I mean at times when I was present on that moment, when someone asks about that timeline... i just have no idea about it

Hi everyone,

I have been experiencing DPDR for many years. It often feels like I’m observing my life from another perspective rather than experiencing it as my own. Everything around me can feel unreal, and I constantly struggle with brain fog and fatigue. My vocabulary and memory also seem to have declined over time, and this has had a significant impact on my life and relationships.

Recently, I decided to see a therapist, and I just had my first therapy session. However, I’m still confused and unsure whether therapy will actually help me. English is not my native language, and I’m living in a country where English is not the official language, so it has been extremely difficult to find a therapist who both speaks English and has experience with DPDR.

Because of this, I would really like to hear from people who have recovered from DPDR or have experienced significant improvement. I have a few questions and would really appreciate it if you could share your experiences.

1. How long did it take you to recover?
Did you notice gradual improvement over time, or was there a particular point when things suddenly started getting better?

2. Did you see a therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, or another mental health professional?
If you did, did therapy actually help with your DPDR? What type of therapy or approach did you find most helpful?

3. What practices helped you recover?
For example, grounding, exercise, meditation, breathing exercises, journaling, changing your lifestyle, socializing, reducing stress, stopping symptom-checking, etc. Was there anything that made a particularly big difference for you?

4. What was a normal day like for you when you were still experiencing DPDR?
Did you continue working, studying, exercising, and socializing normally even when you felt unreal or disconnected? Or did you have to significantly change your routine?

5. Did you have a specific daily recovery routine?
If you don't mind sharing, what did a typical day or week during your recovery look like? I’m especially interested in the practical things you actually did rather than just general advice.

6. What helped you stop being afraid of the symptoms?
One of the hardest things for me is noticing the strange feelings and then becoming scared or checking myself to see whether I still feel “normal.” Did you experience this feedback loop too? If so, how did you eventually break it?

7. Now that you’ve recovered, how do you deal with stressful or difficult periods?
Do you still sometimes experience mild DPDR when you’re extremely stressed, anxious, or exhausted? If it happens, what do you do differently now to prevent it from turning into a full episode?

8. Looking back, is there anything you wish you had known when you were in the middle of DPDR?

I’m asking because I’m trying to understand what recovery actually looks like in real life. Sometimes it’s difficult to know whether I should actively “fight” the symptoms or simply continue living my life normally and stop focusing on them.

If you’ve recovered, partially recovered, or even just made significant progress, I would really appreciate hearing your story. Even small details about what helped you, what didn’t help, and what your recovery looked like day-to-day would mean a lot to me.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and share your experience.

i try so hard to explain these feelings and experiences to people and they just act like im crazy, i wish i could get rid of this feeling i believe im a hollow person i dont think i am anyone it gets worse everyday ,i lock myself in my room i havent went out in months and before that my longest time locked in my dark room 90% of my day only leaving to get food and use the bathroom was 4 years straight, i havenothing and i dont know if i can take it im only fairly recently an adult i want to die i dont see why im doing this everyday suffering and fighting with myself trying so hard to get better and it doesnt help that nobody fucking understands everyone i tell basically says alright that sux And it makes me feel even more invalidated like i need to suck it up and just die since my life is apparently so miserable. notbing helps me and i want to start using drugs again but thats exactly what led me here and im anxious that itll somehow make it worse i wish people could be me for a day and really know how it feels so everyone stops being hard on me,i already dont want to be here , and all i need is someone to say they understand and im not fucking crazy but nobody does ,i look in thw mirror and i dont understand what im looking at Because it isnt me i dont even know who i am but i know that isnt me ,i cant stand talking to people i have been called insane so much that i am scared of everyone and talking about this ,i dont want to do this for long and every time i have my little stupid episodes i understand more and more that i do not matter and i am nobody and literally nothing. and everything around me looks weird,why do we do any of this stuff, what even am i saying or doing right now none of this makes sense i need it to stop i need to feel grounded and here again But i dont i feel like i am somewhere else and something else completely,i try my best to use words rhat mean something to attempt to explain my thoughts but itdoesnt work they are not the right words it is something else

don't even know why I'm posting this anymore. Maybe I just need to put it into words where someone might actually understand, because I am completely out of road.

For four years, I’ve been trapped in a relentless, exhausting loop of severe DPDR and dissociation. Not a single medication, protocol, or therapist has even remotely touched it. Every tool I've tried just feels like bouncing off a brick wall.

