Posted 17 April 2017 - 06:59 AM

Disclaimer: if you are in the starting and therefore most sensitive depths of DP/DR and suffer very badly from intrusive thoughts, then don't read this. I have put off writing this for four years because I never wanted to plant the seed of this thought in anyone else's head because it truly has destroyed everything for me. I know when I was at my worst, in terms of anxious thinking, my mind would latch onto anything to be scared of. I still am scared of obsessions I gained four years ago.

I'm writing this four years into this shitty "disorder", when really I should have four years ago. This thought has stuck with me and permeated my every movement, thought and belief for the past four years without me dealing with it so I've lived 4 years feeling absolutely nothing, just different variations of this one feeling that this one thought makes me feel.

I don't know if I'm making sense but I'll explain the thought that has haunted me for these 4 years:

It first came to me a month or so after getting this disorder. I suffered from the basics, the dreamlike states, the intrusive thoughts, but it all seemed manageable to an extent. Then one evening, I was helping out at a school concert, and in one of our breaks, we all went outside to chill. I was obviously suffering, but at the time I was on the road to recovery, in my eyes anyway, so I was suffering from it all, but my head was on straight and I was determined. These are the times I somewhat miss, where I was still fucking human or something, still had a grasp on myself and reality. Anyway, I sat down outside against a wall, and suddenly this thought popped into my head. Like an absolute truth that I had just figured out. Right now my mind is so suppressed and everything is such a jumble that I can't even remember the exact wording, but I thought like: Life should not be in first person. This is completely unsatisfying. Life should be in 3rd person.

So I can't remember the rest of the night really, except I think the thought was just bubbling away in my mind, but during this time I was on a defiant path to normality. I had addressed that DP/DR was just thoughts and anxiety, so I tried to treat this thought like any other. But it lingered like nothing else ever did. It was unavoidable. So it bubbled away, I remember, and thickened in meaning. It became more plausible. Then after the school concert I got home and was somewhat freaking out about it, I was really going for it in my mind, digging into this thought, moving about my living room constantly. Then, I don't know how I did it, but I ended up sitting on the floor watching the football on TV, and I had seemed to have got over the thought, or come to the understanding that it was just like every other symptom. But then, so vividly I remember, I looked away from the TV and stared at a picture on the living room wall above the keyboard, and I can't remember what I was telling myself, but forced myself to think the thought again. It was like "I just got over this 1st person thought, but what if I brought it back into my mind." It was a feeling similar to blood lust. You know it's awful, but there's something exciting about it.

Then the following events is 4 years of complete and utter 100% unreality. The thought permeated everything. I could think of nothing without that thought sucking every living emotion and feeling out of it. Everything:

Lying on my bed... This could be much better if I had a view of my body. I'm just a floating head. All I see is the wall above me. My body is resting, but I don't get to see it so what's the point.

Dancing... I don't know exactly how my body looks. What's the point of moving my body if I can't see it.

Traveling the world... Why? So I can see it from first person fucking perspective?? So I can see the world from my dainty little insignificant perspective? If I was in third person and I could have a view of everything!

This thought has sucked every last bit of joy and meaning and reality from anything and everything. Nothing mattered anymore once I'd truly became obsessed with this thought.

So my school year was coming to an end and I was detached from any possible thing. Then summer came, and my family holiday to New York approached. I'm from England so it was a very big deal. I don't know if it was specifically this big event that caused so much stress to make me do this, but around this time I became obsessed with everything 90s, and convinced myself that everything good and warm and nice, only existed in the 90s. I became obsessed with how film photography looked - film had the warm look of real life or something, and digital was dead and looked like the world when you have DP/DR: plastic.

I don't know if I can keep writing anymore, there's too much to get into and it's all such a jumble.

SO BASICALLY:

I just need to know if anyone else is obsessed with this thought. It's my whole fucking life, whether I like to admit it to myself or not. it has encapsulated everything existing thing within my brain (eg. if I die and go to heaven... it's still in first person so it's still shit.) When the thought got really bad I scoured the internet to see if anyone else felt this way, and I still do scour, but I never find anything similar to how I feel! I have told myself countlessly the reasons for this thought, that it's just a result of DP/DR symptoms, but I can't get over it, I don't believe my reasons! I feel alone. Everything is pointless in this universe I've created. I can't be the only one to think this.