despite trying to just live life; my nervous system has continued to punish me. I feel so alone, not one of my friends understands what I’m experiencing. not even I do.

i push myself to live, and my dissociative state gets so severe I almost dont have any memory of who I am. my own body is afraid of itself, of being alive, of feeling, of being real. I’m trapped in an unsolvable loop. I’ve been living in this endless misery for 5 years and I’ve been lying to myself about how bad it is, because if I truly accepted how much life I’ve lost, the grief would be unbearable.

no one should have to live in the prison I’m in. my nervous system is afraid of itself, it’s afraid of everything. the threat isn’t outside, it’s inside. I’m a broken human being, I can’t even imagine living like this for another 5 years. I’m trapped, completely trapped,

I feel like I’m dying inside more each day. traveling has shown me how severe this is, I’ve lied to myself for 4 years thinking I’ll get better. the last month after traveling, living, trying to just be a normal person, I realize how severe this is.

my whole trip my mind is telling me I’m not safe, I get whooshes of panic. I can’t sleep, I have vivid insane dreams all night. I’m dissociated to the point I cant even feel where I am. I shut down and can’t even talk to my friends. nauseous every morning to the point I’m going to barf. and this is the world I’ve lived in for 4 years. nothing I’ve tried has made me any better, in fact it’s all made me worse.

i honestly cannot live like this anymore, and am considering just saying enough. ignoring this isnt possible, the symptoms are severe and disabling. I’m so tired, so fed up, so hopeless and lost. I can’t even enjoy a trip with my friends, or anything about my life. I’m suffering every single day with this and there’s no end in sight. Acceptance? yea fuck that. I’ve accepted this long enough.

this is no way to live. my body has turned on itself and is making me suffer in the process. I feel practically dead or like I’m dying. i don’t know how to keep going. because even living my life has shown me that no matter what I do, try, or push myself to do - this nervous system isn’t going to stop this protecting, this alarm, this never ending disgusting life I have to live in this state.

I’m traveling for the holidays and my symptoms always flare up away from home. but this is my baseline. 24/7. for years on end. I have the weirdest, most vivid dreams all night long. I wake up so nauseous and out of body. I remember every detail of the dream. but I’m severely dissociated and numb. I always have this urge to go home, but I don’t. my nervous system is so hyper vigilant and won’t drop into deep sleep.

im utterly miserable and exhausted after 5 years of this. no meds, therapy, or just living my life has helped. Im just white knuckling through every day. i cant feel panic. But occasionally I get a tiny swoosh of adrenaline. But the dpdr is so thick. I feel awful pretty much all day every day and have for many years. It’s no way to live. ive accepted this is my life. But that hasn’t even helped either. This is so deeply subconscious, I have no access to what my mind is even afraid of

I’m not going to. but it’s just really interesting how I can’t be present because my mind keeps telling me that I’m not safe and need to go home. my body is always telling me im going to panic, I’m going to go crazy or lose my mind, and I never do, I sit there the entire time at dinner like a normal person. yet my mind is screaming at me.

im so proud of myself for continuing to live and not fun from my anxiety, it just sucks. it takes all my energy, all my enjoyment, just to stay. it’s like a broken record that never ends. and I don’t know where this ends. do I have to just keep living like this for the rest of my life!

I have such severe dreams, many about sharp objects in my body that I can feel in my sleep, dreams about sex, about being lost, about being unable to escape. every single night basically all night long.

I have sympathy for myself because those are the emotions my mind has never been able to process or let go of. DPDR is protecting me from all of that emotion that’s stuck in my body.

this is why I havent gotten any better despite major behavioral changes and living my life. my body has kept the score and it doesn’t speak language. it’s still living in the past, fragmented and unable to see that life has changed. this never ending loop.

im so proud of myself for keeping on, idk how I have. I still live, I still try every single day despite how difficult it is. and that’s the only reason I’m still standing. who I am at my core is determined and wants to live; but the scared, traumatized parts of me have clouded my entire vision.

ive been having nightmares every night for over 4 years. they’re all the same themes but with different imagery. last night was about having some sort of surgery and being terrified to be put under anesthesia, and witnessing violence. the other dreams are about sharp objects in my body that I can feel in my sleep, and the more I pull them out, more come back. I also dream about being at childhood places such as school, home etc but none of it feels like me or any of my life. when I think about the dreams when I’m awake, I have that same feeling I did in the dream, but it’s extremely far away.