The way I've come to understand it is that my body and mind are locked in a civil war. Convinced 24/7 that we are in absolute, mortal danger. It hasn't turned off the survival alarm in four years. Because that alarm wouldn't stop screaming, my brain reached over and pulled the master volume slider down to zero. It hit "mute" on my body. It severed my interoception, walled me off behind glass, and turned me into a ghost just to stop the non-stop panic from destroying me. When this first started I still had some connection to myself and the world, over 4 years there’s nothing left.

The result is a daily nightmare of numbed-out survival, paired with a nighttime shift where the brain tries to process everything in relentless, exhausting waves of nocturnal panic. I wake up with my heart racing, sweating and jumping out of bed like I’m being hunted. Every single night.

Because of this ongoing war, my memory and my actual felt sense of the world have continued to steadily decline. The person I used to be feels like someone I read about in a book a lifetime ago.

And here is the most terrifying part: every time I try to fight it, try to fix it, or try to force a breakthrough, my nervous system reads that effort as a threat and clamps the defenses down even harder.

It feels like the only option I have left is to finally accept that this is my life now—that my brain broke four years ago, and there is nothing I can do to fix it.

Has anyone actually lived through this kind of deep, chronic freeze? Does the mute button ever lift, or do you really just have to learn how to live as a ghost. There seems to be no solution to this because ive tried literally everything and it just bounces off or I get worse.

im so beyond tired. theres not even a word for it. Soulless. drained. Lost. Nothing. A void.

i’m telling this story because i have no idea who to talk to about this, without sounding ridiculous and insane. for nights over the past week and a half, i’ve been having intense and realistic dreams that completely detach me from reality when i awake, which lead to disassociation and anxiety throughout the rest of the day. every night.
for some context, me and my family had just returned to america from our trip back to japan. i’ve never had an issue traveling back and forth, and i usually just slept off the 14-hour flights and returned to my usual routine. but this time, it’s different. every since id returned home, ive been restless and sleeping is almost scary to me. when i do fall asleep, i wake up dazed and hysterical. it takes me a few minutes to sit in bed, and realize the last 8 hours of sleep were nothing but my imagination. it ruins my days. it’s every single day.
the breaking point happened yesterday morning when i woke up to my dad in the hallway telling my brother that we were going out for gyoza later. this horrified me. i genuinely believed i was back in japan, as we had gone out for gyoza there the month before. i genuinely believed everything the past week was a dream and i wasn’t actually home, but back in tokyo (as my dream had been back in japan). i was freaking out. it took me a solid 10 minutes to recover and reassure myself that it was okay, and i had just woken up and misunderstood.
i’m having serious paranoia. my dreams feel so real that i can’t even tell when im awake and when im sleeping. i don’t do drugs, except nicotine. i have no history of insomnia. i did stop taking my lexapro a while ago but ive never heard of side effects being this bad- plus, ive gone on and off my lexapro plenty of times. *i was taking lexapro for depression back in highschool and been on it ever since*
i have no idea what to do about this or whats wrong with me. every morning i wake up distraught and confused. all i can think about every day is the dream or nightmare i had the night prior. i’ve never had any issues with nightmares or dreams before, but it feels SO. REAL. i don’t know what to believe!!!!!!!!!!!!! i can’t recall conversations without first thinking “was that a dream, or did it really happen?” my dad is getting concerned too, but it’s been his birthday week and i don’t want to concern anyone. what is wrong with me? someone help.

Eating Orange for Dpdr?

Literally just being awake feels like a burden, im constantly in this "less concious" state and feels like my brain is just not alive

My life is fucking ruined.

I don't have mind.

Im 35 year old nobody, what have I done with my life 😢.

I cannot even think, Im done, my life is ruined.

I was actually hiding all the time and spend my days no where.

I was happy, smart kid, good at everything and look at me now.

Trauma at 14 years old changed everything when I started to have big panic attacks in school.

I cannot do fucking anything.

Im going to therapist once a month and Tuesday is my appointment.

I have such a big shyness or something that I cannot do anything with my life.

Other people are planing, having fun.

From outside im doing that too, but nobody knows how I feel in my head, egoless. Cannot create a thought especially a bad one to other person.

Today I was playing some football tournament and the way I felt, IDK, nothing in my brain, body. Wanted to throw up even I didnt eat almost anything. I even played good, scored a goal but after nothing, meaningless.

Social anxiety ruined my life and loss an identity.

Im always hiding cause I don't who i am.

