#does any of this make sense or am i just describing depersonalization without realizing it. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pony-boy21 · 3 years

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I have been feeling really detached from myself [not a new experience, just not in denial I guess] and have been feeling inhuman is the easiest way to put it. Here are others people experience that is very relatable (I'll bold the ones that I experience quite frequently)

“It feels like your conscious brain has detached and you aren’t attached to your body. Everything goes dull like a filter has been turned on.” — Kate R.

“Feeling like I’m not me. Like I’m looking at someone else’s body and when looking at my hands I can’t grasp that they are in fact a part of me. I could stare at myself in the mirror all day and not feel like they are my eyes looking back.” — Lydia G.

“You feel out of your body, you just feel numb, you feel like an observer… like you’re just watching a movie or a TV show about your life that you don’t have any control over. You just feel like you’re on autopilot. You look in the mirror and see yourself and you just can’t believe it’s you staring back. Everything just feels blank.” — Tayla R.

“When it starts, I can feel the things that make me human start to slip away. I lose all sense of emotion, my mind goes blank, and I feel as though my body does not exist. I go through tasks and actions like a well-programmed robot, and when I speak, it’s without my own tongue. I sound lifeless. Sometimes I scream and panic in the back of my mind, but my body won’t listen.” — Amity L.

“It feels like you are witnessing your own life behind a glass wall, like nobody sees or hears you, but you can see and hear everything very clearly, even clearer than usual actually. You see your body move and you hear your voice talk but you have zero control over what you’re saying or doing, and then you just keep banging on the glass wall hoping someone would notice you’re not really there inside the body.” — Kira H.

“You feel like your body isn’t your own body, it’s something strange and distant as a vehicle you don’t drive.” — Natasha C.

“I once described it to a friend by painting a picture. Imagine you are swimming, it’s kind of dark. You can feel what you are doing and you feel like you. As you continue, you start to see yourself from the perspective of a passerby. You move your hands but it doesn’t feel like you’re moving them, only watching. You can stare at them all you want but the longer you do it the more foreign they become. You feel trapped in this space, like your outside of your body and can’t get back in.” — Venus M.

“Depersonalization for me feels like I’m just now realizing everything around me is life. It’s like I never noticed before. And then like that, I’m lost and I’m not even sure how I actually feel. I feel as if I’m not even here. I’m a shell amongst shells.” — Chanta R.

“It’s like I’m underwater. I move, but I don’t think I wanted to. My body carries me through it’s normal motions, while I try to figure out how to come back and take control.” — Jana W.

“Depersonalization is like another version of myself takes over and handles what I’m anxious about. I suddenly become a happier person. I laugh and joke and I’m confident. Once I’m back in a secure environment, my real self appears and pieces of what happened during that time is lost. I don’t remember what happened.” — Tamasvi G.

“It’s like no longer being connected to your own body. Your mind is so overwhelmed that it just detaches from reality completely. You question whether or not you’re real. Everything about you is unfamiliar. You look at your hands and wonder whose they are. It’s almost like watching a complete stranger go about their business.” — Vanessa L.

“In all honesty, it’s horrifying. It feels like I’m not in control of my body. I feel like I’m playing out events and there is nothing I can really do about it. There’s a slight feeling of numbness. Feeling fully aware of what’s going on, but I can’t do anything to stop it. It’s almost as though I’m playing out a cutscene and I’m just there for the ride. For me, they’re the worst kind of anxiety attack I can have.” — Toby O.

“Feeling like I’m locked in a glass box but the glass is dirty and fogged up so i can only partially see/understand whats going on. I feel really disconnected from everything outside of the box so much so that i start feeling disconnected from myself too because I’m shut in and things don’t make sense. I feel spacey tired and confused and i wonder if I’m actually real. Its like my brain feels disconnected from my body.” — Sarah C.

“You’re awake, but you’re trapped mostly in your head. You think you’re in reality, but a lot of time goes by, and when you feel that sudden sense of, ‘Omg, look what month we’re in already?’ You realize you haven’t really been aware. It’s a nonstop cycle.” — Cady S.

