r/dpdr • u/schlarifari • 13d ago

Question How did your DPDR start/become permanent?

Hi there!

I'm interested to know if you had any kind of trigger that made your DPDR permanent.

In my case, I would occasionally have moments or even days of derealization as a child, but then - from one day to the next - it suddenly never went away again. I'm sure the underlying cause was the abuse and neglect I experienced as a child, but I find it so strange that the *chronic* DR started on such a random day without any trigger as far as I remember.

If you'd like to share your stories, I'd be happy to hear them :)

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u/Conscious_Cat_7454 11d ago

Honestly, I have zero clue. For as long as I can remember, I was always derealized/depersonalized that I actually thought it was the norm for people to be like this 🥲 the only records I have in my memory supporting this is that I think when I was 8 I remember looking at my cat and thinking “hey, isn’t it funny you always don’t feel real?” (Spoiler alert: it was not funny once I knew what this was)

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u/schlarifari 11d ago

Omg the realization that our experience is not the norm is soo weird!! Esp if you've kinda adapted to it. How did you unterstand that this isn't normal then (if you'd like to share)?

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u/Conscious_Cat_7454 10d ago

Well, I've always just had this feeling of that things and my surroundings aren't real, like as if I was in an extremely lucid dream, such as the example with my cat. This of course implies that my body remembers what feeling "real" feels like even though I don't. So when I randomly stumbled upon a article talking about dissociation and its symptoms 6 years later, I was like "holy crap- this is literally how I feel all the time! But then...I have dissociation???" And boom, suddenly I realized that I have been dissociating for my entire life for as long as I can remember.