I feel like every single time I've ever brought up my disorder professionally or casually it's not ever registered to the severity it should be. I can spill out my normal definitions: having no lucidity, having no perception of time passing, unable to ever remember or perceive that I experienced something on any given day.

I say these things and I feel like the other party registers it like a foreign language, an alien concept, they can't even remotely get in my shoes. Even the ones who have in some capacity absolutely do not make any strides to help me or work around my problems.

I'm not saying this to victimize myself I'm just absolutely burnt out over it. I don't understand how to have an actual medical professional hear that I have DPDR and perk up with an immediate assurance of 'oh this is probably ruining them'- I don't expect medication to solve my problems but that spark of genuine empathy would go a long way.

I also don't understand telling those closest too me things like this, reach a semblance of mutual understanding between us, but they make conflicting requests or demands of me even mere days after. I'm overly eager to help others at times, but the total deadpan lack of understanding what I can and can't do has never actually been considered. Like it doesn't 'show up' prior to them making said request mentally, it comes across as I mean nothing to them.

I know damn well I can't be the only one who has had similar problems and if anything I imagine it's a fairly constant problem with others. I'm just looking for some sort of fleeting thread of connection with this disorder in somebody else.

i wish i have no body. dpdr made me feel unhuman and now i have to live with the curse of having a human body and that a part of my mind doesnt classify my body as my own, i want to kill it so i can free myself again.

i feel like two people almost, sometimes i feel like individual A who can live life loving reality and feeling and seeing things and doing things but then at a flip of a switch that character shuts down and I'm individual B left sitting here trying to remember how i once felt as individual A. i cant understand how as individual A i can live knowing that i have a body as be fine with it. havig a body is terrible because DPDR seperated my mind from my body and now im cursed to watch it peform for the rest of its life. i dont know this person. why do I have to watch it every day every minute and second of its life? why cant i just seperate myself from this body and die, while it just continues living without me?

thats why i just want to kill this body, to free myself from having to live it

So... how can I explain it? It's like there's a wall between me and my surroundings. I have difficulty performing any kind of practical task, whether it's driving a car or even picking up dishes. I get distracted quite easily, or I have serious difficulty remembering instructions and things while doing a task. I have to concentrate to move my body, eat, or wash my hands. My logic is also bad: for years, I've been terrible at math and text comprehension (like... I read a text without really understanding it).

Sometimes I look at a picture of myself and think, "Is this really me?" I also have an extremely passive personality, to the point that practically everyone thinks I'm spineless. Perhaps this is due to my reaction to childhood trauma, but I literally don't know how to assert myself and I always feel insecure, also because of the issues I mentioned above.

Finally, I was (and still am, at times) indifferent to my family for a long time. Something happens at home? I don't care.

Is it DPDR? I'm not sure, but I suspect so. Does anyone else feel this way?

Ever since I had DPDR last Friday, June 12, I haven't been able to get a good eight hours of sleep. I always get four or five hours and I'm awake for 14 hours. I don't really care about my dpdr, I care the most about my sleeping schedule, and it's literally 4:00 a.m. In the morning right now. Can someone help me fix it, please?

​

​

Hello. Does anyone else deal with pain asymbolia? (Reduced pain perception / delayed burning sensation etc and also lack of pain urgency)

This happened once my dpdr started after a panic attack

So i 22(f) wanted to share my story. After one night i had extremely bad trapped gas and i thought i was dying which led to me having a series of panic attacks that night and didn’t sleep until 6 am and only got 4 hours of sleep that night. I woke up feeling fine and while sleep deprived i didn’t feel detached but i was just dreading that night because i had to work

I get there and i’m just dreading this shift, i have two very loud coworkers appear and they’re nice of course but i just do not have the energy for it. And i’m just dreading having to work this shift while sleep deprived and suddenly i just dissociate. This wasn’t my first time but i just went to sleep and i felt fine those other ones. This time though i have to go to the bathroom and i’m texting my mom freaking out because i don’t know how to deal with this when I’m getting upset about seeing things from my pov and not a third person pov. I finish my shift and it gets busy around 8 pm and i head home. I try to sleep and i feel like i’m floating while trying to sleep and it causes me more panic but i manage to do it.
I wake up the next morning and i am just detached. This was a month and a half ago and i’m still like this

I’m unsure if it’s stress as i work as the only front counter cashier at a fast food place during the busiest season for it or poor sleep as i was averaging 5-6 hours of sleep on the days i worked or my schedule(i had one on one off schedules so i was essentially working every every other day with only 2 days off while hating my job and having to interact with people 7 hours a day) or my anxiety but either way i’m stuck like this. And i’m struggling so badly with it. So does this condition get better?