“For me, it feels as though I’m not really in charge of my movements or thoughts. I’m somewhere not quite beside myself, but not fully me. I start to wonder if what’s happening around me is real.” — Jes V.

“Several times in the last couple of years, I have looked in the mirror and legitimately didn’t know who the girl was looking back at me. I couldn’t feel my body. I felt like I was just a void. Scared the crap out of me when I would ‘snap back’ to reality.” — Jessica H.

“Like in one of these movies, being an alien creature just inhabiting a human body and controlling it. A strong Sensation of strangeness and every move feels over-controlled.” — Stefan K.

“[It’s like] floating in a bubble just above my own head, puppeteering my body, clumsily, on strings. My physical sensations are dulled, except sounds, which are weirdly amplified and out of sync. I can think clearly as the me inside the bubble, but not as the me in the body. The me in the body feels distant, far away, like another person. My voice comes out but is strange and far away sounding. Everything is going too fast and too slow at the same time, people and cars loom up suddenly out of nowhere and things like traffic are unpredictable. My perception is oddly skewed making spatial awareness and proprioception difficult. I feel like I am piloting my body by remote control.” — Katy P.

“It’s like I’m standing just behind and a little to the left of myself. I can see and hear only me at the time. Everything else is black and silent. And if I’m in a rage, I can say and do awful things. When I come back, I remember nothing and don’t feel anything about my actions even when told how horrible I was. It wasn’t me who said/did those things.” — Caralyn R.

“I feel like I’m standing off to the side watching myself. But I feel nothing. Empty. No emotions or feelings, nothing. I’m watching people talk to me but I hear nothing. No sound. Everything is muted.” — Sheree S.

“It’s like being an alien inside your own head, but your body is a machine stuck on autopilot so you’re not controlling much of anything. You see everything, but feel nothing. And when you walk past a mirror, you avoid looking because the person you see in the reflection somehow isn’t you. It’s a hollow unrecognizable shell of a thing you remember, but can’t connect with on any level. It’s isolating too, because even if someone else does notice when you’re going through this, there’s no way in hell they could ever truly understand or relate because they haven’t ever been through this themselves.” — Devin L.

“For me it was like I couldn’t focus on anything, like my whole life was a complete blur, like I needed glasses to make it clear again, as though I was there but I wasn’t. The worst thing was that I couldn’t control it. I would look in the mirror and barely recognize the girl looking back at me. You feel unconnected with reality, you just go on auto pilot. It’s really horrible.” — Kerry F.

“It feels like you’re playing a first-person video game. You can sort of control your actions and choose to interact with objects and people, but it’s not actually you doing or experiencing any of it. You’re just watching what happens from behind a screen, completely disconnected.” — Rowan S.

“It’s like the world around me is made of Lego people and the cars are Hot Wheels. It’s like I’m the child who’s in control of how fast the cars move and how the people and trees and houses are all arranged. It’s scary really. Especially because when I finally realize I’m not the one I’m in control. I feel so confused about what happened and what I felt.” — Emmy P.

#pony-boy21 #mental health awareness #depersonalization

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medi-melancholy · 5 years

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i’ve been really coming to terms the past few months about my relationship with gender identity and i want to put some of my thoughts on paper. this is is very steam of consciousness so it’ll probably be repetitive or incoherent, but i want to talk about it openly. I PROMISE I’M OK LMAO i just wanna chat to myself

anyone who knows me knows i love dolls. hell, i’m dollkin, of course. and a big part of why i identify with dolls so much is because of physical reasons. a doll can be physically neutral without any sexual characteristics, yet perceived as leaning more towards a certain gender based on how they’re dressed. a ‘girl’ doll may wear dresses and bows and such, but has no true physical gender. if that ‘girl’ doll wanted to, they could be dressed more like a ‘boy’, or stay completely neutral perception-wise. hell, they could wear dresses and bows and skirts and be identified as a boy or as having no gender, in spite of traditionally ‘feminine’ clothing.

i LOVE that. that’s like... an ideal situation to me.

