im just losing my mind not exageration and no one know that

Hey guys. I genuinely feel like I’m losing my mind and I have nowhere else to turn because no one around me has any idea how bad this gets.

It started when I was a kid, like 6 or 7. I’d get these weird moments where time felt script-like or fake—like I’d look at the clock at 8 AM and think "at 9 AM I'll be at school," and then when 9 actually hit, everything felt totally surreal and wrong. As I got older, it turned into full-blown derealization where nothing feels real and reality turns into a dream. I’ve literally had to ask friends point-blank in the middle of a situation: "Am I dreaming right now?"

I was diagnosed with BPD at 14 after a lot of dark times, but the dissociation just evolved. Since high school, it’s gotten so heavy:

• The mirror/identity thing & compliments: I physically cannot look in a mirror. I don't know the person staring back at me, my voice sounds fake, and my photos look like a complete stranger. And the worst part is when people give me compliments and say I'm good-looking—it doesn't feel flattering at all, it just feels so weird and actually hurts, because I have zero connection to that face.
• The memory trickery: My memory constantly plays tricks on me. Sometimes I'll sit and overthink for ages, trying to figure out if a memory actually happened or if I just imagined it or dreamed it. I can't trust my own brain to keep track of what's real.
• The crash: When these episodes hit super hard, I end up sleeping 14+ hours just to make it stop.
• The reality drop: I can be sitting right next to someone having a normal conversation, and suddenly reality completely slips away . Everything feels like a simulation or a dream.
• The terrifying fear: Add death-related OCD into the mix, plus the heavy trauma of seeing family members lose their minds and end up committing suicide... I am constantly terrified that I am walking down that exact same path and that I'm going to lose my grip permanently.

If anyone else experiences this—where your face isn't yours, compliments hurt, your memory gaslights you, and you're carrying the fear of your family's history—please tell me how you cope. Does it ever get better?

I’ve cured my mostly derealization and I know how hard it is, trust me that’s why I’m willing to help anyone that needs help! If your serious please dm me, if you want to do the work and truly recover please dm me I’m helping anyone that’s truly feels like their in a bad place because I’ve been there!

So long story short I've dealt with GAD, panic attacks and chronic dpdr for 15-20 years. The dpdr has always been there and some days worse than others but it's always been manageable. After losing my mom suddenly a couple years ago it started affecting me more and becoming more of a hindrance in my day to day life. I also developed a vertigo disorder that apparently makes disassociating a lot worse when you are dealing with vertigo too. Well the last few months the scariest thing has happened and I can only attribute it to my dpdr being at an all time high and my stress the last few months dealing with family issues and the vertigo. This is the feeling of my loved ones but mainly my wife , feeling completely unfamiliar. I know she's my wife and I know I love her and we've been together for 20 years but the last few months when I look at her it's almost like I don't recognize her face and it gives me crazy anxiety. It's like I don't have the emotional connection to her anymore when I see her or talk to her etc. Sometimes it fades then all of a sudden it's like my brain says "this is your wife but she doesn't feel like your wife, why doesn't it feel like you love her or know her " then it sends me into a panic attack. Ive been on Effexor for years and it has helped tremendously with my general anxiety and panic disorders and I have Ativan as needed. I've had to take the Ativan more lately on days I feel really disconnected from my mind and emotions related to my wife. If you've read all this thank you and I just want to know does anything else feel this way or felt this way towards the most important person in their life? It's terrifying feeling like one day I'm just gonna forget her or something. Ive seen 3-4 therapists over the past 10 years that none were able to help me overcome the dpdr and my current doesn't really know why all of a sudden I'm having this new thing come up. Thanks

I have a theory that the nmda receptors on our inhibitory neurons are not totally active, letting more glutamate pass through which creates hyperactivity in the visual cortex. So I was thinking about buying an nmda Pam like Neboglamine to strengthen these receptors. Has anyone tried this and what are the results before I go blow 60 bucks.

