Unreality – Depersonalization and Derealization

@antu, Yep, that sounds a bit like depersonalization. What you have done is disconnected yourself from the life experience. Think of it this way: you are looking at life through a telescope, your not actually living it. Your thoughts are so incredibly powerful that your affirmations have created this reality for you, that’s all it really is. It’s not special or un-special at all your just another person that’s creating her reality (which we all do). If you feel its an un-reality and a simulation then that’s what it will be for you. Start changing your thoughts to the opposite positive of how you think and your reality will soon follow. Take up meditation and don’t be so attached to your thoughts (it will help with the feeling of justification for the reality you have created) and this feeling will ease for you.
I went through a period similar to this (with different reasons for the depersonalization) and I know it sucks, you’ll get through it though. As much as this sucks to hear, YOU CREATED THIS but you also have the power to change it if you truly desire to. If you want more details on how, you may private message me. Good luck, Cheers! :)

Whoa, I thought maybe it was just me who felt like that, but i guess it is more of a common thing than I thought.

@antu, Thank You For This Post. Very Informational And I Was Able To See Many similarities Between Your Story And My Story :D

I agree with finding your roots. I’ve had to remember even though its a dream and isn’t my ‘home’ it still exists and I can make.it what I want lol dreams come true! I’m pondering turning my house into an atrium lol

And.keeping up with my art thats the biggest thing as a shield for the majority making me feel lost, art IS life fellas where would we be w/o imagination
IT’S A L L IMAGINATION

@antu,

I have always felt somewhat like you do, however I generally “snap” out of it when life confronts me. It gets bad when I’m alone though. Sometimes I feel like if I didn’t have the people in my life grounding me, I’d go nuts. I am self diagnosed with derealizaton disorder. I’ve always felt underwhelmed by reality, and thought that there simply must be something beyond this, something I’d really much prefer to graduate to. I look at everything in life so objectively that I never really emotionally experience any of it in a meaningful way. Sometimes I just laugh at negative emotional experience and situations thinking how silly it is that all these people are playing this game of life and that they are all so involved with it that they let it affect them so strongly. I very often feel “above” others in this sense, which can sometimes be borderline grandeur. I don’t like that about myself.

@antu i will tell you 1 true thing… psychologist lie….its their business.
And 1 more thing i will tell you….. when you are about to realise something….don’t think what will happen.. at that time concentrate on that only. don’t be afraid to think what if i go mad? At that moment only think about that thibg what u are doing.. After you get the result you may think whatever you like …u can think you are on top of mt. everest for all i care. :)
YOU WILL NOT DIE IF YOU REALISE SOMETHING. DONT BE AFRAID
this is the difference between 100 people and 1 in 100 people. believe in your convictions.
You know i am still afraid to let go of the light. But i know when you embrace darkness then you will know light better. for it is the rule of the universe. But i am still afraid. But i don’t like to show :/

@antu I’ve had strong senses of depersonaliztion – where I am an observer of my body, and have no control.

I’ve had trips on DMT where I was about to be given an answer to all questions, and I was, but they gave me a choice to forget what I was told forever, or to retain it. I asked them to please take it away, and as I came back down I couldn’t remember what they had told me. Just a man in a business suit…

I’ve had panic attacks that feel like I’m going to burst. The universe itself becomes too small for me – I become claustrophobic no matter where I imagine myself.

Some quotes, songs, sounds, even smells can bring about this.

My deepest fear is that all of this is just some kind of cosmic play, being shown to my consciousness, somewhere in reality, but none of this has any value. When I think about it, it makes no sense to be so fearful of this, but when it comes on, it really comes on.

In my worst years I started confusing dreams with reality. My memories were becoming sporadic and I couldn’t remember if I had just talked to my dad or if it was a dream I had the day before. I started having entire conversations, trips to places, and whole days where I couldn’t remember if it was real or a dream I had previously had.

And yeah, it was the weed that got me there. Marijuana is a fucked up plant… so useful, but few ever experience its true nature.

“I;m not sure if this is spiritual progress or my anxiety justifying itself”

Haha, isn’t that the kicker of a question. You can’t prove it either way, but I want to give you some insight. You probably have your up and down days – sometimes you don’t give a shit about any of this and you feel great, other days you seem like the world, reality, is 15 feet in front of you, and there is this emptiness between “you” and what you’re seeing. Not exactly fitting, but I hope you can relate.

At any rate, these “ups” and “downs” are two sides of the same coin, and in fact, the coin has an infinite amount of sides. You are simply seeing reality through a new veil, a new filter. Once in a while all the filters are removed, and it all makes sense, but most of our life is filtered.

