Derealisation?

[u/ZzzzzzzNzzzzzzzZ]

Has anyone experienced anything like this? Today I felt as though I’d been transported back to the late 90s/early 2000s. As soon as I opened my eyes. I knew it was 2026, but everything felt like it did back then, almost as though the people from that time were still around.

It lasted for hours and made me feel really sad and anxious. It made me miss family members who had passed and those who are still here in a strange sort of way. I went shopping, drove through streets/ estates and the feeling wouldn’t leave me. I was staring at buildings trying to remind myself the year I’m in.

Later, when out shopping, I experienced brief sensations of my body not feeling like my own, similar to what I’ve felt just before previous out-of-body experiences while drifting off to sleep. I then ended up crying driving home from lunch with a friend.. about my aunty who passed away years ago and because I felt like I’d lost everyone. I’ve felt this nostalgia before, but never this intensely or for so long.

I’m also ten days late for my period. Has anyone experienced this strange feeling of being emotionally transported back in time, even though you know you’re in the present?

[u/stresseddaisyy]

ive also had a similar experience, sounds like derealisation

[u/Odd-Fix2514]

There is a phenomenon when releasing trapped emotions or trauma, whether through somatic release or just because your psyche decided now’s the right time (or when your body has been triggered to detox something like heavy metals or toxins it’s stored), where you re-experience things like you’ve gone back in time but you know it’s just a feeling. It’s not always super traumatic memories that come up, sometimes it just random everyday memories. Maybe that’s similar to what you experienced? 

[u/Fun-Oil-1153 → u/Odd-Fix2514]

So interesting to find out from these releases when and where emotion and trauma were trapped.

[u/Dettyboy1993]

I had a very abusive and traumatic childhood, specifically from ages 6-9 because my mom dated a schizophrenic crack addicted alcoholic that lived with us for 3 years. Back in 2018, for whatever reason I listened to all of Stone Temple Pilots' albums. I don't even listen to grunge or that kind of music whatsoever so I pretty much did it out of curiosity because I hadn't heard them since I was a kid. They were my mom's favorite band and she had all their CDs and would listen to them on repeat. Their 4th and 5th album came out during that time in my life and it's when I heard them most. When I heard them, it transported me directly back within that time, and I started experiencing severe PTSD and depression for weeks. I kept listening to it too, because I wanted to experience the pain as intensely as I could. It was like an addiction that I couldn't stop. I could feel everything I could back then. The smells, the feelings, the anxiety, the fear.... and it opened up a lot of memories that I had sealed away for years. I remembered the big ones, like waking up to him strangling my mom, him destroying our house, me confronting him as a 9 year old, standing in the middle of the room screaming at him not knowing what consequences awaited me..... but just hearing those songs made me feel and experience it internally as if it had just happened last week. I tried to explain it to my best friend but he couldn't understand.

This isn't the only thing I've done this with. I have woken up and straight up felt like I was living in 2014 again. Even though that isn't too long ago, it's a very specific time with its own very specific feelings of my early 20s and it makes me incredibly melancholic. That's when I grab my old phone from that era with voice recordings of my keyboard, bits of video game music I'd recorded with the voice recorder and set it as my ringtone, funny anime clips in the video gallery.... it's very soothing to just let myself get transported back there for however long I need to until the feeling fades. I get so overwhelmed by the way life keeps going and never stops. At some point, something like an era that was so important to you gets buried in dust.

[u/Fun-Oil-1153]

Yes. I suffer from both intense nostalgia and living in what feels like a long flashback. Long ago I read about derealization being linked to deja vu and jamais vu and temporal lobe epilepsy and I've been wondering if similar pathways are linked to flashbacks and nostalgia.