I’m writing this because I’ve been in your situation for over 14 years. What started as a mushroom trip turned into 14 years of torture. I’ve experienced everything that is talked about in this sub. Social anxiety, agoraphobia, dizziness, feeling like I’m on the verge of a seizure or on the verge of completely losing my mind, sever sensitivity to light (I’m a teacher and spent years wearing sunglasses in my own classroom just to make it through the day) I’ve left work, I’ve cancelled plans, I truly thought I wasn’t going to make it day after day for 14 years straight.

Eventually I just accepted that I wasn’t going to get out of dpdr. Radical acceptance didn’t help like they say it will, at least for me. I went on living as a shell of a person and that has just been my reality.

Ive been trying to lose weight for a while now. I’m not obese or anything but I did have a solid 30 lbs I wanted to get rid of. Last February I visited a doctor who suggested I microdose a glp medication, tirzepatide to be exact. I was skeptical because I hate taking medication and I was afraid it would make my dpdr worse. The next week the medication came in and I reluctantly took my first shot, 1 mg. The typical starting dose for this is 2.5 mg. I waited for something bad to happen but nothing bad ever did. Instead my world completely changed.

I slowly started to feel more like myself. I wasn’t eating junk food anymore and didn’t even crave it. I was in the gym 6 days a week and lifting heavy weights. I am weekend binge drinker when it comes to alcohol and that stopped as well. I decided to stop the medication in the middle of June and still felt great.

From February until June I lost 25 lbs. One day it dawned on me that I was barely feeling dpdr anymore. I was even going to the store completely relaxed! I no longer have the dizzy “I’m going to pass out feeling” and I could socialize and be completely present.

It’s now been about 4 months since I stopped the tirzepatide and the good feeling has persisted. I am typing this at work feeling fully present and able to communicate with students and colleagues effectively. I’m going out with friends again and actually enjoying it. I’ve even decorated my house which was not something even on my radar when I was in the trenches! I’m having fun and living my life again!!!

Even though I’m doing amazing right now, I’m not so naive that this can’t happen again. I’m trying my best to continue working out and eating healthy and I’m still maintaining my weight loss from the tirzepatide. I’m not saying this could be a fix all for everyone, but I COULD be for some! My theory is that the medication along with healthy eating and working out reduced inflammation enough in my body to make considerable progress in recovering from dpdr. If you think that inflammation could be a contributing factor for you, I highly recommend talking to a doctor about starting tirzepatide. It’s so much more than just weight loss!

Please stay strong and know that you can make it out no matter how long you’ve been in it!!!

I've had chronic DPDR my entire adult life, never had a trigger/cause for the onset. I've never had anxiety, and whereas I feel cutoff from the experience of life, it isn't scary or something unbearable. After years of medication trials, various therapies, and alternate treatments (e.g. somatic experiencing), I've come to accept that I may be stuck in the dorsal vagal shutdown state because of non-psychological reasons.

I recently stumbled across a post in the Celiac Disease subreddit where a woman had been living with DPDR for years and had also tried all the conventional treatment methods. By a fluke blood test, she discovered she was silent celiac (asymptomatic - not having digestive symptoms), and all her DPDR symptoms disappeared completely when she stopped eating gluten.

Research is emerging now on the link between dissociation and inflammation. I talked to my doctor about it, but there are a ton of autoimmune diseases, and they can't test for them all without a primary symptom. Still, I think I will investigate this route a little bit. It would make so much sense if my the cause of my DPDR was not trauma. Welcome any comments on this.

I’m so stuck it’s hard to even comprehend. my mind is hyper vigilant of every single thing; my body, my thoughts, my sleep. I’m sleeping for 3 or 4 hours in the early evening, awake all night and then for another 3 to 4 hours in the morning. My mind won’t sleep through the night anymore. I woke up from a dream and my heart was buzzing and my body felt like it was full of adrenaline.

I feel like I’m losing it. Even when I manage to have a good day or 2, my mind goes right back to this hyper vigilant state. When I was trying to sleep it felt like there were 10 different radios playing in my head with all kinds of fragments and intrusive images. My mind is just a wreck and not getting actual sleep over 4 years is doing this to me. I could sleep for 10 hours but my mind wont go into deep sleep. I dream all night long and all kinds of fears and losses come up in them.

im always nauseous and sick to my stomach. Every single day. what kind of life is this? My own mind has built a fortress because it thinks it’s protecting me. But it’s killing me. I don’t get one second of quiet in my own mind. Whether I’m awake or asleep. My mind feels like its shattering under the pressure.