i think another reason i identify so much with the lack of physical gender/sexual traits the vast majority of dolls possess is because i’m asexual and quite sex-repulsed. the thought of ever being around a naked person makes me sick, because i just reeeally don’t want to see any of those parts. i don’t even like seeing my own parts most of the time. i just want to be... nothing.

a lot of my hatred for parts of my body likely relates to my struggles with disordered eating and chronic illness, but that’s an issue for another time.

i would love to have the ability to be neutrally gendered by default. i technically can be if i want to! but because i have ‘female’ physical characteristics, people will pretty much always automatically assume that i am female. i understand it’s an issue to say something like... “having a chest and hips = female!” because that’s absolutely not true, i understand that. but to someone who desires to fit society’s view of what is female, having those characteristics is valuable. yknow?? so it’s not like... an entirely bad concept, if it helps someone be more comfortable and happy with who they are.

by that same token, i bind (safely!) every now and then because i want to be lacking in those physical characteristics, and therefore hopefully perceived as more neutral. hell, i’ve crossdressed before and presented as male for historical reenactment purposes, and i LOVE IT. i love having the freedom to control my gender. it feels so good.

it was easier when i was younger, when i wasn’t curvy. when i kept my hair very short due to abuse, and could easily pass as ‘male’.

these days i spend a lot of time dressed as a stormtrooper or a tie fighter pilot, neutral costumes with helmets with conceal my gender. i cherish the moments i have in those sorts of costumes, largely in part because in those moments it’s not my gender that matters but instead the children i bring joy to, but i digress. there’s certainly a theme with my feelings, though.

i end up feeling most comfortable cosplaying characters of unconventional gender presentation, i’ve noticed.

i had my phase around middle school where i hated the color pink, i hated traditionally feminine things, i never wore skirts or dresses, i wanted the color blue, i wanted pants. i felt weird and out of place trying to fit into ‘girly’ roles. it’s weird to think i was ever in that place, considering my interests now, but it sure did happen. i think a lot of this time might relate to me coming to terms with my sexuality--being asexual, and the struggles of having sexual characteristics--and also realizing i really REALLY like girls. my subconscious thought process might’ve been something like, “boys like girls, and i like girls, so maybe i should be more like a boy?”

i grew up, thank god, in a household that didn’t force me into playing house, playing with dolls, all that stuff. i was welcome to play with whatever toys i wanted, watch whatever shows appealed to me, listen to whatever music i liked. so, i had both barbies and transformers, i had bratz and star wars, i had a mix of ‘girly’ and ‘boyish’ music and movies i enjoyed. i was certainly bullied for this, harshly so, but i’m eternally thankful that my parents have been accepting of me ever since day 1.

for many years i’ve had trouble identifying with being afab, with being a girl, because of my body. i have a hormone imbalance of some sort that does fucked up things to my mind and body, and i suspect i have some sort of issue with, well, the girly internal hardware too, but i’ve been horrified to go to a specialist about that sort of thing because i HATE talking about... those parts, it’s making me feel sick right now. i don’t want anyone looking around down there, EVER.

anyways, my hair grows in absurdly fast and absurdly thick, everywhere, even before i felt pressured to start shaving as a kid. my legs, arms, pits,eyebrows, just everywhere. even my face, i do have to shave my face. it’s... invalidating, i guess, of my supposed ‘womanhood’, so i find myself having trouble calling myself a real girl. i know hair is a natural thing, and i NEVER ever judge other people for it, but i do judge myself.

i’ve often described my feelings as... i want to be a girl, i know on some level that i am a girl. but i’m physically NOT a girl, and i only want to strive for feminine physical traits in some ways, not in others.

it’s a very weird, depersonalizing feeling, considering i’m afab.

there’s also the fact i’m like 6 feet tall, that’s certainly not a ‘girl’ trait. “no one will dance with a tall girl”, the saying goes. i’m leggy and gangly and weird. and somehow curvy at the same time. i look like a joke lol

i wanna mention that i had a phase in high school where if any of my friends asked me what my gender was, i’d just pull up a clip of a la cucaracha horn. that’s still such a huge mood.