i can feel angry, anxious and numb when I’m awake. but that’s it. and it feels like it’s not really me experiencing any of it. similar to my whole life. for 4 years I’ve lived in a state of nothingness, fear doesnt even touch me anymore. I feel like I wrapped in a mile thick of bubble wrap, and even though the fearful thoughts come up about the things in the dreams, I don’t feel anything towards it.

i can’t live my life in the way I want to because I’m not able to feel any of it or experience it as my life. it feels like someone has cut the wire completely to my past, to my self, even to my emotions. when I get angry, it’s usually because I’m getting defensive or having to set a boundary. and when I get anxious, it’s because of the agoraphobia and doing something out of my comfort zone.

my therapist said all of these parts of me are like little kids screaming, and they’re not going to listen to the adult me. I have to develop a relationship with these parts of myself in the dreams. but I don’t know how. the fear of anesthesia, of being trapped, of being unable to escape or loss of control - I’m not sure where it comes from. or what to do about it. that core fear basically controls my entire life. and it’s not a way to live. before panic and this state I’m in, it had no control over my life. I loved life and being carefree. now I’m just a shell of nothing.

Exposure therapy has completely backfired and is the reason I’m worse off than when I started

continuing to live my life and do things despite how I feel has completely backfired on me. all this time of thinking I’m getting better, I was getting worse. the alarm never went off, my system never got the all clear. so exposures did nothing but reinforce the dissociation because my body never felt safe in the world in the first place. exposure therapy is the worst for this severity of DPDR.

there’s no solution to this, I’m damned if I live my life, damned if don’t. I feel like I’m trapped in a prison of my own making. I went on a trip this past weekend and ever since then I’ve felt even worse. the worst part is, I want to live. I want to do things, so I do them. But then I’m punished by my nervous system. For years I’ve continued to live my life like my system would regulate itself, but it’s not. it’s stuck in a never ending alarm, that wont turn off, that’s why I’m so stuck. trapped. hopeless. you can’t fix this

my nervous system developed existential ocd from going into a chronic dpdr state and I’ve been stuck for many years this way. I’m living my life, I’m in therapy weekly and I’m on meds. I’m getting worse, because the dissociation is getting worse over time, which sparks more existential OCD, which makes the DPDR worse. my brain is basically stuck in a loop it created with no way out.

I’ve never felt more hopeless, lost, out of body, detached from my own identity than I do now. it’s like I’ve been erased from my own mind. I’ve been taking small trips for summer which I haven’t been able to do for the last 4 years and it’s making my condition worse. I used to travel solo all over the world just 5 years ago, and now I’m trapped in my own mind. even moving to a new apartment 15 mins away, my nervous system is freaking out.

idk what to do anymore. somatic experiencing hasn’t helped because I’m so dissociated I can’t even feel my own breathing. my mind is dumping numbing chemicals to the point where I’m almost in a coma. I’ve been battling this for so long, and I’m exhausted, anyone would be. and it’s not for lack of effort, I have tried everything at this point. between the daytime suffering and the vivid weird dreams all night, I don’t get one moment of peace.

im looking for recommendations on how to deal with this or cope, because it’s becoming impossible. this is chronic 24/7. looping thoughts, severe numbness, loss of identity and memory, agoraphobia, existential OCD, no sense of time or seasons, unable to function or be present in anything.

i feel like im being punished for a crime I didn’t commit. I had a horrible childhood and then when I finally grew up and made a life for myself that I was finally happy and felt myself, I lost 2 family members. then 4 years later I had a nervous system collapse and I’ve been stuck this way ever since. this is not a life. it’s a nightmare.

I’m sorry for posting again, I just don’t know what to do. my loss of self and ability to even comprehend my surroundings is getting so bad. I wake up immediately and feel a deep sense of dread, of unreality, of being out of my body. yet everything hurts, everything feels awful and pointless. I can’t feel anything yet I feel everything, it’s this horrible gridlock.

ive tried my somatic exercises, I’ve tried journaling, I’ve tried doing nothing, not even doing nothing helps anymore. No amount of rest or meditation touches this. It feels like I’ve genuinely lost my ability to feel. It’s so distressing and so horrifying. My own family, friends, myself - completely detached from as if they never existed. As if I never existed. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself that I’m safe, or that this is just to protect me. It’s terrifying. And it’s getting worse and worse with no way out.

