Depersonalization/derealization

[Deleted member 29311]

I still remember when it happened..

It was a couple of months before high school graduation, I was sitting on the bus on my way back home, coming back from a mall. I was starring out the window, thinking about how depressed I had been feeling for a couple of years and all these bad thoughts, when all of a sudden, something strange happened.

My emotions suddenly went completely numb, and everything around me felt surreal. I was completely disconnected from my body. It felt as though I died and entered this weird dream. It's one of the worst feelings in the world, worse than the depression I had been feeling for so long.. I wouldn't wish it to anyone.

The following day, I went back to school and explained to my friends what I was experiencing. Everything still felt so surreal and strange, as though I was watching my body move on it's own and everything, and I was a spectator.

This feeling persisted for a couple of months, and slowly started diminishing over time.

The thing is, the feeling isn't gone still. I think I just got used to it. All I know is that it's still there right now, although it's not as intense, at least I think it's not.. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel exactly, except I know it's not this. Something is still wrong, and I can't seem to shake away this feeling, I want to feel connected to my body and to those around me.

I want to feel real again.

 

[crystaltear]

I get this too. It's so awful. I'd rather be bawling my eyes out from a broken heart than feeling stuck in some 4th dimension.

Ive found it tends to happen to me when I have (subconsciously or maybe consciously) distanced myself from my true feelings. Sometimes I dig around until I can feel something, or watch something that I know will make me teary eyed. Crying seems to break the drought for me, at least for a bit.

 

[Chava]

I was in high school when I started noticing this too, and it was happening primarily within relationships....like people I knew or thought I trusted didn't seem real...like I was just watching them on a t.v. show. Or I didn't seem real. The surroundings probably didn't either, but they didn't jump out at me like the people not feeling real. I walled myself off from others. Now I don't struggle with this so much, but it helps to work on decent relationships with a small number of people, like colleagues, neighbors, friends...and keep in touch with them.

Even though I've stuck with my current therapist for a few years I've gone through periods of feeling like she is not real between sessions (good she seems real when I am there)...but like she or I never existed or one of us disappeared in between. There's some derealization there but I think this is more like a very early object permanency issue. It has affected other relationships...like other people stop being real when they are out of the picture, the relationships just don't exist. Somehow this part has gotten better.

In my nightmares, I'm still outside a window watching a little girl get hurt (the little girl is somehow me but doesn't look like me and "I" as an adult am watching the nightmare from a safe location). Sort of depersonalization but really more like how my dissociation works in dreams. In one I took this little girl to the ER, so I think I was integrating these parts of myself.