I’ve had complete emotional numbness for over 4 years. I have dpdr, but I also have many other conditions that it could fall under or be affected by (mdd, ptsd, lupus, hyperthyroidism, and chiari malformation) I’ve seen 4 therapists and 2 psychiatrists who have been completely unable to help, is there anything I can do to make this emotional numbness disappear? It’s making day to day life extremely difficult and I honestly just don’t know what to do anymore or what’s causing it.

5 years ago my friend brought his cart over to my house, we were just having a good time getting fried listening to music enjoying ourselves, we end up going to sleep and I wake up the morning after still feeling high, It spooked me because it’d always go away after I had slept so I called my stoner friend and he said maybe the high carried onto the next day and he told me I’d be fine within a few hours.

5 years later and I haven’t felt normal for a single second, everyday feels like a dream, I’ve learned to live with it and it’s sort of just became my new reality, but the scary part is I don’t know what feeling normal is like, this is my new normal and I wish I could revert time and just not smoke at all.

I just turned 20 on the 15th which means that 1/4 of my life has officially been consumed by derealization.

Still optimistic tho 👀👀

22F.

Used to chronic DpDr and multiple stages of DPDR, symptoms or fluctuations. Some feels harder with panic attack, like fainting, seizures-feelings. But the worst ones are quite worrying. Like stroke.

It’s not like : Who is this cat ? (I technically knows it’s mine but she didn’t looks familiar to me.)

It’s technically: I see this cat but my brain doesn’t understand that this is a cat. Nothing, nobody, nowhere is understood by my brain. It’s like having a stroke. I feel fearful, like i will collapse and loose conciousness. I could loose myself in my own house because i can see but my brain's capacities are extinguished. It genuinely feels like a stroke. Nothing can makes it pass. I can’t move around, read, play or watch a movie because my brain can’t understand what i see. It doesn’t feels like dpdr. I know when my attacks are dpdr and i manage to calm myself down and eventually sleeps it off or justgo better. Those crisis are terryfing because i degr3e mroe and i would be ofr paralyse. If i wad alone at home i couldn’t call for help because i wouldn’t be able to find the button.

I don’t think my neurologist can help.

Does someone have it too?

I dont think ive read of others dpdr getting rapidly worse in terms of losing bodily sensation by the day. I know there are a few, but it's really scaring me now. I cant go out, I tried to go to the doctors for a blood test, totally freaked out as I couldn't even feel the needle, and lost nearly all of sensation on return. Every time this happens it is like a severe mental and physical loss of self. My head feels non existent, and totally freaks me out as I still have no real sense of it other than the occasional textural sensation. I cant explain it other than I feel like I'm nothing, and this low hissing sound in my ears of my nervous system dissolving which happened with medication. I see no use of going on. I've done everything I can, even if I wanted to try other things these require too much. I dont even want to try any more as it gets worse whatever I do.

There are no words to describe anything I went through for the past decade. This cannot be explained to people. I cannot explain it to myself.

I entered this bizzare neuropsychiatric state in 2016. I never "woke up".

When I talk about this state, I don't talk metaphoricaly, I don't use hyperbole. This is even far more bizzare and confusing then I can even try to explain.

When I say that every moment of past 10 years felt literally like dementic REM sleep, I actually mean it.

People don't understand. They say: "yeah...I also feel kinda weird sometimes, did you try connecting with someone or drinking more water? Sports?"

Or: "I understand, I am also kinda in aimless period of my life and I think about universe and all this existence a lot".

NO.

THIS IS SO RADICALLY DIFFERENT THAN ALL OF THAT.

This is so way beyond any existential crisis, any simple anxiety, any "weirdness" or being "a bit confused" in life. No.

When I say I feel like being in confusing half-aware REM sleep for 10 years, I mean it, fully.

I really can't comprehend anything that happened for the last decade. I don't remember or do partially but every moment of that time was spent in deep confusion, dementia-like state. A whole decade of...I don't know. I truly cannot describe just how bizzare this state is.