ever since i was a kid, i’ve found myself drawn to characters who are androgynous or don’t conform to typical gender presentation, and i’ve never really known why. i figured, maybe that’s my idea of beauty or something? i hate to word it like this but i like... really found myself attached to male characters that presented femininely, or dressed as such, or wear lots of makeup, and i still feel that way? that just feels so safe, so comfortable, so real to me. that’s reflected in my IDs/kintypes too, i really really relate to gender neutral characters, or characters who are ‘supposed to’ be masculine but are feminine instead, or any combination, just... nontypical displays of gender.

it feels so suitable to what i want in life, i think. the same feeling i want to achieve.

funny that pretty much every single character i identify with is a doll/puppet or related to them in some way, too, huh? it all sorta connects, i guess. i value the nonhuman trait of having no definitive physical gender, i guess?

i’ve had people suggest to me before that i’m a demigirl, maybe, but that never felt right. i’ve had people say “hey, sounds like you’re nonbinary” but i just... don’t feel right with that term? just for me personally.

it’s almost like i don’t want to label my gender. it feels so vague, so indistinguishable.

girl a little bit to the left. girl flavored la croix. the tape outline of a corpse at a crime scene, and the corpse happened to be a girl. hint of hint of girl. i don’t feel that all the time, though. sometimes i just feel.. an absence of gender. no gender but with vaguely feminine traits.

at the same time, i worry myself about identifying as a lesbian. i’m only interested in dating people who identify as female, that’s who i end up attracted to. i want a girlfriend, i want a wife.

but if i’m not entirely a girl myself, can i still call myself a lesbian?

well, i’ve never judged or policed other people, so why the fuck am i judging myself? we really are our own worst critics.

anyways, within my close circle of friend-family, i’ve been going by they/them for a while and also neutral terms, for the most part. it feels good, it feels comfortable. it’s not something i’m gonna want 24/7, but sometimes that’s how i’m feeling so that’s the terminology i should use. makes sense, feels good.

i can still be a sister, a daughter, a girlfriend. but i can be a sibling, a datefriend, too. i can use she/her and they/them at the same time, or whenever i’m feeling one over the other

the closest word i’ve found for how i feel is gender nonconforming, but i still don’t want to put a label on myself in this case.

i just wanted to get this off my chest. or... get my chest off. it’s complicated.

you can call me sarah, you can call me medi, you can call me a person who is a girl, a person who’s sort of a girl but sorta not. i dunno. i’m just me.

i thought i had all my identify stuff figured out but these past few months have been Whew

shoutout to my friends for always being so supportive and loving, yall are the best.

and uhhhhhh thanks for reading, sorry for getting so real all of a sudden.

this may have been brought on because i have a new doll kintype whose gender is a fuck and i was like shit, that’s me, huh!

#long post #it me #it sure is me huh #uhhh tw for lots of gender talk i guess idk #nothing upsetting i don't think. just talking about [vaguely gestures at self] All This #OH and maybe like the post if you read it. if that's ok!! i just wanna know who's like... in the know about stuff. if that's alright

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psycho-lifestyle-blog · 6 years

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Dissasociation

Disassociation has a definition, but it does affect people in different ways. The definition is to “ disconnect or separate.” How each and every one of us relate and/or define dissociation can be different or the same. The most vague, and most common, description would be to describe it as if you feel like you are in a dream. Everything is foggy, and it can mess with energy, memory etc. There are many parts of dissociation, because it is more of a general term. There are two basic parts that stem off of this: derealization, and depersonalization.

Derealization is defined as “a feeling that one's surroundings are not real, especially as a symptom of mental disturbance.” This is what i most define with. Feeling foggy, like nothing is real. wanting to treat it like a dream but inside, I know it’s real life. When I am in this state, my memory is awful. It’s like my mind has doors. behind each door is a thought. I struggle to open a door so I concentrate on that thought, then i want to bring another thought it, so as I open the next door, the first one shuts. When one door opens, another shuts in my world. I can never access my own thoughts and it drives me crazy since I can’t think anything through or make any decisions. When i started disassociating for the first time, I thought it was a side effect of my meds which weren’t perfect yet. I didn’t know what dissociation was at the time. My dumbass thought, well this is driving me nuts. i think it’s caused by my meds and i want it to stop, so i’ll cold turkey off my meds.... never do that! I went psycho without my meds, but when I did that, the disassociation didn’t go away, and after I stabilized again, it still hadn’t gone away. It was with me 24/7 for a very long time, to the point that I got used to feeling that way. When people spoke to me, I came off as completely normal to them, but in my head I only realized what I was saying after I said it. It’s like i’m in autopilot and i’ll just listening to the echos from the backseat. Kinda like being high on weed, but a little less fun because you don’t feel in control.

