Not Sure Whats Happening

[Weapon]

The other day on my daughter’s birthday my mother asked me what I remembered from when I was her age (4). I realized that I don’t remember much of anything from those days let alone before 9. I know it sounds weird that was a long time ago but most people that I have talked to say they remember their younger years.

Lately I look in the mirror and try to determine who I am…some days it’s almost like an out of body experience. It’s almost like I don’t recognize myself. There have been many days lately that if I’m in public with my wife and she may go off for a few minutes looking at something and I feel like I’m lost. Well, maybe not lost but defiantly like there is something wrong almost as if she isn’t real and I’m in a daydream. I was wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar.

 

[Srain]

Welcome to the Forum John Barta,

I wonder if you have ever looked up Derealization as a type of Dissociation? This might be what you are experiencing, there is information about it here on this site discussing a lot of various symptoms related to PTSD. It can be frightening if you don't know what is happening and have not been properly diagnosed.

To answer your question, I get that experience all the time, it's rather chronic with me and at first I had no idea what was going on. I thought those long lost day of drug use(it had been literally 20yrs ago, you have got to kidding!) had somehow caught up to me, though I had no idea how, that or I was watching myself lose my mind, quite literally. I would try to explain to people but nobody understood, until I read about it.

We are glad you're here, you are not alone.

peace,
Rain

 

[predicttheweather]

John, I also experience derealization pretty frequently. It's awful, isn't it? I also tend to experience depersonalization a lot, which is feeling like the world is real but I'm not, or I'm actually standing slightly behind myself instead of actually being in my body, or watching myself in a movie. One thing that tends to help me with both is to name things I see ("there's a stop sign, there's a blue car, there's a pine tree") until I feel more grounded in my present reality. Another thing that really helps me at those times is to listen to music that calms me down or makes me feel safe--the best way I can conceptualize it is that rather than my "self" being out in the world (which is scary and destabilizing) it goes into the music and that gives me somewhere safe to put it.