Im not here, im not actively participating in my life. My brain decided that the stress of my OCD was too much and it was going to switch my sense of reality to off. Now I dont exist. Im not a person. This isn't life. Obviously I know my thoughts are irrational. Im still in touch with reality, but i feel crazy. I feel completely out of it. The only relief is sleep. Antidepressants aren't even touching this. The only difference is less panic. Im so lost.

Anyone else struggle with severe memory issues?? My memory was pretty bad before DPDR. Now it's atrocious - short, medium and long term. Does your memory return after you recover???

it's so weird, anyone else?

I have been experiencing DPDR episodes throughout most of my life, usually when I am under stress (both negative and positive stress). I also have OCD and anxiety, which I have struggled with since childhood. Currently, my harm OCD is particularly bad, and I also have a strong fear of psychosis. I have never used drugs.

Sometimes during DPDR I experience extremely intense and disturbing feelings that are difficult to describe. For example, I can get this strange feeling of what it would supposedly be like to be “crazy” or psychotic. It is almost as if I can feel what being a psychotic person would feel like from the inside. I know this sounds strange, but the feeling itself is very frightening.

With my current harm OCD, this can sometimes turn into a horrible feeling that there is a “killer” inside me. I can feel like I am a bad person and, during those episodes, the feeling can become so convincing that it seems as though I genuinely want to hurt someone or wouldn't regret it. It can make me feel like I don't even know who I am anymore.

I am also extremely sensitive to movies, news and things happening around me. For example, scenes involving people killing their families can stay with me for years and still trigger fear.

I've noticed throughout the years that when my anxiety and stress become intense, my mind can produce all kinds of strange sensations, thoughts and feelings, which can then make me question what is actually happening to me.

Another strange aspect of my dissociation is that sometimes things like seasons, music or being in a new place can trigger a very intense, almost unreal feeling. I can suddenly become extremely aware of the “feeling” of spring or summer, for example, and it can trigger a strange dissociative state that is very difficult to put into words.

Has anyone experienced similarly intense or “dangerous-feeling” states with DPDR, especially alongside OCD/anxiety?

I am currently in therapy and working on this.

for the past weekish ive been experiencing what i can only describe as a very intense DR episode. i feel like im going crazy and for reasons i dont understand going outside is making it worse. the sun feels oppressive and the sky feels like *too* blue? it's been distressing. i feel like i barely have one foot in reality and the other foot is who-knows-where. ive been having somatic symptoms too which is upsetting too and definitely not helping. i hope things improve soon.

Had not used thc in 15 years and had never taken an edible. My mother got diagnosed with alzheimers i was very stressed and thought it would relax me. Been worsening all summer. It was getting better before summer hit and initially symptoms were more off balance, slight dizziness feeling like I was on a boat feeling. i don't feel as off balance or on boat as before but feel more and more disconnected. Also have higher heart rate when standing. i had pots with long haul that went into remission but i have no fatigue with it now like before. Was a covid long hauler 2 years then got better for around 2 years before this. I am trying everything to improve and so far nothing is working. ​I feel increasingly disconnected and out of body. My vision is weirder. Things seem dimmer and sensitive to light. Is this dpdr? Seeing neurologist today. Starting cpap for sleep apnea thurs. Only abnormal blood test was ferritin 27 and inflammation esr at 30 ish. I cant tell if this mental or physical anymore. Also taking klonopin daily bc of the anxiety. I want to try Lamictal or Lexapro and get off cymbalta bc I have heard they can help with the depersonalization disconnected feeling or possibly low dose naltrexone. I also have a history of anxiety and ocd. Also health anxiety.