Sometimes we have rose-colored glasses, makes it nice, but you can’t enjoy a rose!
Sometimes we have ocean-colored glasses, makes it calm, but you can’t enjoy the sky!
Sometimes we have brown glasses, obscuring all beauty.
Sometimes we don’t have any filter at all… trying to take off the filter on command is where meditation comes in.

@ijesuschrist i couldnt agrre more about the marijuana plant. Do you know scientists have found out that the visions or trip you get when you take lsd or mescaline or the aztecs medicine is for a short time maybe for 1 day but the long term users of weed feel that after they use it and not for 1 day but the visions become real later. and there was the templers linked with marijuana..interesting , huh!!

@antu,

i. ” For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt that life is a dream, or a hallucination. ”
ii. ” Now I’m 25, and I’ve felt for a while now that life is just like a virtual reality ”

these two statements suggest emotional detachment, which,

iii. can be induced by a traumatic childhood

these three are commonly linked, in your post you mentioned,

” I’ve read this disorder can be induced by a traumatic childhood, or by drug use…. I meet all the criteria, though I haven’t smoked or used drugs in over 5 years .”

you specifically brought up ( traumatic childhood ), but did not mentioned it further like you did with the marijuana use, understandably this is a touchy subject, so i will not press if it makes you feel uncomfortable, but i have a sense that, if yours was traumatic, it is the source of all your current confusion,

” For the longest time, I was convinced I possessed some deeper insight than most other people and that the state of mind I entered into was special. Even though it is isolating and depressing, it seemed and still seems to me that I just know something unique. ”

this is not ego death, this is ego acceptance, this feeling of superiority is used to justify not doing anything, isolating yourself, see, superiority in spirit, that is, superiority that controls your actions, is a danger sign, your brain is tricking your into a false sense of security that is created by the isolation you are surrounding yourself with, everything makes sense because everything is small, and the smaller you make it, the more secure you’ll feel, this is a brain trap, it is trying to create a box to make up for your inability to understand your emotions,

and again, i am often wrong and usually fairly blunt, so please don’t take anything i say the wrong way.

Can anyone help diagnose an experience I had a couple years ago?:

At the time, I’d never felt anything like it before and tried to do a lot of research to come up with a reason. I concluded that it was some kind of depersonalization/derealization, but I haven’t research it since then and the experiences people are sharing here seem a little different. What I was feeling lasted for about 2 weeks and entailed strange, fleeting moments of no sensation. Like, I would reach for a door handle and know that I was turning it, but could not feel the handle in my hand or being turned. This happened randomly and similarly for many actions during that time, like not feeling my feet touch the ground for a few steps, or not feeling myself pick up an object, etc. I was always aware of the change when it happened; and out of surprise, only by focusing my attention or eyes on my hands/area of no sensation would it then return to a normal state, the action realized by my brain and senses stimulated. It was like I had to consciously choose to feel my body, it wasn’t just normal, automatic stimulation. So I didn’t really view this as a positive or negative thing that was happening to me, just very strange and unexpected.

I’d describe it as a very physical experience, not an enlightening, emotional, imaginative, thought-patterned one like others are describing. I would feel out-of-body in those moments, like the world perceived through my senses was disconnected from my brain stem and was all fuzzy like pins and needles. I was aware of my behavior but not receiving any feedback from my reality. I have never experience it since, but do credit the triggering to a bowl of weed I had smoked like a day before these moments began to happen. I was a little afraid to talk about it to anyone because it’s such a foreign sensation and difficult to describe.

The only time I’ve ever felt something like this is when finishing running the mile in gym class as a kid. I normally jogged it consistently in about 7 minutes, and would sprint the last 100m or so. Always during the final sprint when my body is totally exhausted but I push it harder anyway and would then feel out-of-body. All sensation would disappear, I’d look down at my legs and arms pumping in silent auto-pilot, not even the sound of my feet hitting the ground or my panting could be heard. I always suspected it was my body saying I was about to pass out, but I never did nor ever have before. So the two experiences are pretty similar in that it feels like I’m watching a movie, my body being the actor in this temporarily desensitized reality. But that’s about as far as it would go, the physical sensation.

Would any of you also relate this to depersonalization? Cause that was the closest guess I could come up with at the time, but it’s since gone away and doesn’t sound quite like the beneficial experience people are associating it with here. I wouldn’t say I’ve gained anything from it at all, except curiosity in other states of consciousness. I suppose it was what first fueled my research that led to my pursuit of DMT and wanting to experience ego-death. But having had both experiences now, those couple weeks were still completely different from drug induced ego death.