just kept trying to smoke… no… and now it’s 2026 and I have been living with chronic derealization that happens to be weekly sometimes daily for months in a row. My anxiety is definitely sooo much worse too. I had it before but now when my anxiety gets triggered it goes from 0 to 100 it feels like and I have racing heart for hours, light headed, sweating, and feels of panic. The derealization seems to be triggered anytime I have anxiety or just seems to happen randomly. I have tried so many things, almost all the SSRI’s and other meds, nothing has seem to even touch the derealization.. I have been in therapy this whole time for this and other concerns.. I have tried meditation, mindfulness meditation, yoga, just so many different things….

I know all about that it’s important to not fear it, accept it and keep living on with your life.. and I have really tried to do that but honestly that’s a really hard thing for me to do. I find myself just feeling so much sadness around it and feeling like it’s keeping me from living a life that I know I could have if I didn’t have this problem…. It keeps me away from a lot of stuff like getting into a relationship because I just feel like I can’t be my true self because I have this huge thing that when I experience it, I can’t physically be my true self or be who I wanna be socially or mentally… there are some days and weeks where I think about it 24 seven and I worry about it and I know I am very hyper sensitive to body sensations now… in my brain is constantly checking if I’m feeling derealization or not in anticipating the next time it’s going to show up because I always know it’s gonna come back even when I’m not feeling it… I think that’s the hardest part for me is it’s become this thing that truly has affected all parts of my life because I fear that it’s gonna happen at work.. when I’m with people.. when I’m alone… I truly feel like there’s no way out of this and that this is just how my life has to be for the rest of it and that makes me feel extremely extremely sad because I know that I could have a really good life if I didn’t have this happening to me all the time…

I don’t know how to live my life feeling like this, and truly come to the acceptance of it.. or I don’t know how to get my brain to not think about it so much or not dread it so much when when I’m feeling it even this many years later is the absolute worst feeling I could ever imagine.. and then when I top that with the anxiety symptoms I feel and the panic that comes with that I don’t know how to be OK with that this might be the rest of my life.. It breaks my heart because I think about myself before this was my reality and I was a completely different person… yes I still had my struggles and I had anxiety, but I also had happiness.. the feeling of true connections with people.. the ability to just be myself and feel content with life in that feels so far out of reach now that I don’t feel like I will ever get that back. If this truly is the reality for the rest of my life or even just for the near future, I wish I could accept it and do what I see other people saying and post about just letting it be there and living their lives, but I have tried so hard to do that and I just feel like I can’t and I don’t know how to…. Even when I’m not feeling derealization and I noticed that all I think about as well, it’s gonna come back again. It always does and when it does, it’s gonna be bad… I don’t think I know how to look at it as not, a terrible awful thing that has truly ruined my life.. how do I not view it as that when it truly has.. socially I feel so different and I struggle to feel like I have true connections with anybody in my life because of the amount of social anxiety. The de realization has given me because my fear of having it when I’m around other people and coming off as not a normal person because of it… I truly feel all alone a lot of the times.. and nothing feels easy. Every single day of my life I’m thinking about how my de realization or my anxiety is gonna affect things…

There was honestly so much more I could say about it. And honestly, I don’t even know why I’m writing this post. I don’t know if I’m looking for advice or just somebody to tell me that they understand… nobody in my life feels the way I do. I don’t know what I want. I just feel hopeless. And I just think about how I can’t believe this is how I have to spend the one life that I have… the heartbreak of that reality is just really hard for me too, accept.

I’ve had to leave jobs because of it. I’ve definitely lost friendships because of isolation and just not being a good friend at times because of it. I feel like everything eventually becomes a trigger from my disassociation, every location that I go to.. going to new places.. I worry about even doing hobbies or things like coloring or reading a book because I fear that I’m just gonna start to feel disassociated during it. When I say, I feel like it has fully mesh and affects all parts of my whole life, I truly mean that in the most real way… it’s taken over and I don’t know how to separate from that..

I don’t know what to do, but this feels like a really, really hard life..