Depersonalization is defined as “ the action of divesting someone or something of human characteristics or individuality.” and “a state in which one's thoughts and feelings seem unreal or not to belong to oneself, or in which one loses all sense of identity.” I have not personally experienced this, and I haven’t done much research recently, so I won’t have a ton of information, but I could write another post on just that if requested. The most severe case of this that I have heard from people around me, is when someone I know was in class at their desk, and suddenly they felt like they were standing behind them self, while they were really sitting down. They said they were looking from behind at them self. like an out of body experience. I believe that that was a stressful day for them, and could be what provoked this. Depersonalization could feel like you aren’t in your own skin, or it could just feel like you aren’t you. You may forget things about yourself. “Where did I grow up?” “What’s my middle name?” and so on.

*Disassociation can also be connected to much bigger disorders such as DID or SPD, which I do plan on writing about.*

Either way, I understand that this sucks to have to deal with, and there are other people, including myself, that understand. You are not alone. We are not alone.

I hope you all have a great night. It was hard to get motivated to write a post, but I said I would post once a day and I don’t want to break that. I felt like absolute shit and I still accomplished something.

Goodnight Psychos :)

-Psycho Lifestyle

#psycholifestyle #psycho #disassociation #depersonalization #derealization #mental health #mental illness #support

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quietborderlineinfo · 7 years

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Hi I have a question or want your perspective on something please. So I've seen myself in other people's descriptions of bpd for a long time. My t thinks I might have it. If I have it it's the quiet type. But there's just some things that I can't see fitting? Or understand how they would be "quiet"? And some of the criteria I only experience very rarely or with certain people. 1/?

alright hey stargazer!

i can totally appreciate how much thought and detail you’ve put into this - i remember being in that place, and its so confusing and frustrating and frankly exhausting. breathe; from what youve said it sounds like your T is paying close attention and wants the best for you. over time, you’ll figure out what diagnosis & treatment(s) may work for you. until then, just focus on getting better one step at a time.

keep in mind that below i just discuss how the things you said relate to the diagnostic criteria, but no one here can diagnose you. definitely talk to your T (and if theyre not a psychiatrist, try to talk to one of those if you have access to a good one, since theyre more inclined to diagnose, in my experience)

also remember that you only need 5/9 for a diagnosis - so two people w bpd may have only 1 overlapping symptom. (so if you dont see yourself in everything you read, thats normal)

For instance 1 (frantically avoid abandonment) only w/ 2 relationships I’ve ever had, and these are more feelings than actions I take 2 (pattern unstable intense relationships) I’ve only had one significant relationship in my life and it was very intense and unstable, but I have no history of it but I also have no history of what I would call “close” relationships. I’m mostly avoidant of them) 2/?

1 & 2: saaame. i once asked a T if never letting yourself feel close to people was a form of attempting to avoid abandonment, and was told that it can be, if that’s why you do it. it can be hard to figure out why you do something you may have always done though, so it helps to both try to analyze past experiences and definitely to try to look at your feelings and how they’re motivating you as you go forward.

I’m not sure on the whole feelings vs actions thing; ask your T cause i think there can be a lot of grey area. and for #2, i had the same experience too; everyone who treated me seemed to think that the one relationship was enough evidence, i guess considering that avoidant behaviour.

3 (id disturbance) I’m not sure exactly how this manifests or is separate from depersonalization. Like I don’t feel real when I try to engage in hobbies. I only exist when I’m doing things with others and then I feel fake and two dimensional (but this is getting a lot better and I’m afraid that means the symptom isn’t real) I’m not sure of my own hobbies and I have no internal motivations or knowledge base to make my own decisions. 3/?