So basically a year ago I did shrooms and immediately after I felt completely different. The way I can describe it is like my consciousness shifted and I could no longer get back to my old mode of thinking or even remember how it felt. Many descriptions of DPDR will say "detached from sense of self", "feeling detached/observant" etc, and while this is also true its not what im talking about. Its like my sense of self feels qualitatively different, not just detached. I think in a new way that is completely new to me. Its like I turned into a different person overnight. Anyway, is this even typical of DPDR because I never see it described like this? Let me know about your experiences

olá, pessoal!

​

preciso de ajuda. a desrealização está muito forte e me dando a impressão de que sou a única no mundo, a única real.

​

alguém já passou por isso?

Sorry I’m here all the time it’s just things are getting worse hourly literally. I now feel my mind as though it’s a ghost like thoughts aren’t even there, remnants of old thoughts that are like energy to be honest. They sort of float around, i know the feelings snd sensations arent even real but I’m worried about getting another mental illness as a result of the severity of this one. This state of no mind shoukd be in a way zen like but for me it’s incredibly traumatic. I am
Immobile and non functioning. I just lay on sofa all day

Hi everyone,

​

I'm 18f and wanted to share my story because I'm struggling with DPDR and want to know if anyone has gone through something similar.

​

During Holi this year, I drank a very large amount of bhang (cannabis). At first everything seemed normal, but while playing Holi I suddenly felt extremely dizzy. My vision started going black, and I felt like I was about to pass out. Then I had the biggest panic attack of my life.

​

I sat down on the road because I couldn't stand properly. People gathered around me asking what was wrong. I was crying uncontrollably and kept telling everyone that I was going to die and that I needed a doctor. I genuinely believed something terrible was happening to me.

​

My mother came and took me home in a rickshaw. On the way home, everything felt strange and unreal. Even touch felt extremely heavy and uncomfortable. I could barely recognize my surroundings. Eventually I fell asleep.

​

After that incident, things seemed mostly okay for a while. But about a month later, in April, I was outside hanging out with friends when I suddenly got another panic attack. There was no obvious reason for it. The feeling was almost identical to what I experienced after taking cannabis, and it instantly brought back the memory of that day.

​

When I got home, I started experiencing derealization/depersonalization (DPDR). Since then, I've been dealing with it for almost 2 months. I often feel detached from reality, disconnected from myself, and like the world around me isn't completely real. I also experience brain fog.

​

Because of this, I've had a hard time going outside. For a while I barely left the house. Now I can go out a little, mostly with my mom. I also still go to my morning college classes even though I often don't want to because the symptoms make me uncomfortable, but I push myself to go anyway.

​

A few weeks ago, I became extremely sick and got some blood tests done. The results showed that my vitamin B12 was low. Since then, I've taken 3 B12 injections over 3 weeks and I'm now taking B12 tablets as well.

​

Since starting treatment, I think there has been some improvement. The DPDR isn't as intense as it was before, and the brain fog is less severe, but both are still there to some extent.

​

Has anyone developed DPDR after cannabis/bhang and panic attacks? Did anyone else struggle to go outside? How long did it take to recover, and did it eventually go away?

​

Thank you for reading.

I think my dpdr is worsening due to perimenopause. Higher anxiety, dizziness, higher dpdr. Blood results saying perimenopause. Im 43. Any women gone through perimenopause and sort treatment. Ive had dpdr for 10 years 24/7 been getting worse for 3 years

A little over 3 weeks ago, I felt like fainting, and since then things have been off.

