Cotard Delusion or affective symptom? (thinking you're dead)

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I've been having some serious health problems lately, incapacitating horribly painful life-threatening ones. I've been in poor health for much of my life, but this time it's really looking like my number might be up. I'll admit it's knocked me for a loop and I've been in a bit of psychic distress about it for a while.

Lately, I've been having these weird, um, interruptions. I'll be in class or talking to someone or in my room or whatever, and I'll suddenly remember that I'm dead. I died when I collapsed at the counter of the school cafe the other day, or I died two weeks ago in the parking lot, or I died on the table during one of my surgeries, or I died before my birth, or (the most disturbing and upsetting of them all), I've never lived because nothing has ever lived, ever, and the whole universe is a blasted barren void. Anyhoo, I'm dead, so...what am I doing in Italian class/my friend's apartment/the gym/etc? Then I'll come back and be all freaked out. No other affective symptoms. But the...interruptions are happening more and more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotard_delusion

This is a rather popular delusion, but it's usually due to brain damage which I may very well have from the health crisis. Or it could be stress, or my depression. If it's the brain damage thing, I need to go to the doctor like yesterday. My IRL friends would megafreak and make me go to the stupid hospital, so...what do y'all think?

I think you need to consult a licensed medical professional, perhaps one specializing in neurophysiology.

I get those often and they can last between several second to several minutes in my case. It bothered me when I was younger but now I feel like I've gained something positive form experiencing them. They are terrifying and extremely disturbing but when I was severely depressed I thought about suicide as often as a 20year old guy thinks about sex. Anyway having those flashes of death made me appreciate life a little more. It was like yeah I died but I got a second chance like I had just experienced an alternate universe where yes I died in that instant but I'm alive in a new or different one. It actually makes a lot of sense considering life is change itself. Death is permanent if you were in a permanent state you'd be dead. Life itself is moving patterns it's constant change. Once the change stops and there is nothing there then that is death. I am extremely sensitive to change I don't like change but I except that life is change. You change everyday with every new experience and new memory that you make. In essence you are the universe experiencing itself as a conscious being. That is why life is important, and why you are important. When that happens try to not let it bother you get excited that you got another chance to experience more things. Of course if it's really disturbing you maybe a psychiatrist can be more helpful.

I do think you need to see a doctor soon, and try to figure out what's happening, especially since it seems to happen more frequently and you have other health problems.

I'm not sure what to say that I think about it, but I'm very sorry for your distress. I tend to have similar "interruptions", though... I don't have them that often, but I sometimes very briefly tend to think, as an example, that when I get up from the couch, I will find that if I look back, my body will stay there, limp and dead, because I now am a ghost and my body is dead. Or when I wake up and am about to get up from bed, I will find my body staying under me, dead, as I raise the upper part of my body from the bed, as a ghost. I also may briefly think, at times, that I died a week ago or so, after fatally breaking my neck when walking down the stairs, and I've just been living a day in repeat, since then, as a trapped ghost. I very often get the mental image, when walking down the stairs, of slipping while walking down the stairs, the very next moment, and quickly dying from a broken neck, as I hit it towards the edge of one of the steps. I think that thought is an event of OCD, like when I think that I will suddenly die from a stray bullet, or someone shooting or stabbing me, when I'm outside, after him having, for some time, been hating me because I'm not a normal guy, and for the way I dress and such. I don't actually worry about it, however... kind of just being prepared for it maybe happening. I think all these things develop due to anxiety, though... except maybe that in my case, I think a lot about death, and even have a self-"made" religion that partially revolves around death from a romantic suicide pact.

i question whether i am alive or dead a fair bit. to an extent none of this is real. its all illusion all holographic waves, all perception and i just perceive that this is all fake and like people and things are computer programs (think matrix) and i am disconnected from the matrix because i am dead. i see similarities in people like their base program is dad101 and the remind me of my dad and so on. its like there are a certain number of matrices ir indices of programs and your reality is based on the palette of primary programs on which everything resides even to the point where I see the same base faces in person and on tv and nothing here bothers me amuses me or deeply empotionally affectsme even though iwant it too badly because i have a pretty strong feeling none of this is real or that i am already dead and i have wondered if i had died and i am stuck in some in between pergatory before i can move on and feel things again. i feel like i am awake or aware of my awareness that this is all fake and i wish i was not aware and i want to lose my awareness of this fakeness or have everyone else wake up and realize we are all in this delusion/illusion together and figure out why we are here and how to get out of here. sometimes i seriously contemplate suicide to break out of this pergatory. i tried it when i was 19 and i actually did die for a bit and left my body and everything and it was amazing and wonderful and blissful and i did NOT want to come back...i am not afraid of death at all i am more afraid i am not alive and it seems the only way to tell is change the state of being - dont worry i am not going to. somedays are worse than others with the realization of the unrealness that we exist in and its almost unbearable. i am wondering if the use of spice and marijuana might be contributing to things. when i am high i can feel the disconnection and segmentation and see everything as one small thing in the whole and not the big picture. its very odd. its like the tree is a program and the grass is a program and everything is all disjointed and not together at all and i have an awareness of how disconnected everything is and that the illusion is that it all goes together and seems to flow as a functioning reality when thats not the case....its very trippy.