How did you overcome depersonalization?

Post Reply New Topic

(Fairly long, but bear with me here if you can.)

I'm 23 but hoping for some responses of experience from some of the 30+ members, but any advice is always welcome. I know everyone has their own problems to deal with and I don't want to sound whiny, but please try to be patient with me. It may sound odd that a community of strangers is who I'd turn to instead of someone I know personally, but you all are the only people I can ask about this. I need some kind of wisdom from those with AS. I'm starting to become really scared.

It's insanely difficult for me to apply meaning to my life, and has been since I was 11. Before that I didn't have any either, but my youth wasn't chronic emptiness like the past 12 (almost 13) years have been. My problems don't stem from being lonely or not having a lover, but from the fact that I can't gain any attachment to reality. On a daily basis I see and react to everything as matter that is self-aware, or just there. I'm not sure if I believe in a higher power. Most of the time I think there is one simply because of the fact that things exist, but I doubt we've ever had some form of contact with it. There may not even be an afterlife even if there is a god of some sort. And if everything goes nowhere...logically it becomes meaningless to me. I know it's true that "life is what you make of it" but for me everything has to have logical ground. I have to have a choice that frees me. But I am starting to feel as though that such a choice does not exist, rather there are choices that can delay unfavorable outcomes or help ease my mind. If the choices I make now deter those outcomes for years, what will become of me when it's ran its course? If I pursue my dreams and it ends in failure, or after so long I come to find that the issues never left me, I cannot find an alternative. It took me years just to come to some sort of goal that I felt was truly worth aspiring for.

I don't want to die. But I feel so f****d up being in society. I feel like an observer. A lot of the time I don't feel human. Sometimes I do, but that's usually when I feel intimacy with someone, and that feeling has greatly diminished over the years. Recently I did something that I am ashamed of, but I did so because she made me feel good. It felt like someone actually wanted me. But I ended up being used for sex, and everything was just a ruse because she knew I wouldn't have done so otherwise. But it was the first time in over 7-8 years that I had been able to have emotional investment toward someone. I just wish it could have been someone else. Or that I had used more self-control and spared myself. But when I tried to distance myself I was so freaked out by her presence and being around other people that I was having severe panic attacks and wasn't capable of doing my job.

I try very hard to maintain relationships with people at work to some degree, even if it's just idle chit-chat. For the past 2 years I gave myself goals with my music as I'd like to be a performer of some kind, but overall I can shake my feelings. I'm obsessed with music as it helps me relate to my emotions better than I can with language, but overall I'm constantly lost in my thoughts. I've lost any real desire to pursue love or to start a family someday, and now slowly I'm beginning to doubt if my dreams in life will give me a sense of accomplishment that gives me enough relief to live. A lot of the time the financial situation and even trying to get things started becomes compromised. Everything holds on by a thread for so long.

I feel like I was blown up by an explosive and I'm still alive but someone took all my parts and threw them in different places all over the world. I don't want to die. But I feel like I'm being forced into a corner. You might say "you are the only one who can get yourself out of that corner" but I'm the one putting me in it, involuntarily. All of the struggling I do, I do it with myself. I sincerely try to be optimistic and to focus on a positive future. I haven't killed myself because I don't want to hurt certain people in my life. I DON'T WANT TO DIE. But I think in the near future I might try to kill myself. I feel so selfish for even thinking of it. But I don't want the rest of my existence to be the extreme detachment from reality I've been living with for over half of my life now. It's changed what kind of person I am, and having lived with my uncle who also has AS for most of my life, I've seen what it does. It's very ugly, but very subtle. I know nothing of the man, and whatever there is to know happened before I was even born. The only thing there is to him now are his routines, his obsessions, and nothingness. Not a friend in the world, and doesn't even use the internet. Just extreme isolation. Maybe I'm better off than he is, but the fundamental problems are still there that we both share.

I don't know what to do. I'm hoping there is some kind of answer. I used to pray. I just want to feel alive.

I got happy pills from the shrink. Other than that, it is a matter of forcing yourself to do some socializing.

I first heard the term "depersonalization" just a few days ago while watching a movie I had found while looking for a different one someone else here had mentioned, and I know *exactly* what you are talking about. I do not have any solution to suggest, but you can be sure I will spend the remainder of my life looking for one (or for *something* at least helpful) to pass along or leave behind for others like ourselves.

Success or "meaning" in life is all and only about what we do for others. Most of my own efforts along that line have seemed fruitless, yet the efforts I have made have nevertheless given my life meaning.



As difficult and as strange as this can seem, I work at simply accepting the reality of my life as I know it ... and please believe me when I say I hate philosophical tripe. Truly, my sense of non- or dis- or de-attachment to a "reality" I can really only theorize about actually *is* a reality it now seems I might as well accept ... and that seemed to be where the character in the movie I had watched ended up.



Never mind "believe in" and just stick with your willingness to believe there *is* one ...



I know I have, and I know your own experience will have to come to you in its own time.



For myself, there is far too much evidence of *something* supernatural going on in this universe for me to believe there is any such thing as "everything (everybody) goes nowhere" even if some people actually might.



I think it is more true to say we can only make matters worse by giving up on it.



My own choice is to "Just run what ya' brung" until life as we *presently* know it is over.



I presently can only do my best to hold that question at bay every day.



Personally, I see no alternative either way.



Same here, but that is the reality I can only accept at least for now.



Remain in it.



Somewhere there is someone, but be cautious about some specific dream possibly distracting you from noticing.



Again: The only reality we can sanely embrace is the one we actually know.

Last edited by leejosepho on 10 Aug 2010, 1:56 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Hello,
Just passing by to say that i feel a bit like you do, and i m 33 yo.
I wasn't like that before but i can almost pin-point the moment i started to be like that and it's mostly in the end of a romantic relationship, i even had a breakdown.
Now i m in the urge to get my living feeling back, i want to hear my heart's beat again and it's a bit complicate cause every thing look boring after some time...
I m starting to ask me if It might not be depression or just i didn't find something exciting enough...

When you present such interesting philosophical questions, even strangers will do their best to answer them.

I don't think your answer is necessarily supernatural, although it can be. As an atheist, I'll cover the godless scenario.

Life is whatever you want it to be. Life ends, but that doesn't make it meaningless. Someday we may reach clinical immortality, but if you don't lend meaning to life, all you'll get is an endless, meaningless existence. Live for yourself! Make goals and dreams! Don't defer your dreams out of fear of failure; you have to accept some measure of risk in your life. If your plans don't work out, make new ones.



You said that you don't feel lonely, so I suppose you can withdraw from the social world. An alternative would be to open yourself even more. How does that work? Well, I get the feeling that the huge scale of this social tragedy was inflated by scarcity. That is to say, the scarcity of emotional intimacy in your life. All your eggs were in one basket, and it blew up on you. If you have others in your life, then your social life will actually be more secure. I would to interested to hear more about your social needs and wants.



You need a much better reason than that, or you'll be in real danger. What do you want out of life? Don't even spend that much time on the question, just pick something and go for it! If you find a better answer down the road, then you have something new to strive for. Good luck!