Depersonalization/derealization/dissociation

@orangeCherry98

(Continuation of my story)

It is extremely lonely feeling like there is a veil between you and your environment, including people. It has affected everything for me from my health, social skills, relationships, memory, sense of time, and of course school. I actually dropped out at 15 because my symptoms were too intense. I have tried various adult schools since and have completed certain things but always ended up dropping out again due to feeling too separate and distanced which caused a lot of anxiety. This cycle and worrying about school, while isolating myself has caused me to have depression as well. So I figured I have to be alone to feel completely comfortable or surrounded only by people who I have a lot in common with. I at least have been educating myself in many ways since through the Internet and books but I wish my health could get better so I could study either in the Arts field or the Environment. I'm also an environmental/ethical activist and haven't done as much as I've aspired to in this area. I have chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety and depersonalization. I am tired of the mental health stigma in our society and I'm tired of people not being compassionate. I hope for a better, more understanding world one day and what I can at least do is be the change I wish to see in the world as much as possible and treat others as I would want to be treated.

@orangeCherry98

You might also want to check out the Dissociation Subforum in the Traumatic Experiences forum.

I don't know if I can relate because I haven't been able to relate to anybody since I was a child. I do find some similar things between your experiences and mine.

I've never been diagnosed or gone to a psychiatrist at all so I don't know what I have if I do have something. But I do feel like being able to relate shouldn't feel like is a chore or something to even think about. You just do, right? Or that's how it's suppose to work. I can empathize but seeing things from my own side. I feel like a foreign always, almost inhuman sometimes. I've been alone for so long that I never learned to function with others. I do feel joy, sadness, desperation, confusion, amazement, anxiety, hope, but I just cannot understand why I can't feel people, if that makes any sense.

Lately I've been trying to accept it and not fight it anymore. Let's see how the experiment goes.

I am not sure if the feeling in question can be classified as depersonalisation, so that's what I'd like to ask.

Since my childhood I had times I could swear upon my life that everything was... different? fake? Not making an,y sense whatsoever? As if I had a filter on my eyes that I had to gouge out. I refrained, because even if everything were fake it would surely upset those fake, weird, not-really-there people. A feeling that often, but not always arises at the same time is a feeling, that my brain and thoughts are being stirred. Like a gray swirling mass. A variation thereof is feeling kind of a numbness in my limbs, like they were not mine. Again I never spoke out, because the seemingly controlled limbs did the proper things in this fake, kinda distant world?

Those feelings always pass after a few hours to weeks, And I can conciously make them appear by thinking about the sense of things.

Quesrion is, is depersonalisation /realization the correct word for this?

@orangeCherry98 i thought I was the only here that experience dpdr ... Thankfully I'm not alone :)