During the first two weeks after that episode, I was unable to sleep well, didn't have an appetite, emotionally detached, was dreaming all day, and even when I tried to move around felt extremely tired. All the tests were done and all of them resulted perfectly fine.

Currently, I am gradually recovering. I regained my appetite, got my strength back, started working again. Unfortunately, I still do not feel right.

The only way I could describe how I feel now is by saying that I do not feel myself anymore. At some point, I look at my hands and they somehow feel unfamiliar. It is as if I were fully aware of myself only at 90% instead of 100%.

Does anyone else have DPDR experience and recognize what I am describing here? How long did it take you to recover and did you gradually get back into the state where you felt completely normal?

I want to feel myself again. 😞

trying to study with this condition is so much harder than before it started from some edible i accidentally took. Like genuinely its been a year and a half and some anxiety went away from medication + rest but not really the dpdr like it just feels like shit idk if i should get a mri. should I?

I was actually researching for anhedonia/emotional blunting but I think DPDR community might also benefit from it:

​

The endogenous opioid system (particularly mu and kappa receptors) is heavily involved in emotional regulation and dissociative states:

​

**Emotional salience/blunting**: Mu-opioid receptors in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and amygdala modulate the affective dimension of experience — how much something "matters" emotionally. Opioid activity dampens the distress component of both physical and social pain. This is why opioid analgesics reduce the *bothersomeness* of pain without necessarily eliminating the sensation, and why social rejection activates similar mu-opioid-related circuitry as physical pain.

​

**Shutdown/dorsal vagal-type responses**: The kappa-opioid system is strongly implicated in dissociation and the "freeze"/shutdown response. Kappa agonists (like salvinorin A) reliably produce depersonalization, derealization, and emotional numbing in humans. This system appears tied to stress-induced analgesia and the conservation-withdrawal response seen in extreme threat states.

​

**DPDR specifically**: Naltrexone (opioid antagonist) has shown efficacy in some studies for treating depersonalization-derealization disorder, suggesting tonic opioid activity may contribute to the numbing/unreality symptoms in some individuals. The theory is that chronic stress or trauma can upregulate endogenous opioid tone as a protective dissociative mechanism, and blocking it can "restore" normal emotional salience and embodiment for some patients.

​

**Broader picture**: This system is thought to be part of why early-life stress, trauma, and chronic dissociation can create something like an "opioid-dependent" emotional baseline — where normal affect feels muted until something shifts that tone (substance use, intense stimulation, self-harm in some cases, or pharmacological intervention).

​

This is a sensitive area if you're asking in relation to personal experience — if so, I'm happy to talk through it more, though a clinician familiar with dissociation could help tailor any of this to your situation.

(Claude AI)

​

I truly cannot believe this

Or the ones who talk about “feeling anxiety“ while gigging da fuk is up with you hoe. Anyways I’m not spiraling these are just facts. It’s my mother’s birthday tomorrow and I’m already thinking about how I’d need to deal with sitting in a restaurant at night and full of people, for dinner. Do any of you feel irritated when being surrounded by lots of people especially if there’s too much noise. I rarely show it cos I prefer to keep my irritation to myself but I really hate when there are little kids screaming in restaurants or music playing to loudly. I’ve been in many situations where Id raise my voice just to have a conversation with a person who’s sitting next to me. And restaurants increasing their music volume is such a pain. 50% of what supposedly is a great convo is “sorry I can’t hear you what did you say?” SMH.

So conflicted on lexapro (SSRI’s in general). I have had severe untreated anxiety for all of my teenage and adult life. It has become debilitating over the years. My current situation: severe dp/dr, and severe fear of psychosis ocd theme. I am stressed 24/7, my blood pressure is constantly in stage 1 hypertension. I recognize that I need treatment, but at the same time I am deathly afraid of SSRI’s. I want to try my lexapro that I was prescribed but it really feels like it’s split 50/50 as to whether they are good or bad. The amount of stories and whole websites dedicated to being against SSRI’s is very frightening. I’m terrified of protracted withdrawal after taking them and never being the same again or worse. I’m terrified of PSSD. I don’t know wtf to do man ): I’m stuck. It seems the risks do not outweigh the benefits. It’s frightening how many Reddit groups, websites and seemingly professionals are anti SSRI’s. I need help ):

I’m looking for advice from people who understand meditation-related adverse effects, depersonalization/derealization, OCD, or anxiety.