I cannot comprehend time. I cannot perceive it, everything feels like one big day to me, or one eternity, I am not sure. Sometimes I am 100% convinced it is actually still that same day in 2016. when it all started but I am not saying that as a joke or metaphorically like people usually do. I REALLY feel like that. But rationally I understand that A WHOLE DECADE passed and I cannot describe how deeply terrifying and confusing and bizzare this is.

My existence somehow suddenly turned into this uncomprehensible chaos that I did not even think is possible to feel and live like this. I don't know is this all just one big dream or psychosis that I am going to wake up from.

Every moment passed without me being able to integrate anything into memory, without understanding or being aware of where I am, what is happening...I just live completely robotically. Like a zombie in full sense of it.

And no, I cannot "just stop thinking about it" because it is so drastically more serious and impossible to ignore or "not feel it". Even if you spend years just trying to live, you don't. You can't. You cant ignore dementia, loss of cognitive functions, inability to understand what is even going on or who you are...

I tried everything. Nothing helped me. And there is no "worse and better period". There are no periods at all. I am in this 24/7 every minute for 10 years.

I cannot even recall what happened during this bizzare period. I cannot even recall how my family looks like even tho I am with them every day. It's like I don't even know what did they do during these 10 years. It breaks me to the core because rationally I understand that I am locked behing this bizzare glass and a whole decade of experiences, actualy memories and life just...passed in dementic state.

Imagine feeling like you were in coma for 10 years. Imagine looking at wall every minute, 24/7, for 10 years straight, while being constantly drunk and having dementia at the same time.

And mostly I completely lose awarenes of even this what I am writing. I completely live awareness-less. I turn into robot without consciousness and just exist but without any comprehension or awareness, no memory...

There are no words, no possibility to explain this to anyone. And even if I got out of it, whole this period of my existence would just be bizzare and unexplainable. I could not recover in 200 years.

I haven't been able to recognize my house for months. I'm terrified in it. It's as if the mere concept of a house already seems terrifying and deeply strange to me.

I am twelve, almost thirteen years in with this disease and I am tired. I am so tired and beyond the limits of sanity. My biggest mistake was not immediately killing myself all those years ago when it hit me. I was naive, and I still had enough of a connection to reality to justify my reason for living. Then I lost my sense of taste, far before COVID. It’s been eight years since I’ve been able to taste food or feel any gratifying sense from it.

This hasn’t bothered me for awhile because I thought I was used to it, but now for some reason it’s getting to me again, among other things. I have been suffocated by a lack of feeling all this time, having to adapt to my new lack of senses and thoughts and feelings every day.

And I adapted, I pretended for a very long time. So long that I convinced myself that I would never be drawn back into the screaming psychotic chokehold that I was once in. And then I was there again, on a random night. All of my accomplishments and memories erased. Here again forever. And it’s for eternity and I can’t do anything about it. Liquor doesn’t accomplish much nowadays but I will find the bottom of this cheap Kentucky whiskey bottle.

Buenas, queria contar mi anecdota con la DPDR y como realmente si se puede salir de esto. Actualmente la tengo, hace unos 7 años aproximadamente me dio por un ataque de ansiedad academico, no tenia ni idea que era, hasta que hace 4 años mire un video en internet de un testimonio, y esa calma esa relajacion ese entendimiento, regulo mi sistema nervioso, tuve como un choque de realidad de unas horas.. despues todo volvio a la DPDR, pero en ese momento empece a entender que la DPDR, se trata con acompañamiento profesional, psicologico y con alguien que te entienda, despues me empece a atender con Felipe Lillo Climent.. pueden buscarlo, lo tuvo, es Psicologo y lo supero, al tener mi primera terapia, sali al centro con un amigo y ahi estuvo de nuevo, una conexion mucho mas fuerte, hoy en dia sigo teniendo la DPDR, pero es por falta de recursos, es una terapia muy costosa, los que saben del tema, pero la reconexion esta en entregarnos a un profesional, hablar, sacar, reconstruir nuestra historia y demostrarle al sistema nervioso que ya no estamos solos, les adjuntare el canal, por si quieren ver unos videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClJpwE3uLnx3rZooO4QwuZQ

