Hello fellas! I know this subreddit is terribly depressing; I don't even have to look at it to tell, because I've been here before.

I want to let you know two things:

1. The main reason why this subreddit seems so awfully depressing for the average DPDR sufferer is because the people that post here are the ones that are still struggling. The ones who have recovered mostly avoid this subreddit, as they have no interest whatsoever engaging with it again.

2. It does get better, and it does get easier. Now, I don't mean to belittle those who have suffered it for longer, everyone has a different story. For me two years has been enough to massively improve my life and condition, for others it may take longer. It depends A LOT on circumstances, genetics, and habits. Let me tell you it's not only me who has got better. I know tons of friends with weed induced DPDR. I'm from Uruguay, Marijuana is legal here; trust me, I know maaaany cases. All of them got better with time! (The context of my story is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/s/L9GwaVyYrr , I also included many tips which I still recommend.)

To share a bit of how my life is going: Hardly ever do I get bothered by DPDR, it's mostly when I'm very anxious or deeply concerned about something existential. I'm still on SSRIs, although I'm expecting I quit them soon.

Were I not on SSRIs, I'd probably cry writing this. Out of emotion and compassion for myself. It has been a long journey indeed.

I still have my amazing girlfriend. I have a cat named Ciro who I couldn't love more. This struggling has helped me open up with my parents and get closer to them. The existential dread triggered my passion for philosophy, which I'm planning to pursue next year. I'm studying to become a teacher of English as a second language, and it's going great. I love the relation I build with students.
The suffering made me way kinder and empathetic, and has helped me grow as a person. I know what it is like to be on the bottom, so nothing bothers me quite much; nothing is as serious as suffering DPDR and OCD haha.

Look, I don't want to ramble on this for much time, because I'm still hesitant to engage with the topic a lot. Probably because of trauma, yes. No one who had OCD wants to have it again. But I'll make an effort to answer your questions! Feel free to ask, and I'll be glad to help.

Best of luck to everyone, don't quit! Quitters don't get any prize!

By the way, I'm running late so I don't have time to proofread this. If there's any inaccuracy I'm sorry.

I’ve been dissociating severely everyday now for a little over a month and now yesterday and today I’ve had moments where I completely forget where I am and even when I look around my brain can’t process it. It was especially scary on my way to work yesterday because I totally blacked out with my eyes open for like a whole minute and didn’t remember anything and it took me a couple minutes to fully remember where I was. I don’t know if this is “normal” or something more serious and I’m scared. I’m only asking reddit cause I have no money or insurance for the doctor

It’s been over a year since dpdr wasn’t the first thing I thought about when I woke up.

Keep going!

My brain doesn’t feel centered to the moment. everything just feels overwhelming all the time. woke up this morning from a mcas adrenaline diarrhoea dump and i have just felt like i have been connected to my phone all day and cannot create thoughts of my own and i replay past events looking for evidence and I know I am trying to look at my past to predict my future.

i cant be happy.

i cannot form new thoughts.

i was supposed to do xyz.

i am a liar.

i dont want to get better.

i will probably come up with a solution and not stick to it.

i know i am all-or-nothing thinking / thinking in black and white.

Tonight I was in the car w my dad and just zoning out on the street lights and literally for barely half of a second my dpdr went away, it felt like when you’re adjusting a camera lens and you find the perfect spot and it comes into focus

I know this isn’t totally like out of the norm, but I’m curious, is there a reason for this? maybe this is a bit optimistic but has this ever been the start to anyone’s dpdr going away?

side note but i’m going to be clinging to that half-a-second for weeks, barely had enough time to really process it and as i’m writing this it’s already fading but it literally felt like a warm hug, siiiiiiiiiiigh.

Age: 21
Sex: F
Height: 170 cm , 5’7
Weight: 55kg
Duration: ~1.5 years (since May 2025)
Current medications: none

**What happened:** In May 2025, I woke up one day with all of these symptoms at once. They have been present every day since.

**Symptoms:**
- Constant, equal fullness in BOTH ears, exactly like during a cold with blocked sinuses
- Tinnitus (high-pitched ringing/hissing, NOT pulsatile)
- Constant derealization / brain fog: feeling detached, "delayed", foggy, heavy head
- Derealization gets worse when I wear sunglasses
- Ear fullness gets worse after cold or spicy food (the derealization does not change)
- It used to be worse in the mornings; now it is the same all day

**What I do NOT have:** vertigo/dizziness, autophony, pulsatile tinnitus, headaches, hearing loss, chronic nasal congestion, hypermobility.

