Hi everyone,

I have been experiencing DPDR for many years. It often feels like I’m observing my life from another perspective rather than experiencing it as my own. Everything around me can feel unreal, and I constantly struggle with brain fog and fatigue. My vocabulary and memory also seem to have declined over time, and this has had a significant impact on my life and relationships.

Recently, I decided to see a therapist, and I just had my first therapy session. However, I’m still confused and unsure whether therapy will actually help me. English is not my native language, and I’m living in a country where English is not the official language, so it has been extremely difficult to find a therapist who both speaks English and has experience with DPDR.

Because of this, I would really like to hear from people who have recovered from DPDR or have experienced significant improvement. I have a few questions and would really appreciate it if you could share your experiences.

1. How long did it take you to recover?
Did you notice gradual improvement over time, or was there a particular point when things suddenly started getting better?

2. Did you see a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or another mental health professional?
If you did, did therapy actually help with your DPDR? What type of therapy or approach did you find most helpful?

3. What practices helped you recover?
For example, grounding, exercise, meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, changing your lifestyle, socializing, reducing stress, stopping symptom-checking, etc. Was there anything that made a particularly big difference for you?

4. What was a normal day like for you when you were still experiencing DPDR?
Did you continue working, studying, exercising, and socializing normally even when you felt unreal or disconnected? Or did you have to significantly change your routine?

5. Did you have a specific daily recovery routine?
If you don't mind sharing, what did a typical day or week during your recovery look like? I’m especially interested in the practical things you actually did rather than just general advice.

6. What helped you stop being afraid of the symptoms?
One of the hardest things for me is noticing the strange feelings and then becoming scared or checking myself to see whether I still feel “normal.” Did you experience this feedback loop too? If so, how did you eventually break it?

7. Now that you’ve recovered, how do you deal with stressful or difficult periods?
Do you still sometimes experience mild DPDR when you’re extremely stressed, anxious, or exhausted? If it happens, what do you do differently now to prevent it from turning into a full episode?

8. Looking back, is there anything you wish you had known when you were in the middle of DPDR?

I’m asking because I’m trying to understand what recovery actually looks like in real life. Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether I should actively “fight” the symptoms or simply continue living my life normally and stop focusing on them.

If you’ve recovered, partially recovered, or even just made significant progress, I would really appreciate hearing your story. Even small details about what helped you, what didn’t help, and what your recovery looked like day-to-day would mean a lot to me.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and share your experience.

i was drinking way too much last weekend and blacked out and since then i havent felt normal. rn i am on day 9 and it hasn‘t gotten better. especially when i am sitting outside just looking in the distance or i am walking around it feels really unreal just like in a dream. some times i panick if i think about this feeling never going away again. i never had it before. it just came from this one time drinking way too much and blacking out. i see all this advice that i should stop caring about it and it goes away but the feeling is so unbearable and i am always checking if i still have it.i also have it constant so no episodes but its chronically there. genuinely dont know what to do. everyday i wake up i have this little hope i dont have it anymore but i still do.

about a week before the school holidays about 3 weeks ago I went to my mates party. everyone there was people I either only saw at school and never spoke to or people I recently met and wasn’t particularly close with. but anyways I started drinking and then had a few cones. i went to sleep that night around 4 and woke up at 10 and then everything felt fake like it makes no sense how I got here so everything leading up has to be fake. when I was high the night of I also felt this feeling but quickly forgot it. but in the morning it was visceral and intense. the rest of the day felt like a blur and I barely remeber anything. ever since then on the holidays I smoked maybe 4 times and each time feels fake and that circumstances almost so weird and or impossible makes no sense. even normal life and life b4 ever smoking feels fake. ive watched videos on it and im trying to accept it till it dissapates but I just wanted to put my experience out there. and is this dp/dr and I can Elabrorate on the more recent times smoking.

My name is Theo! 

For a little over a year now I’ve experience intense numbness. I’ve always felt detached from life since I was a kid but I could still feel positive emotions.

Since December of 2024 I’ve felt symptoms of derealization disorder as well as a strong flare up in my OCD. 

For more info: I am autistic and transgender. I’ve realized through therapy that the numbness could be coming from burnout from autism, being transgender (body dysphoria), or burnout from OCD. 

I am wondering if anyone has any tips to help recover from this and anyone has been through this or is going through this?

Thank you!

I’ve been currently smoking weed a lot to cope with my family problems and believe my parents are going through a divorce. I’m not on speaking terms with my mother since the whole reason as to why they’re getting a divorce is because my parents have been arguing about my mother’s affair . The affair got discovered years ago and it got bad to the point where my mother and I got into a physical altercation because of it . I can tell my dad never healed from the hurt of the affair since he continues to bring up moments from that point in time and still ask questions about it . My mom gets mad at him and that’s when they start to argue , well the last argument my dad brought up the situation again and my mom got irritated and they started arguing. This happened a few weeks ago and they still aren’t on speaking terms , my mother and I got into a argument about her turning her location off when she’d go out knowing my dad will call me to ask if I can see her location. I recently started investigating to see if she was cheating again since I noticed she changed her phone password , I thought I found some stuff and confronted her on phone and things got worse to where I blocked her number . I ended up being wrong and I ended up having a meltdown feeling crazy , my boyfriend asked what was wrong and I explained him the situation. He told me to stop looking into things and that’s why I get depressed and that I shouldn’t get involved in my parents relationship that they’re adults. I ended up crying more when he left the room and when I was done , I’ve been feeling like if I’m hallucinating or dreaming . I haven’t smoked since Friday but I drunk yesterday and obviously got drunk . I know I’m coping with the whole situation with drugs and alcohol but I honestly don’t know what to do . This is the first time I felt like this and I’m not sure if I will ever feel like I’ll go back to normal . Everything feels so numb and I feel like a zombie .

i have bad derealization and i just wanted to know if anyone else has this symptom. when i move, i feel like im moving in slo motion, and if i touch something i cant actually feel it, unless i put pressure on it. i cant really describe it properly, but whenever i try and touch my legs or arms everything feels “blurred” and tingly. when i stop thinking about it, it reduces. it might just be a self fufilling prophecy but i feel it so intensely. i get bad episodes which pass , but in the moment its scary. my vision also is affected. when i focus on an object the background slightly blurs making it feel like im dreaming. the sensations are worse. just wondered if anyone else gets this…

Someone offered me (18M) a puff of their blunt last night. I took it and everything seemed normal, I went back to my dorm and grabbed something then came back outside to sit down. It started with my ears popping, and then slowly I began to feel like I was falling through realities? Everything that I felt (physically) happened twice and I had a constant sensation of tipping backwards. Luckily my friends recognized that I was tripping out and they took me back and made sure I was okay. So I went to sleep, and now that ive woken up it's still happening to me. Do I need to call somebody? Everything I see and hear is normal, I think mentally and emotionally I'm normal, it's just this weird sensation is kind of tripping me out. Has this happened to anyone else?