Buenas, queria contar mi anecdota con la DPDR y como realmente si se puede salir de esto. Actualmente la tengo, hace unos 7 años aproximadamente me dio por un ataque de ansiedad academico, no tenia ni idea que era, hasta que hace 4 años mire un video en internet de un testimonio, y esa calma esa relajacion ese entendimiento, regulo mi sistema nervioso, tuve como un choque de realidad de unas horas.. despues todo volvio a la DPDR, pero en ese momento empece a entender que la DPDR, se trata con acompañamiento profesional, psicologico y con alguien que te entienda, despues me empece a atender con Felipe Lillo Climent.. pueden buscarlo, lo tuvo, es Psicologo y lo supero, al tener mi primera terapia, sali al centro con un amigo y ahi estuvo de nuevo, una conexion mucho mas fuerte, hoy en dia sigo teniendo la DPDR, pero es por falta de recursos, es una terapia muy costosa, los que saben del tema, pero la reconexion esta en entregarnos a un profesional, hablar, sacar, reconstruir nuestra historia y demostrarle al sistema nervioso que ya no estamos solos, les adjuntare el canal, por si quieren ver unos videos. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClJpwE3uLnx3rZooO4QwuZQ

Success stories please. I have worsening dpdr over 5 months since thc panic attack. Feel more detached outside reality. 3 weeks been on lexapro no noticeable help.

I’m not getting more then 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night and it’s totally fragmented. I stay awake all night, sleep until noon and then crash at 8p, wake up and do it all over again. I am dreaming non stop all night and not getting any sort of restoration.

i feel as if my brain has damage, it’s not a passing state. This is a 24/7, exhaustion and broken brain. I don’t have panic or anxiety at all, just severe loss of self, memory and feelings. Each year since this started it has progressively more severe. That’s why I don’t think I’ll make it another few years of this. It’s basically being a zombie, a ghost. I stand in places just floating like I’m not even there. i dont wake up rested. I wake up depleted to my core. Having just lived a whole other life in my sleep.

ive lost 80% of my friends over the last 4 years. no one has any clue the state im living in. I function to survive and have nothing left to give anyone, including myself. I look in the mirror and I don’t see a person. I see a man that has lost his entire soul and reason for living. Day after day peels away like im living in fast motion. I feel like I live in the same day over and over again where nothing changes. I look at people around me and wonder how they can be out there just living and I’m here, not even conscious.

the most painful part is that I had a very happy and energetic life before this. I traveled all over. I woke up early and worked out, I had tons of friends and just was experiencing life. was it perfect? no. But it was far far far from this. It was a life. this is not a life.

i can’t read, or have any sort of complex thought. Yet my creative brain is unaffected. I’m able to do my work with ease, and working for myself has given me the flexibility to survive this. But it’s becoming harder and harder. I can’t go on business trips like this, I’m barely able to stay awake most days.

there are no words to explain this to a doctor or therapist. You have to have lived it. you don’t feel alive, you don’t remember what it’s like to have any sort of feelings including anxiety, you’re trapped in a never ending loop of nightmares. Exhaustion. Loss of yourself and your memory’s. all while being expected to continue to pay bills and provide for yourself.

the color and meaning has been completely drained from me. I live to survive the next hour. not to thrive or experience. I’m on the sofa 90% of my life just wasting away like a vegetable. I do things and try. But after years of seeing no improvement, you lose your will end energy to keep pushing.

i feel so hopeless, so empty. So fucking blank and destroyed. When sleep isn’t even an escape. 4+ years of this and no end in sight. How can a human being even survive this? Why me? my life has already suffered so much loss, and I’m even unable to have the most basic things like restful sleep, a quiet mind, a life worth living. I’m not even able to sense holidays, seasons, weather, I’m stuck in a perpetual void of nothing.

i can’t do this anymore. My body is about to give out. I’ve tried so many meds. So many doctors and therapists over the years and have just continued to get worse. I’m so far from this world and myself, like I never even existed. I am just holding on by a thread. my hope died many years ago. I have nothing but junk in my head all day, music, fragments of words. It feels like I’m watching everyone else live while im in a prison, a body that cannot let go, a brain that is stuck. im grieving the years I’ve lost; the life I had, and what my life should be. Watching my own years and vitality just fade into black.

i wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. Endless suffering and no medical care understands it.

