What a relief to find that there is a name for what I am experiencing and that I am not alone in this; although, I’d not wish this on anyone. So here we are….all in this physical world but NOT! ….all in our little bubbles. Last night something happened that made me realize how bad my DP is right now and motivated me to write and make contact with others who have depersonalization disorder. I went to bed and woke up a short time later to find that I still had my glasses on….so I removed them and put then on the bedside table. When I woke up today (I laugh as I write this because I really never wake up!), I thought, that I must have dreamed that about my glasses but when I looked….there they were….beside me just like I remembered. I usually leave them over beside the computer. This made me realize how severe my DP symptoms are right now. This experience fits right in with what I was thinking yesterday. It came to me that my life was like a Holodeck on Star Trek except my body was part of the hologram, too….and so are my glasses, of course. I feel as though there is no difference in the ‘stuff’ that all around me is made of. It is just the backdrop that Soul creates to have a particular experience called life in the physical third dimensional world…except in our case has become life in the two dimensional world. I really noticed yesterday when I was driving that I have difficulty with it because there is no depth perception. I drive by using past experience to know when to start slowing down. I guess it’s like living in a video game……the illusion of 3 dimensions on a flat screen. My history:I have had this ‘disorder’ as long as I can remember. As I read through all the other stories, I could take out sentences here and there and put them all together and that would be me. As I very young child I remember looking up at the stars and wondering where I really came from because it sure isn’t here where everything is so strange…..so unreal. As a child I had nothing to compare it to and didn’t know it wasn’t like this for everyone else and I never spoke about it. I grew up in a very violent household with an alcoholic father who beat my mother and me sometimes until he left when I was 12.In public school I always had to go to school with a friend because I was very disconnected and had no sense of time and was terrified of being late. I felt most comfortable in nature where I didn’t have to relate on a personal level so I only had one friend. High school was a nightmare. I got lost in school all the time and lost my locker and combination, too. They told me I had an IQ of 143 and I should go one to university…but how terrifying was that thought. I tried to kill myself twice while a teen and ended up quitting school just before graduating because it was just too much to cope with. Surprisingly, they gave me all my subjects except for math…..Amazing to me. I had DP since a young child but in my 40’s I had recall in several dreams of being sexually abused as a child but don’t know if this was a cause or just my life. I did the typical drug thing of the late 60’s and early 70’s, I was a hippie. but when I had my son I stopped. Also, found that by the time I stopped drugs, it only took one ‘toke’ from a joint to send me into super-stone mode and I couldn’t handle the way it made me feel….no control. Having a baby/child to be responsible for in DP is also a nightmare. This stress of being a single parent and coping with migraines and no support made the DP worse. I remember thinking that if my son died, that would be ok with me….I wouldn’t grieve…I wouldn’t miss him. My son is now 30 and is not speaking to me. Now that I have a name for my experience, I could explain this all to him but he won’t have anything to do with me….so I respect his wishes (heck….I don’t feel anything about that either….so what difference does it make). I know there are feelings about this in me because they all came out the last time I spoke with him but I seem to need some kind of extreme trigger to access my feelings. Now and for the past 20 years, I have had MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensitivities) so I am extremely affected by chemicals in that they effect my central nervous system and trigger worse DP. (chemicals like many prescription drugs, alcohol, perfumed products, paint, pollution, smoke, cleaning products, etc). I worked in a toxic environment and everything worsened at that time…..my words were coming out all jumbled up, I had heart irregularities, extreme dizziness, muscle pain and spasm, extreme fatigue.I am extremely sensitive to everything….light, sound, smells. When the anxiety cycles hit, I deal with it by eating. Somehow the chewing and swallowing ‘brings me down’ just as if it were a high on drugs. I never feel hunger or fullness…..just eat when I think it must be time or when I am driven to it. I put on so much weight and didn’t even see it happening because, of course, I am not my body…..it is part of the unreal hologram. What I think:I have had Out of Body experiences twice where I looked down and saw my body on the bed….so I know I’m not my body. I have seen myself as Soul…..a shinning ball of light or a point of awareness. I am a spiritual being of higher frequency having a physical experience.Depersonalization Disorder is a name that doctors have given to a set of symptoms. Once they discover something happening in enough people, some doctor with give it a name. I am not a set of symptoms, I am a spiritual being having an experience. My Higher Self has chosen the DP experience for this life. There is a life force, an energy that sustains and permeates all. I have been able to see and hear this since my teens (before taking drugs). I once found this description of it in a book, “what appears to be fine cosmic energy all around them…as if they are ‘seeing air’ or ‘life force’…..energy snow. For some, microscopically minute energy particles seem to vibrate everywhere in the field of vision, while others perceive patterns in this cosmic energy that are specific to different plants, animals, or even other’s emotional states.” This from a book written by a MD who had a near death experience. (‘A Farther Shore’ by Yvonne Kason, MD) So I have determined my truth is this…the only reality is the life force I see and hear (spirit?) and the ‘point of awareness’ that is me (individual Soul) as one individualized extension of one Higher Self. The physical world is a stage on which to gain experience. For most people the stage is totally real…..whereas, I live in fluctuating stages from total immersion to standing outside and viewing as an observer. I believe that as a group, mankind and the planet are shifting into a higher dimensional reality and many of us with ‘weird’ symptoms are forerunners. Because of the chemical sensitivities and physical symptoms I was able to get provincial disability, thank god, because i sure couldn’t work like this. I live a very isolated life in a bachelor apt to keep myself safe from the exposures and this sure doesn’t help the DP when I hardly go out. When I do, I often have to wear a mask. I can get lost in the TV, or a book…..it is often the only way I experience feelings because I can become all the actors and experience what they are feeling. At least it is a good way to test myself to see if the emotional ‘plane’ is still in my existence….yes, it is, but I am just unplugged from it. Physically, I am a 54 year old woman but I feel that I am timeless and ageless. Wow…..this is getting really long and it is only a brief. (Why is it so easy to type and impossible to write by hand?….some weird brain thing, huh!!!) I tried to re-read what I wrote but at this moment it seems that I’m capable of writing but not comprehending what I wrote….so I’ll just post it and hope for the best.
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