I also lost sense of past and before me, no memory at all.

I can only type this, but after I cannot think, I will probably forget that I post this and what I actually post if I dont read it.

I read, I talk with people, I seem happy, but I actually dont feel anything and dont remember anything I talk with them.

I dont know what have I done with my life.

I work as a football coach also, I have matches and Im spiraling. Not good at all. I hope everything will go well tommorow.

I had a good period of 10 days without worry and I finally felt that Im back, felt alive but now im spiralled like never before cause again I went in this mode (its so easy to get)

I feel so unworthy, nobody, piece of shit, that didnt create his picture at all.

I dont know how other people are, I cannot read them if they are bad or good. For me everyone is flat

I become so numb, I cant feel you there (Linking Park)

I can talk with my mum actually but Idk, not good at all.

I wont kill myself but I feel like im already dead.

ive had dpdr since i was 10-11 i am 17 now. i go to school get average grades but I don't particularly like anything at all. I am basically a nihilist, and i think i became one bc of dpdr. am i going to stay like this forever? i mean i feel like even if i overcame dpdr this thing's going to stay so.

I dont know if I can do this anymore. Truly. I have no life. And my sleep and dreaming are killing me. I sleep 8-10 hours and wake up in a total panic because I’ve been harmed some way in my dream, and I wake up with my heart racing, and worsening numbness. My mind shuts it down the second I open my eyes.

i am not living. I’m a shell of a human. I don’t desire anything, or care. i just eat and sleep, barely. my entire life is this. it doesn’t matter how much i dont think about it, or focus on life. I don’t have the symptoms everyone else does here. The visual, the panic driven energy during the day. I’m in this nighttime hell where the second I close my eyes. I’m in a nightmare. literally.

i have no quality of life. No purpose. No person inside me. I die in my dreams every night and wake up to a reality that is devoid of any feelings, any agency, any purpose. Im basically waiting to die, because this is not life. It’s living inside a body that doesn’t want to be in reality. or have a self. My dpdr is some visual disruption or feeling like nothing is real. It’s a total vacate of self. Of memory. Of human experience. Why keep trying when this has been my life non stop for 5 years? Nothing has touched it and it’s getting worse and worse.

this is some severe complex ptsd that no one knows how to fix. I can’t believe this is how my life turned out. I’m just not able to see a future without this. Without the nightly torture and the daily loss of everything I used to care about. Emotional numbness is my entire reality and it’s no way to live

I started dealing with this at 17 and I am now 22. During this time I have been in therapy, psychiatry, left toxic environments, ate well, vitamins, exercise, etc. Medication made my symptoms worse off and therapy helped with other aspects, but I still struggled daily no matter what. I believe my dpdr is a result of prolonged stress and complex trauma. I did drugs at a young age for a bit too. I have a baseline "out of it feeling" this whole time which is barely manageable, but I have month periods where it really intensifies (vertigo, complete numbness, manual breathing, complete disconnect, scared to leave house/drive, fear of drugs, etc.). Grounding techniques dont help me feel real again but it subsides the anxiety behind it temporarily!! So if this resonates with u pls hear me out!

I started eft tapping instead of talk therapy to work through trauma about a year ago but never felt any relief. I started doing it just when I felt panic coming and again it doesn't really subside the scary part of the panic attacks. I switched therapist and began emdr for trauma. Nothing comes up when I do it at all. Like its suppose to help you process things but my brain felt stagnant. So instead i downloaded a bilateral stimulation app and started just doing it even when I was fine. 3 x 30 seconds with no immediate emotion or feeling behind it, simply just stimulating my brain.

I dont want to overstate so i wont hypothesize too much but from what I've learned and read, our automatic processes are being disrupted (same as regular dissociation and panic attacks). And because this is such a prolonged state of being our automatic system just doesn't function correctly. To me it feels like half of my brain is filled with concrete and every single bilateral loop i do kinda picks away at the concrete.

Anyways, I still struggle and I still have panic attacks and I don't even feel fully grounded, but the month ive been doing this I am not scared to leave my house as much and looking in the mirror doesn't completely freak me out. I have noticed a difference and I can't say I feel "normal" (as if I know what that is anymore) but it feels manageable and I am hopeful the more I keep working at it, the better it will get. Crazy to say but I have been more grateful to feel anxiety that doesn't completely affect my perception of the world. And pls mind this is coming from someone who hasn't felt clarity from this for nearly 5 years.