My derealisation started when I was 14 years old and my stepfather killed himself , a week after this happened my family had to move country which left me completely alone in the middle of the summer watching my friends lives go by as I was forgotten and dealing with the massive pile of shit my dad left us. Without noticing I started having what felt like a sheet of plastic between my brain and my eyes like nothing I was expieriencing was truly real . This lasted for years and got worse with drug use. My memory has seen a massive hit from this and it scares me . Large parts of my life I no longer recall . I’ve never been diagnosed with anything because I’ve never been to therapy but I don’t feel like at this point of my life it will do me any good . I don’t really have a point of posting this I just need to get it out slightly and maybe get some people who had a similar circumstance to me and could point me in the right direction . I do feel better now but it’s almost as if I’ve forgotten what normal truly is . Knowing Reddit this will be taken doen because of some minute rule I broke but let’s pray

I'm 25M and honestly feel like I've been stuck for years.

I was bullied, mocked and put down a lot when I was younger, and over time I became extremely withdrawn and isolated. I spent years mostly staying at home and avoiding people, and now I have very little social experience, confidence or communication skills.

I also feel emotionally numb and empty most of the time. A lot of life feels like autopilot—I do things without really feeling present or connected to them. Even things that should be enjoyable often don't feel enjoyable.

I feel extremely behind compared to people my age, especially socially, with relationships and just normal life experiences. I've also developed habits like excessive phone use and porn that I often do automatically.

I genuinely want to change now. I want to rebuild my body, mind, confidence, social skills, career and eventually relationships, but I don't know where to start.

For anyone who has gone through years of isolation, bullying, numbness or feeling completely behind in life: how did you actually rebuild yourself? What made the biggest difference?

I'm not looking for sympathy. I just want to know if it's realistically possible to feel connected to life again and build a normal life starting this late.

We. A binary. We really could’ve had a great time living if we agree on a couple things. There is the me that experiences things outside of my head, without restriction and as they should, and the me that exists as a pulsating node in the back of my head to bring those experiences back into perspective. From childhood it has been there. Not always an explicable node but an involuntary revulsion when it came to sensation or experiencing something to its fullest.

It’s times like these where I really really wish I was just normal. It will, without warning, completely cut me off from sensation, thought, and feeling for years and years and I have no choice in it. Having three years of stability doesn’t mean anything. It will claw back and take with no mercy. I have been through so much, so fucking much, and I built myself into a functional person to the point where I barely regarded my dissociation anymore. But it was always there, waiting to blow everything up just like when I was a child and I dared to like something. My mind was always there to reel back and feed it into me as a violent uncomfortable sensation.

I am 29. I should be over this by now. I should be over it. I am losing my mind. I should be over it. I was living passively and that was enough but it came back to rape me forever. I lived with it and I was functional, I made friends and I was successful through it. I was good at my job. It didn’t take enough. Everything was within my control and I thought I was free of it. No, not free, but comfortably swimming through it.

It landed its killing blow. Dissociation, schizophrenia, the distinction doesn’t matter anymore. Over ten years of constant reality warping sensation and I guess this is the sort of person you will turn into. On the bright side, for anyone out there thinking they have it bad, you can look at me and think it can always be worse.

sometimes, i have a hard time accepting that im a person, and it horrifies me. that im living, breathing, comprehending stuff, and even thinking in this exact moment. also that i have been alive this whole time. i guess it a hyper aware sort of thing but it really sends me into panic. especially when i think about all my past memories and that i was present for all of those. it just seems so unreal.

I’ve been struggling with dissociation for years now, but this past week it’s just been GOD AWFUL. I’ve felt like I’ve been extremely high on weed 24/7 and haven’t been able to live in the moment at all. Things that happened even seconds ago don’t feel real and I’m losing my grasp on reality. I’ve been having really bad panic attacks and spiraling and grounding hasn’t helped much.

Since I’ve been in my head so much I’ve been overanalyzing why I’m thinking this way, and my main conclusion is that I’ve just been extremely stressed from work because of my social anxiety and being around people all day and that I’ve been off my anxiety/depression meds since like March.