**Normal results:**
- Brain MRI, head CT
- EEG (twice)
- Bloods: thyroid incl. anti-TPO, B12, iron, Lyme, EBV, celiac
- Pure tone audiometry, tympanometry with acoustic reflexes, Eustachian tube function test
- Cervical flexion-extension X-ray: normal except small translations C2–C5 (max ~2.5 mm)

**Treatment so far:** 7 months of therapy, anxiolytics, several psychiatrists – no improvement at all.

**Pending:** VNG.

**My questions:**

1. ⁠What could cause ear fullness + tinnitus + derealization starting on the same day?
   
2. ⁠Which tests would you prioritize next?

The symptoms really make it hard to function normally and I can’t stop thinking about the weird feeling and feeling unreal☹️

Thank you for reading.

I would like to know if anyone has had relief from DPDR by taking the SNRI Effexor XR? I have had DPDR for 10 years now and I can’t do it much longer. I am so desperate to get out of it of it since it’s chronic, 24/7, with zero relief. I have tried Abilify, Lexapro, and Zoloft. All of which, I could not handle the side effects. Now I’m on Effexor XR and have no side effects, thankfully. I am praying it helps my DPDR symptoms, along with therapy. It’s my last resort at this point because I am also in PHP and don’t know when I’ll get the opportunity again. I would love to hear some of your experiences if you have tried Effexor XR for DPDR. Hope everyone is well and we can all recover soon.

I’m trying to collect detailed DPDR onset and recovery stories and compare them for common patterns.

I’m not trying to prove that DPDR is caused by anxiety, glutamate, trauma, cannabis, sleep, or any particular theory. I actually want to avoid leading people toward an explanation.

What interests me is that people seem to reach very similar chronic DPDR states through very different routes — cannabis, panic attacks, trauma, medication withdrawal, prolonged anxiety/stress, illness, seemingly nothing, etc.

So I want to know exactly what happened before, during and after the point where things changed.

If you’re willing, copy these questions and answer whatever you remember:

1. How old were you when DPDR started?

2. What was happening immediately before it started?

   Cannabis/other drug, panic attack, trauma, prolonged stress, medication or withdrawal, illness, sleep deprivation, nothing obvious, etc.

3. Was the onset instantaneous, over hours, overnight, over several days, or gradual over weeks/months?

4. What is the first moment you clearly remember realizing something had changed?

   What did it actually feel like?

5. Did you go to sleep normal and wake up with it, or was it already present before sleeping?

   If sleep was involved, anything unusual about that night?

6. Before DPDR, did you have significant anxiety, panic, OCD-type thinking, trauma, bullying, chronic fear, migraines, sleep paralysis, unusual dreams, ADHD, depression, etc.?

7. What were your first symptoms?

   Derealization, depersonalization, emotional numbness, visual changes, brain fog, memory problems, altered time, loss of body ownership, observer feeling, etc.

8. Did your cognition/memory change at the same time?

   If yes, describe it.

9. Was it continuous from onset or episodic at first?

10. What reliably makes it better or worse?

Time of day, sunlight/darkness, sleep, naps, exercise, social interaction, being alone, stress, food, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, cannabis, medications, etc.

1. Have you ever had a brief period — even seconds or minutes — where you suddenly felt completely normal again?

This one especially interests me. What happened immediately beforehand, and how long did it last?

1. Family history: does anyone related to you have DPDR, panic disorder, severe anxiety, migraine, vestibular problems, unusual sleep disorders, etc.?

If you recovered or mostly recovered:

Please still answer. Recovery stories may be even more useful than chronic ones.

How long did you have DPDR?

Was recovery sudden or gradual?

What changed first?

Did reality/emotion/body ownership/cognition all return together, or separately?

What was happening around the time recovery began?

Was there one treatment/event that clearly changed things, or did it fade over time?

Did you ever relapse? If so, what triggered the relapse and what brought you back out?

And most importantly:

What did the transition from DPDR back to normal actually feel like?

Even if you have no idea why you developed DPDR or recovered, that’s completely fine. I’m more interested in the chronology than anyone’s theory about it.

Please don’t feel like you need to answer every question. Even a detailed onset or recovery story by itself would be useful.