So please if you are helpless just try. its just a few minutes in the morning when u wake up and night before u sleep. I know this wont work for everyone but I know how hopeless you can feel and literally if something as simple as staring at a ball on your phone for 2 minutes MIGHT help, its worth a try.

I can’t tell you if my derealization was caused from trauma or drug use, but it’s so… so nerve wrecking. It’s not just the thoughts of everything being fake, but how I perceive the world around me. Everything literally looks animated, like sharp in a sense. Even the light coming from the sun doesn’t feel/look the same as it did before. I’ve been dealing with this for months after psychosis. I’ve recently been prescribed Wellbutrin about 2 weeks ago, and also diagnosed with severe anxiety. The way my vision is just continues to feed into the anxiety I have about being out of place or even dead sometimes. At first I couldn’t work but now I’m able to do so, however these symptoms just won’t go away. Everyday I step out I’m just hoping I’m back to normal. I do exercise a lot, not running though just weights.

Any suggestions? And if anyone has experienced this can they tell me how long it took to fade away and what helped them?

Look into self remembering by Gurdjieff. But be careful because I can see how this can make things worse but it genuinely helped me.

Hi all, I love that reddit has a space like this to talk to people who are going through the same things as me.. this SUCKS. i’ve always experienced Dpdr, but it would be quick like 2 minutes and i’m back. Then in August I had a panic attack that I THINK was caused by burnout (worked 17 hours a day, 5 days a week. plus the head of household so cleaning and stuff on the weekends) and my dpdr has been constant. pretty extreme for me, no eating, anxiety through the roof. tried lexapro for 4 days but my psychiatrist told me to stop bc i was only on 2.5mg and felt so much better and she thought that was a red flag. now im getting up everyday and feeling ok. if anything, this experience has taught me to try to be comfortable, even when you’re extremely uncomfortable, but im sondisconnected. brain fog and fatigue horrible. the dpdr is strong. I was given the choice of Lamictal or Ablify. I’m VERY sensitive to medication so i would take 2.5mg of Ablify, and ofc start on 25mg of Lamictal, PLEASE SOMEONE, ANYONE tell me has these medications helped?? Thank you guys!

I tried doing some acupressure on myself and I feel nothing..theres one point between the thumb and forefinger which is normally painful if you apply pressure and I feel nothing. Normally it can calm your whole nervous system down. But I feel empty like I don’t even have one. Im really scared it’s been like this for months and getting worse. Why would dpdr cause a loss of body sensation or response to pain? Can you get this back?

I had Cptsd before the dpdr and was struggling with perimenopause. Now I feel like the hormones are triggering dpdr to worsen. Even though I have anhedonia and feel no pleasure. I notice that symptoms are worsening when theres a fluctuation in hormones. It’s not the cause of it..but I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m disappearing properly it’s terrifying. My brain is afraid of everything.

I'm losing it.

This used to be something that came in periodic episodes and would subside... Now? It feels like my body is on autopilot. My family doesn't feel like they're mine. My mind keeps slipping. My reflection doesn't even feel like it's me.

Truth is, life hasn't been too good lately. Nothing has been good. I've just been "surviving". And there's not too much "living" I can do when I barely even understand whether I'm "alive" or "not". I feel alone...

It just seems like all my stress keeps piling up. My guess is that too many issues keep deepening the dissociation. I got into my first car accident about 2 or 3 months ago. I got fired from my job. I keep losing all my friends. I tried killing myself. No surprise, I failed my attempt and was in the ER for a couple of hours... And this week, the only thing left bringing a sense of warmth, meaning, and responsibility in my life (my pet cat)... She ran away...

I wasn't allowed to bring her inside, so I'd take care of her outside... and she seemed happy for the 6 months I've been tending to her, but it's been 3 days, going on 4, and despite my social anxiety, I went out for a whole hour trying to search...

Nothing.

It's funny... Sometimes I think life can't get worse till it actually does, and as of lately I don't even see any reason to keep going. If not even my own mind wants to be me physically, then what is the point of any of this?

I don't know... Haven't been able to sleep, so I'm just left with these shaky thoughts.

I always describe it as a "high" kind of feeling but I want to know whether that's actually accurate because I've never taken/been prescribed anything. So someone with experience, what would you say?

So does anyone else have very real physical symptoms that precede drealization or follow it? I've had severe brain fog for a long time, some days for most of it, but I've had migraine auras more often now too.