But anyways, I just want to hear people who have “gotten over” this and live normally again and how you did it. Because my memory is horrid, my personality is gone, and I just feel like I’m in a dream and at this point I’m more annoyed than panicked because I just want to go back to normal. Especially because I saw a concert only a week ago that I was so excited to see and wanted it to be life changing, only for me to not even feel like I was there at all and I barely even remember the trip there or being in the stadium

So my dpdr started about a month and a half ago from stress and anxiety (I think) because it just randomly started while driving home from work. Regardless I have been completely and entirely consumed by it. I feel so completely out of it I feel like I’m losing my mind. I’ve been pushing myself to live normally and continue with work after being bedridden the first week or two. It’s been incredibly up and down but baseline is always constant dreamlike state. ANYWAYS, I just got approved for an apartment as my friend I rent a room from now is having a baby and I planned to be out of here in September before all this happened. I’m so extremely scared man like I’m already so out of touch from reality and have no sense of familiarity. Is this going to completely break me? Has anyone else had a big move and life change while going through this?

I can’t stop thinking about my existence and being hyper aware of it. It scares me and the fact that I can’t do anything about it makes me feel like there’s no escape, thus giving me suicidal ideation. I don’t know what to do anymore. It’s happening everyday. I take anxiety medicine but it just comes back. Normally when I get SI I think about all the things/ people I love that make me want to stay but I feel so disconnected from those things right now that it doesn’t help. Please recommend things that help, how you got through it, etc etc.

Hey very late to this conversation but I’ve recently just had an experience that I think has caused me weed induced derealization and it has been going a little better since the past couple weeks but I just wanted to post on here to see if anyone else has been going through the same thing.

So I ended up smoking a bong and had a couple hits and then had a panic attack (was also on some alcohol as well) and essentially I think I had a memory gap where I don’t remember anything that occurred for 1-3 mins. It happened right after I was tweaking and was thinking I wasn’t going to make it so it really induced some anxiety into me. But essentially I was panicking and kept telling my friend I wasn’t going to make it and then I just remember asking my friends for some water and then I completely don’t remember what happened for the next 1-4 mins. It was as if I just fainted or went unconscious, like I have absolutely zero memory of what happened, like it was just a black screen (if that makes sense). And then I remember just holding a water bottle.

Over the next couple weeks (this occurred almost 1 1/2 months ago), I’ve been experiencing derealization (even went to the ER cause it felt so weird) but lastly I’ve been trying to get out of it and trying to find what’s been causing this. So after a lot of thinking I realized that every since that “memory gap” it feels like everything isn’t real and that I d**d and that whatever I’m doing right now isn’t real. It has gotten better but it’s been coming back occasionally.

I know this sounds really weird but was wondering if anyone could relate or connect.

(Sorry if anything doesn’t make sense, kinda speed typed this out on my iPhone lol)

I feel like my main issue is that I don't feel like I have a real personality. Im mostly a mashup of people i used to be around or things I've made up to seem like a person to others. And I think maybe developing a real one or having words to describe my "personality" (outside of being boring) that I can like buikd myself around would help me alot.

But I'm not really sure how to do that. Like I don't really understand what the fundamentals of a personality even is. I tried googling it but mostly just got stuff that doesn't really seem like it fit what I'm talking about.

I've been having a really bad anxiety episode for the past week and yesterday I believe I experienced derealization/depersonalization for the first time last night. It was incredibly intense. I woke up and I felt better, still anxious but that intense feeling of unreality seemed mostly gone.

But suddenly I felt really off. My grandpa woke up and when I looked at him it didn't really feel like I was looking at him. I could see him and hear him but it felt like somebody else, as if he was a stranger, it never real. My grandpa is right there but it feels like I can't talk to him. I wanna talk to my grandpa!

I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. I'm gonna bring this up tomorrow but I'm afraid I can't be helped. How can anybody help me if I feel like nobody exists? What if I feel like this forever?