. I can hardly tell right from wrong a lot of the time and use clues from others to help me. And I can change depending on the people I’m around. Is that what this means? This isn’t all things but some things 4 I am not in the slightest impulsive except if you count the impulsive texts I would send to that one intense relationship to make sure she didn’t hate me every few weeks 4/?

3. so depersonalization is a type of dissociation, so that’d fall under criterion 9. symptoms can get better and that absolutely doesn’t mean that you are now or have ever been faking; remission of symptoms with time and/or therapy is actually more likely than not. not knowing right from wrong is interesting cause at first i thought that was entirely unrelated, but realized it could come from not having an internalized moral system, which would definitely sound relevant.

what does fit the description is both not being sure of your hobbies (esp since it sounds like means youre not sure of what you enjoy/care about?), and changing depending on the people you’re around (if you feel like its more of an internal change than say, changing from business-appropriate speech patterns to something more casual when around friends vs at work).

the wiki page describes ID disturbance really well i think, but if you still have questions, definitely send them your T’s/our way.

4. neither am i, and i was still diagnosed. some people seem to think that it’s one criterion that has to be met though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it is possible that it manifests only very specifically, like w me I’m only impulsive w self-harm or recklessly crossing the street.

5 (self harm) I’ve cut in the past but I can go years without cutting, but the urge to cut will always surface every few weeks whether I act on it or not 6 (affective instability) not sure I understand this. My emotions are so intense that I have a hard time doing anything but engaging in avoidant behaviors. Focusing on school and work is extremely difficult around my thoughts and feelings, Is that what this means? I can change really quickly too based on one thought or one outside occurrence5/?

Hi stargazer anon again. Sorry I’m all over the place with this I just get confused. So missing might be the part that addressed diagnostic criteria #7. basically yes I experience emptiness. I think The end of message 5 is relating to diagnostic criteria #6 (instability of mood) and message 7 is relating to diagnostic criteria #8 (anger). Sorry it’s a mess. But I don’t think there is anything important in the missing piece. I was just going through each symptom and comparing my experience w/ it

5. that certainly counts! (proud of you for keeping it to a minimum, hope you’re working w your T to eliminate it entirely!)

6. “Patients often describe affective instability as an “emotional roller coaster” that relates to a subjective sense of strong affects and emotions experienced in an uncomfortable, rapid sequence.”

what you described sounds intense, and to clarify the changeability i think it can have a lot to do with reacting really strongly to things in the environment/in relationships. you didnt talk too much about the changes, so id say it sounds like this likely fits, but warrants more discussion just to clarify.

7. aight √

But i don’t get angry at people usually. I used to have this pattern of withdrawing from my relationships because I was convinced they didn’t really like me and I wanted to see if they would come talk to me to sort of “test them” but knowing the whole time that I was a horrible person who didn’t deserve their love anyway and if they didn’t really love me then I didn’t deserve it (though have gotten way better at this with therapy). Is that what is meant by the cold shoulder? 7 I think/?

8. see idk, it’s possible that that’s anger for you, but it sounds like you’ll wanna think more about it. i think cold shoulder is more about refusing to engage someone because you are upset at them. to me, what you described sounds more like fear than anger, but only you can know that. idk about other quiet borderlines but for most of my life I’ve had anger far repressed 🤔

9. (for the sake of completion) depersonalization, which you mentioned in part 2, is a kind of dissociation

Sorry for this essay if not ok just ignore and delete. Sorry I’m just having a hard time cause so much of this feels like me but then so many of the hallmarks don’t at all, or only rarely appear. I think I have aVpd too and it makes it hard to know because some symptoms cloud each other. Thanks can please tag stargazer if you do answer it? 8/8 I think it was?

sorry for taking so long to respond! yeah its useful to have a full discussion with a psychiatrist about this especially when multiple disorders are in question. also remember that as much as we may seek the sense of identity labels can give us, you dont need to fit something specific to have valid pain that deserves to be treated and warrants a break from work.

please let us know if you have any follow-up questions. good luck - it’ll get easier with time & work!

#Anonymous #stargazer #mod abby #self harm tw

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