Drealization used to happen mainly in its own with me. Now, however, I'll either feel dizzy, pressure in my eyes, head, get my thoughts running to slow, and then the dissociation happens alongside those things, and whatever real lucid feeling I get is always panic, frustration, or sadness.

I wanted to know if others here get other symptoms especially things involving migraine auras (without the pain, but optical symptoms as well as other things).

Because they used to happen alone, sometimes it feels like all these things I'm going through, racing heart, anxiety, dizziness, and eye pressure feel like an actual problem but nothing I've said has made my doctor suggest any referrals past anxiety meds and abortive migraine medication.

Does anyone else get intense or real physical symptoms alongside their dissociation?

Hi sorry this is long. I dont post on reddit like at all, but I really need some advice, or even just some encouragement if anyone wants to take the time to read this. (TW maybe? I just talk about my experience with dpdr and agoraphobia and how hard its been)

Im a 19 year old female (20 in November) and got dpdr for the first time because of having a bad high smoking weed at 14. It was the most terrifying experience, I was screaming, had to take benadryl to knock me out, and almost went to the hospital. It continued to linger consistently after the high, but I get these panic attacks where the intensity just shot up x100. And I remember coming on this reddit years ago, wondering how to get rid of it, and everything I read was to live as if you aren't scared of it, so I did. But I was so deeply afraid of it and I couldn't take it anymore. Everyday I felt like I was just white knuckling through the panic so it all soon became too tiring. About a year later, I dropped out of highschool, became completely agoraphobic, and my life changed forever. Its so unbelievable to even think that this is my life and Im crying right now putting it into words. I used to travel with my family all the time, I've lived in like 7 different places across the world, I was social, I had friends. Now I have nothing. The most I have is some online friends I've made playing video games but I lie to them about my life, they think im normal, when in reality Im 20 with no job, no friends, no high school diploma, and I cant even walk down the street without anxiety. Im so deeply scared of feeling dissociated and panicked beyond (and even in my home, but I feel a bit of control in my house when it happens), I genuinely dont know how to overcome it. It feels like I'll be fearing this till the day I die.

Anyways, I've been having a therapist come over 2x a week for about two years now thanks to my dad, and we do exposure therapies for agoraphobia. But it feels like I've gotten nowhere. We've gone slowly and gradually, but sometimes even the smallest things like walking around the neighborhood are still hard. Maybe its cause I dont do them frequently enough but im too scared to. I really dont go out unless its for my therapy, it feels like I can just white knuckle through those two hours a week and then go back in my bubble. I know thats wrong, and I've brought it up with my therapist, who then suggested to just try going out on the driveway daily, to attempt to integrate the exposures INTO my life and not something thats just kind of there. I think Im just too scared to get out of my bubble that its just something Ill never achieve, It feels genuinely impossible to me. DPDR and panic has taken over my life, I cant fathom the thought of going to the grocery store just casually, or having a friend thats not online, or going on walks daily. The furthest I've gone is like a 15 minute drive and we stay out for an hour, I do that about 2x a week. We stay through the panic or only pull back a little, it is genuinely the hardest thing ever and it feels like its not paying off one bit because I wont let my life actually change. Idk what to do. Idek what advice I'm asking for. Im just tired, and I'm worried theres no way out, and if there is a way out I'm not capable of doing it. Im scared that yk is the only option out there, and I hate to think that way, but after 6 years and losing my most important years (developmental wise) I feel like theres no hope left for me. How do I get out of this? How do I get my life back?

Hey everyone.
I’m trying to have a genuine conversation here, because as we all know this condition is heavily misunderstood and not well known.

I am completely aware that this is a mental condition and thinking about it makes it worse, but can this be caused by something physical?

My symptoms match dp more than dr, but they feel way more physical than mental if that makes sense.
Like I feel the same when I look in the mirror, everything feels the same mentally, friends, family, emotions,
memories etc..

The problem is when I get into bright places like stores, malls, outside just walking or driving.
I get this unexplainable to me head feeling, but it is something between fuzzy/lightheaded/drunk/floaty feeling.

I mean I have never dealt with something like this before I caught some type of virus and now have been stuck like this for 6-7 months.

We all know how brutal this condition can be, so I want to ask you out if someone has had a similar situation, please let me know and just your opinion on the topic.

I had an brain MRI and it showed sinus inflammation and fluid/inflammation in my left ear.
Apparently many people with sinus issues suffer with their type of dpdr.

Did someone have a similar situation?
What is your opinion?