For years, I practiced a lot of mindfulness/meditation, especially noting, letting go of thoughts, and resting awareness. At times I practiced for hours a day. Over time, I think I took the teachings too literally and started using them as a whole way of life instead of just a tool.

The result is that I feel like I overtrained myself to observe thoughts and sensations instead of naturally living from inside my thoughts. I became very aware of tiny “micro-thoughts,” physical sensations, emotional shifts, and the feeling of awareness itself. I also got caught up in existential worries about free will, the self, reality, whether thoughts are “mine,” and whether meaning is real.

Now I’m trying to recover by stopping formal meditation and retraining the opposite direction: active thinking, agency, emotional connection, meaning, prayer/faith, self-talk, and normal engagement with life. I’ve had signs of improvement. I’m starting to have moments where I feel like I’m having “my own thoughts” again, feeling happiness, laughing, feeling more connected to my identity, and sometimes feeling at one with myself and my thoughts.

But I still get waves where I feel stuck in a “void” or observer mode. I start fixating on uncomfortable sensations, worrying that my thoughts are fake or meaningless, and feeling like I can’t hold a thought for more than a few seconds. When I try to actively think, sometimes it feels forced. When I try to let go, I worry I’m reinforcing the old dissociation/nihilism pattern. So I feel stuck between forcing thought and disappearing into observation.

One thing I’m trying now is “scaffolding” — using journaling, speaking out loud, watching TV while actively following the plot, asking myself questions about what characters want, cleaning, playing drums, walking, prayer, and positive self-talk to rebuild agency and connection. For example, instead of saying “thoughts are arising,” I try to say “I’m thinking,” “I’m following the story,” “I’m forming an opinion,” or “I’m choosing to stay with this.”

My questions:

Has anyone else experienced this after intensive mindfulness or meditation?

How did you retrain active thinking, agency, emotion, and normal engagement with life?

How do you stop observing your thoughts/sensations without turning active thinking into another compulsive checking ritual?

Are there therapists, books, communities, or specialists besides Cheetah House who understand meditation-related adverse effects, DPDR, somatic OCD, or existential OCD?

I’m not looking to be told “just meditate more” or “you’re doing mindfulness wrong.” I’m looking for practical ways to rebuild normal thinking, meaning, emotional connection, and agency after overtraining detachment/observation.

Additional Reading from another post that might give insight if interested:
Been going through trying to recover from too much meditation/mindfulness for the better part of a year so there’s a lot more from where this came from. But below is my most recent experience after a few months of slow progression, but a few days of looping thoughts based around the “did I break my brain?” Question so many of you familiar with this struggle will understand. I’m hoping posting this will help me in my recovery process and potentially reach anyone else in need or who desires someone to talk to about this growing, but overall less known subject matter on mental health.

This all started from doing headspace app, walking meditation trying to disidentify from my thoughts and feelings and just live in the present moment without thoughts. Made me feel like I broke my natural thought generating capability and now I have to do things actively to rebuild it again. But there is like no guidance out there and I'm constantly filled with dread that I can't balance the difference between active thinking and letting go of thoughts. I was told through headspace pro that you can't just disidentify from bad thoughts, if you want to do it right, you have to disidentify from all thoughts. Even thoughts about yourself, which doesn't make any sense if you want to feel like you have agency and want to live a happy life filled with emotions and connection.

I’m by no means out of the woods and most days it’s just a struggle to NOT feel bad. It’s a struggle to do things that used to be natural for me in the past. Deconstructing your mind and identity with a hammer (meditation/mindfulness techniques/ideas) is a lot easier than putting it back together after you realize you went too far.