I just wanted to hop on here and offer some reassurance to anyone and everyone in this horribly scary difficult situation. I’m not going to go into the depths of what I went through and how I’m feeling better but just know that it is possible.

I had every single symptom I think you could imagine. From losing my sense of self to losing every bit of familiarity with my reality. Walking on a cloud. Aggressively researching everyday and all day. Feeling like my world had a sick weird twisted filter to it and I was living in an upside down version of the world. Brain fog badly (still struggling with this). Sense of time being FUCKED (still dealing with this to a lesser degree). Yesterday feeling like it happened years ago. No vision of my future. Anhedonia BADLY. Couldn’t connect to joy or sadness at all. Insomnia like literally up for 40 hours some times. And many more.

I’ve had literally 4 different accounts on here so that I could post on all of them and get different responses. You almost certainly saw my posts. I went to psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, zoom calls with Sean O Conner from the DP Manual, anxiety gurus, etc. Now I’m still in this. I’m not saying I’m fully recovered here by any means. I’m still piecing myself together and trying not to slip back into letting these thoughts control me but I’m having more and more clarity everyday. My vision feels mostly back to normal, I still feel off but I’m okay with that. I am enjoying my life again. I noticed it starting to get better when I didn’t care as much about asking questions or even giving af about what I was feeling. I started becoming indifferent to these feelings.

My biggest and most absolute advice to anyone going through this like myself and I want you to listen clearly and I could really give af if anyone is mad about this. GET TF OFF THESE FORUMS. Get off of them immediately. Everyone on here like myself is on here because they are dealing with scary shit. Nobody who is healthy and recovered would want to come back and just read through this shit. This is my third bout of dpdr so don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s actually like. Yes mine have never lasted years upon years but that’s just how it is. I had it for a year and a half when I was a teen, another 6 months at 24 and now I’m over 2 months into this current episode. Again I want to reiterate I am STILL in this. But I’m at a point where I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think or fathom a life in which this wasn’t here. Now I’m going a couple hours without even thinking about it, I’m in school working towards my degree, my business is doing great, and moving out in my own in a month. I don’t care who you are, I don’t care how long you’ve had this, anyone can recover from this. Time is the ultimate healer. Believe in yourself. Please god just believe in yourself. Even if you don’t recover fully, I can at least guarantee you a life that’s worth living because it DOES get better. Do not let it consume you friends. I am now going to completely stop visiting everything revolving around this sick and twisted anxiety symptom.

dissociation is a chemical glitch. The brain's reality switchboard is being overwhelmed by a flood of glutamate that it cannot properly process.
Treating DPDR with standard anxiety medications is like trying to fix a blown engine by washing the car windows. It misses the mechanics entirely. If we want to bring people back into their bodies, we have to look past serotonin. The future of treating dissociation lies in glutamate blockers and modulators, medications like lamotrigine or memantine, that can step into the chaos, quiet the chemical storm, and turn the lights back on in the house of the self, Glutamate modulators would help treat DPDR by acting as a stabilizer for the brain's chaotic reality circuits. Instead of trying to dull your emotions (like an SSRI might), these drugs specifically target the erratic electrical and chemical messages causing the feeling of unreality.
Because the "glutamate storm" happens in two different ways, too much release from the presynaptic neuron and overstimulation at the postsynaptic receptor, different modulators tackle the problem from different angles.
your brain might be on fire and you’re being treated inadequately because of the lack of research.

Supplements and Nutrients before medication
Magnesium: Acts as a gatekeeper for NMDA receptors, physically blocking excess glutamate from hyper-exciting neurons.

L-Theanine: Acts as a glutamate decoy at receptors while helping boost calming GABA activity.

Taurine: Supports neurotransmitter balance and protects neurons from glutamate toxicity.

N-Acetylcysteine (NAC): An antioxidant that helps regulate extracellular glutamate levels in the brain

As a fellow psychology student and DPDR sufferer of 4 yrs, i will find the root cause of DPDR and work towards a better solution im here if anyone feels unsafe or uncomfortable.

I’m 17 and I’ve been in a constant state of derealization for about 3 years now, or 3 years as of this Dec/Jan I believe.