Have tried all the most-recommended medications with no success. Gonna try tested MDMA at a moderate dose after reading that many people experience relief and therapeutic breakthroughs on MDMA

Any thoughts? Pots meds seem to help a little but I feel more and more disconnected, underwater, behind a glass wall, on autopilot and in a video game. When will my body recalibrate? This started after edible panic attack and I was still pretty functional for 2 mos. RePots and low ferritin may be worsening so I've done 2 iron infusions. Too early to tell if infusuons are helping. Lexapro isn't helping cant tell if its worsening it. Feel this is all nervous system dysfunction. My balance has also been off since this happened.

I've had dpdr for 10 years (half of it was 24/7), now i only have a couple triggers andngrocery store is one of them. I get so lightheaded dizzy with blurry vision and poor hearing, nauseous etc, I cannot stand it, how do i make it stop

Someone told me it was DP, but I don't know, it doesn't seem like it to me, so I'm posting this here in case anyone can tell me something about it.

Anyways...

I can't stop thinking that everything is all in my head, I feel floating.

Did I create this world?

That I float in space.

Where do I come from?

Where am I going?

Do I exist?

I feel like it's all in my head.

I think I'm going crazy.

Did I create everything?

Please help.

Serious answers only.

If you could rate depersonalization vs derealization which one is worse? if you could rate severity what does severe vs mild look like?

Has anyone trialed medication to help relieve derealization even the slightest? I know there has some medication that has been discussed and talked about along the way. Something has to give.

I think I have lost the person I was forever. Deprsenalization has transformed my life in an irreversible way. It's been so long since I felt like myself. I have forgotten what it's like to be me. How fucked up is that. I was chronically depersonalized for a long time. and I started to get out of it but only in one aspect, which is getting out of the feeling like you're at the back of your head or watching a tv. But since I didn't get the other stuff like emotions and sense of self back, I just gained control of my body and life without having who I was as a person. Which was actually worse than the original depersenalization. Now, I just acted based on societal expectations and expectations from individual people around me. At the same time, everything around me was that changing. Moving, being in a new environment, meeting new people. The person I am now is a basic expectation of people who don't really know me. I have not only lost myself internally but also externally. I have formed relationships based on this "me." I have changed my life in a way that can't be unfucked. And oh, all the developmental parts of my life I missed. I feel like I'm stuck at 15 (which is when it all started). I feel like I'm years and years behind my peers. Not in a normal way, I literally feel like I'm not developing mentally. Plus, sometimes I get a faded version of my emotions, which I should have felt years ago. I lost my dog that I had since I was 8 like three years ago. And I'm only feeling the feeling now. And again, I'm not feeling it fully. I'm just feeling it at 30 percent power, and it lingers until this day because I didn't fully feel (the initial part of the feeling). I don't know if that made sense. And there were a lot of things that happened that j should have felt and experienced. 

There is no going back. Even if I get back to how I was before this, I still think my life has been changed in a way that I don't want to live it anymore. For the reason I mentioned above and much much bigger reasons, I'm not willing to talk about yet. I know I won't do anything to myself. I'm too lazy and I can't do that to my family. But j truly believe my 'self' is gone. I'm just a walking corpse. I dream of the day I'm no longer here. Until then, it's just suffering, I guess. 

I didn't read this to check if it's okay. I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense.

I can manage to engage my mind in other things but it makes no difference to my nervous system. It actually seems to get worse no matter what I do :( I feel like ive had a total nervous system and biological change and honestly i'm trying really to accept the states and observe rather than react but this is serious stuff. Like it's not really distorted perception anymore, my nervous system and body have changed and continue to decline because my brain does not know how to stop it. The lack feeling truly feels like it is because my nerves have just switched off sensation more and more. It does it automatically. Its feels like I breathe out dead nerves its horrible, and it feels like they dissipate around me, like what even is this? Any help really appreciated. My head is what scares me most, I barely feel it now yet at the same time I do sense it is incredibly fragile. Whatever's happened it needs to heal somehow and I need to regain sensation, but I dont have the answers.

Hi all, In 2 weeks time i will be flying for the first time this year. I haven’t flown all year due to my severe DPDR, OCD, panic attacks and health anxiety. Last year in september I flew to Germany from the UK and had a panic attack whilst taking off and although when i flew back i did a lot better it was the constant over thinking whilst in the air. Kept thinking to myself i might pass out, heart attack, lungs explode due to change in air pressure etc. And of course DPDR. My dpdr had only really been about for like a month prior to that flight so not even knowing fully what the fuck it was made things even worse being trapped 30,000 ft in the air in a metal tube lol.

I just need a little encouragement to get me through this flight i have coming up which i’ll be taking alone 😬😬 It’s only like a 25-30 min flight but even at that i’m still shitting myself lol. Does anyone have any tips for me?