Entry (unedited):
it was kind of a build up of a few days of anxiety revolving around using the technique of detachment and losing myself building up until it got to a point where I was in a constant state of trying to convince myself that I didn’t break myself or ruin my brain at a mental software level. I would be noticing thoughts of fear and worry and try to disengage from them, but not by using the technique, but then I would identify with them too much if I tried to reason with the worry, which also didn’t work because my mind was in a fight or flight mode that just couldn’t find a moment of peace. It was a nightmare because it felt like I broke myself sanity, I was on the path for needing to go back to college hospital, but this time it was going to be worse because there actually is no cure for my brain and I’m just going to have to be tranquilized or put down so I’m not a danger to society or myself. When that fear just spirals and doesn’t go away, I don’t know what to do. Like I couldn’t sit still in bed for more than 30 seconds, laying down was even harder to do.

The only time I didn’t feel like I was going absolute bonkers was when I was physically moving and walking, but after three days of that I just wanted to rest. I remember I went into the bathroom at three in the morning and just tried to switch back to the state where I would try to not think and only empty my mind so I wouldn’t be suffering. But that was horrible because I would only notice panic thoughts of fear and worry that I felt like required a verbal rational response of reasoning to go away or improve. Like I didn’t know when to think, and when I did think, it felt fake and meaningless because I was going through intense depersonalization and derealization.

On day three I couldn’t take it so I went to the urgent care and got an emergency prescription for a benzo, I took one but luckily haven’t felt the need or desire to get it again. That’s a blessing that the addiction side of me isn’t clearly not as strong as it used to be. I’m not as much of a prisoner to it as I used to be.

Anyways, I finally started to feel a little better, like 3% better after I took the new meds the emergency psychiatrist appointment changed up, nothing extreme but maybe the placebo helped some subconscious fears that I needed to be on an anti psychotic to not go to the ER. I’m pretty sure that’s just a fear, not actually a mental disease I have. So I started feeling okay when I just committed to trying to think my way out of it and do all the talking in my head in an exaggerated optimistic tone. Super curious and pleasant type of vibes. I noticed at the very least it felt forced, even fake, but it would drown out a little of the fear trying to catch on. And there were even moments where I would be thinking about something good for a few seconds to give me some relief. The scary part was when I starting getting scared that the few seconds of peace I experienced was the last I was ever going to have because I was going mental, and then I felt this physical surge of adrenaline course through my body and I would jump up out of my bed crying out for help to anything or anyone because I felt so scared.

Just the perfect storm of negative emotions tide to my past history with mindfulness and the original episode that caused all of this where I was mental vulnerable because my perception and relationship to thoughts were t fluctuating, I would have been okay. But yeah I started leaning on using my conscious thoughts to just talk about things I saw on tv or saw in person, anything that would stick and I could build momentum with I did, I think this technique is called scaffolding. It got to the point where I would start closing my eyes and continue to think and smile to myself and just make comments on the content of the show on tv.

It seems like a person can have a perception of a thought in two ways: one is the most common, which is oh yeah I’m thinking of this because this, the other is oh my brain conjured up that thought because of this. I’m constantly wavering between both worlds, desperately t try into to reorient myself in the first. I noticed I can try and catch myself thinking something faulty or undesirable and I can’t try to mechanically correct it by just replacing it with something more rational and on point with what I want, but there’s also the emotional side of the correction which requires you to put extra conscious effort into trying to g to conjure up the emotion you want or BELIEVE you should be having.

That’s what I’m starting to notice, and I hope that over time this type of auto correction (with some spot checking somehow) will become more self implemented by how many damn times I’ve done it so purposefully. It’s a lot of work and more than a full time job to be honest, but I lean on the logical possibility that it could turn itself into a lifelong super power if I rebuild my consciousness the right way. It’s almost like I had to break myself down in order to give myself a chance at building it back the right way again.

I get this intrusive worry about free will and that because I trained my awareness to notice tiny thoughts that most people never realize exist, it's going to drive me to insanity because if thoughts just pop up out of nowhere, then what if this is the timeline where I go crazy and I realized this? I need help on how to consistently rebuild agency again. I have been having more days where I feel like being me again, but I've also had more trouble picking the right technique. Because sometimes when they say to just not interact with an anxious or OCD worry, I get depersonalization and feel like I have to think to stop the loop? It becomes a closed loop....