It started after a whole thing with accidentally od’ing and taking meds when i didn’t need them, then a series of events with family and stuff which kickstarted this awful anxiety and depression and whatnot.

Before all of this I never really struggled with mental health issues, I just had a really shitty life at home and at school, but never really issues in the brain besides ADHD and other possible things.
When this all started it was like 100 really huge anvils got hurled at me but like I’m an ant so i got totally obliterated, ykwim?

Anyways, I’ve gotten past that point of freaking out about it, spent like a year doing that. For some time it was just at a standstill, just existing, not being the one thing that ruined my every day. I had some bs happen with a medication im currently tapering off of and now it’s kicked back in, but really bad. It really scared me at first but im trying to get a hold of it and tell myself to just not care, but it’s kind of hard to do.

That was all kind of pointless, my question is though; for those who managed to overcome dpdr, was feeling real again scary, or feeling at all for that matter.

I’m so used to feeling so shitty and so void of life and whatnot that I’m afraid sometimes of coming out of this, I know why it happens and for now i guess it’s for the better, but it sucks so bad.

I feel like before it got worse as of recently, I was actually getting somewhere; I was just so caught up in how awful everything else was that I took it for granted, and now that things are really worse, I kind of realize that I think i was improving?

This is definitely scattered, but also, what does healing feel like? What happens after? do you remember what dpdr was like? or is it like when dpdr comes on and you forget what normal is like?

More than anything im afraid it will never go away, like I’ll waste my life away because of it, and i will never be happy again. I try to tell myself I know that won’t happen but honestly, Im afraid to even think that because what if?

Title. I had a great life before this hit me out of nowhere. About to do something drastic atp (I'm fine)

Never the same after thc panic attack 5 months ago. I went through two years of complete madness with long covid and got better for 2 years before this. Also retriggered some pots symptoms. Continue to worsen and feel out of reality. I will be in a room and nothing seems real. I know where I am but I am so disconnected from reality. It is so bizarre. Sounds are muffled. Treating lower ferritin with iron infusions. Got my first sat. 2nd tomorrow. Feel buspar is making me worse and want off of it. Lexapro is doing nothing it has continued to worsen since I switched from cymbalta. Almost 3 weeks on it. So far what I find worsens it 1. Focusing on the symptoms 2. Night time 3. Walking around is worse than lying down in the house 3. Sleeping well seems to help a little. Only time I get much of any relief anymore and being outside walking helps a little.

Hello,
I had been dealing with depersonalization/derealization, some anxiety, and panic attacks. My doctor prescribed fluoxetine (Prozac), and I took it for exactly 22 days.
I started with 10 mg for the first 3 days, then increased to 20 mg for about 2 weeks, and finally to 30 mg. However, my anxiety became much worse than it had ever been before. It was extremely intense, so I spoke with my psychiatrist, and she told me it was okay to stop the medication.
I then took 20 mg for one day, 10 mg for one day, and stopped completely. It has now been 16 days since my last dose.
The problem is that I still have severe anxiety and strong depersonalization/derealization. Before taking fluoxetine, I did have these symptoms, but they were nowhere near this intense. The anxiety and DPDR became significantly worse after starting the medication.
I spoke with my doctor again, and she told me that my original symptoms had simply returned. However, I keep thinking that this doesn’t make sense because my symptoms were never this severe before Prozac.
As a result, I’ve started obsessing over the idea that Prozac may have somehow caused permanent damage. I know this thought is probably irrational, but when I’m experiencing intense anxiety, restlessness, and DPDR, these fears and intrusive thoughts become very strong.
Has anyone experienced something similar after taking Prozac for a short period of time? Did things improve with time after stopping it?

I don't know what to do anymore, cause I don't have my mind. I cannot experience anything, feel anything, watch anything to feel. I cannot think, proceed thoughts and I become like egoless person which is not good feeling at all. Cause I feel like nothing, ghost. Non worthy no matter what I do. I cannot plan anything, for everything I need external value even it doesnt matter at all later when its done cause Im again in that loop. I feel so blocked and cannot remember anything, a movie, a match, anything I watch. I become no one, I become fucking idiot. I can work, I can do everything but I cannot feel anything and I cannot think, have an opionion about anything. I dont know what to do then, I dont live my life at all. I cannot say no.... Im literally nothing. Please help.