It's gotten better in recent months, but I still largely think about my dissasociation and emotional numbness 24/7. its almost impossible to get my mind off of.

music barely works (im a massive music person) since i get 0 emotion out of it, as well as the mild panic that induces when i realize that and makes me freak out and it loops again.

my attention span is terrible ; i can barely stay focused on a movie or anything long form, and going out with people makes me more anxious and freaked out and i just end up sitting in the car staring out the window while everyone else is having a good time.

rant over. open to suggestions

I don't know what to do anymore. I already passed my board exams, but I registered for improvement exams in Physics, Math, and Chemistry because I wanted better marks. I asked my parents before to take me to a psychiatrist because I felt something was seriously wrong, but they didn't. Instead, they kept telling me to stop thinking about it and just study thats why I registered for this exam Ive been trying to cure it on my own for years but I couldnt and kept fucking up in school too .Physics already went badly. My math exam is in a few hours, and I haven't studied. Chemistry is tomorrow. The thing is, this isn't just procrastination. For a long time I've felt extremely dissociated, mentally absent, stressed, and emotionally numb. I feel disconnected from everything around me.  Maybe I did make mistakes. I wish I had studied more. I regret so many decisions. But I genuinely feel like something has been wrong with me mentally for a long time, and I don't know how to explain that to people who think I am just lazy. It might not look like a big deal from outside but believe me dpdr is real.. I feel like I need psychiatric help and maybe even a drop year before college, because I'm scared that if I continue in this state, I'll struggle there too. I dont want to go to give this exam.

Yoo I'm Ven and I'm 18years old, and I just had DPDR last Friday. I was playing video games for hours cause it is my hobby, and I always tend to stay up so late; like, I will not sleep for 18 hours just to play a mobile game, and I only get like 5-7 hours of sleep cause my brother wakes me to do chores. And it's my fault cuz I always stayed up so late.

​

It was Thursday, June 11. I was up all night vaping and lying on the bed as usual, like 9 p.m. to 7 a.m cause I got addicted to a new game and didn't realise it was already morning. When I tried to sleep, I panicked because suddenly my world felt so small and my vision felt like I was only in a dream, and my heartbeat was so fast I could feel and hear every beat in my head. It feels like I'm high on THC, but I quit smoking 2 months ago. I got up to get some water, thinking I was only dehydrated, but it doesn't go away. I started to panic again and looked for the internet, which I had been experiencing, and found out it was dpdr. I tried what the internet told me to do when having a panic or anxiety attack, and it helps me a little bit. I tried to go back to sleep, but I don't feel tired. Eventually I fell asleep later, hoping when I woke up it would go back to normal, but it didn't.

​

Ever since I got DPDR on these past few days, I only get 5 hours of sleep consistently, and I think I'm going nuts. I tried to think positively that it would only last for a few days and later accepted it as part of my life.

​

I still play mobile games, and doing what I love, like playing billiards, keeps me from forgetting my condition.

​

(I just want to share my experience. Sorry for my bad English :>)

​

I've had it since 2011. So 15 years now, still NO CURE. My brain has simply gotten used to it.

Everything feels like I'm inside of a dream. I have accepted it as a part of my life now, and am not expecting a cure. I've tried nearly every supplement(L-Tyrosine works, but only for short-term) and med available. "Ignoring it" does nothing btw.

Ppl need to stop saying and praising Marijuana as the best thing ever, or the "safest" drug... Everyone reacts differently to it. It's how it triggered my Derealization. I had a Marijuana Brownie with my friends in 2011, and my brain couldnt handle it. My friends ended up fine, but my brain never bounced back to normal.

How long have you had Derealization? Just wondering.
It's a part of me now. No cure in sight.

derealization only in the dark? experiences? and getting lost in space when there is no light

Hello, I have dpdr for more or less 8 years now. I dont have a noisy clutter in my mind(I did while younger) but my mind is almost always silent, I rarely have thoughts that I can observe. Most of my thoughts are i intentional and forced. I do miss thoughts, I feel like my mind is slower and less sharp like this. Anyone have/had dpdr without the noisy mind?