in my 4 years of this, it’s never been this bad. I feel like I’m fading away into nothing. I feel strange, foreign, out of body, drugged, so strange and not good. theres no panic, just this worsening sensation of being out of body, out of my mind, and losing my grip on reality. idk what to do. in the last year ive gotten 10x worse. it just keeps going deeper and deeper and I’m terified. idk how you’re suppossed to think this is protection. literally nothing bad is happening yet I continue to get worse and worse. the dreams. the loss of awareness and body, it’s horrible. I dont understand why this is happening to me, despite all the healing work I’m doing. it’s like I’ve been given some weird drug like ketamine 24/7

it’s been years since I’ve felt alive. happy. real. hopeful. excited. angry. Jealous. anxious even. I’m just a completely lost soul with nothing inside me. I don’t know how to just keep surviving like this day after day. it’s gotten worse and worse. I have no awareness of myself at all. doing anything is pointless because I feel nothing. I dont even remember what feeling is like. I feel like I live in a flat world where time never passes, there’s no seasons, there’s no feeling, no purpose. it’s endless nothingness, not even anxiety. I’m literally trapped in what feels like a room with no doors. there’s no way out, just endless nothingness. I have had a panic attack in years. I’m just nothing, no one.

I’m living my life as normal; doing most things i did before Dpdr; but I’m getting so much worse. I feel completely untethered, like I have no self and the past is gone from memory. I’ve done everything and am still worsening, it’s beyond belief. i lack any sort of mental cognition, I’m just floating around. i dont feel at home anywhere, like I’ve drifted way out to sea and no longer can see the shore.

im not lying when I say I’ve gotten to worse, despite living my life and pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone. I feel so empty, so lost, so foreign, so dead inside. I can’t date, or do things because I have no energy for anything. I feel like I’m just in another universe. My mind doesn’t work. Nothing makes sense. I feel like I’m just a complete zombie and my mind can’t fathom anything; time, space, reality

I feel so empty inside. I see everyone living, and just being present in the moment. feeling alive. and I’m here feeling so empty, so lost, so tired. I feel like I’m in a nightmare where I can’t win no matter what I do. if I live my life and push the boundaries of my DPDR, I suffer. if I stay at home and hide, I suffer. there is no good option in this situation, damned if I do, damned if I don’t,

i traveled this weekend and the aftermath was horrible. horrible existential anxiety, horrible dread, horrible dpdr, but if I stay home, I’m watching the world move around me with no part in it

ive been trying to heal for 4 years and I’m just about ready to give up. nothing has worked - not living, not therapy, not meds, not ignoring it. I can’t ignore the fact that my mind has my entire life about fear, my mind never backs down. It never lets me just be, just be happy or even present. It exhausts me to even do the smallest things everyone else can do with ease. I have to fight my own mind to live, to be a person. it feels like my own mind wants me to suffer and be miserable, because I’ll never be the same after this

I haven’t felt this horrible in years. after coming home from traveling, I feel this deep existential crisis and dread. I’m realizing what a vaccum I’ve lived in for so many years and how terrified I am of reality and being vulnerable again. I felt safe in my house before this, now I feel nowhere is safe, because I’m going back out into the world by moving to a new place, by traveling and pushing the dpdr. I can’t describe it but it’s this deep dread and fear. I have all kinds of random words in my mind, songs and just looping fearful thoughts of existence and safety. it feels like the glass wall ive been behind is slowly coming down and im horified of the reality behind it. I’ve lived in this bubble for years and traveling made me realize how much life I’ve lost to this, and how utterly terrified I am of going back to myself. I feel I have no home, no safe space., no escape from any of this. not even got 5 mins. I’m trapped

It is an immense amount of loss for one person to carry. When you look at the architecture of your life—the loss of your mother, your brother, the reality of your childhood—it makes complete sense that you feel like you are being punished. When life hits you with those kinds of seismic, irreversible events, the brain naturally begins to look for a "why." And when you can’t find a logical reason, "punishment" is the only story that fits the intensity of the pain.

But there is a very different, much less cruel explanation for why you are "like this," and it doesn't have anything to do with being cursed.

The "Protective Wall"

You are not being punished; you are being protected by a system that has been traumatized.

You have lost the most foundational anchors of a human life: your mother, your brother, your sense of safety in childhood. Your nervous system didn't just witness those losses; it absorbed them. At some point, after enduring so much grief, your brain likely made a subconscious, biological calculation: "Connection and vividness are too dangerous. If I feel too much, if I am too 'real' or too 'attached,' I will be destroyed by the next loss."

The DPDR, the muted world, the "loss of self"—these are not signs that you are being punished for your efforts. They are the physical manifestations of the walls you built to stop the world from hurting you anymore. You didn't "end up" like this; you constructed this state as a fortress against a world that proved, over and over again, that it could take everything from you.

Why the Therapy Felt Like It Didn't Work

It is agonizing to have spent 10+ years in therapy and still feel this way. But often, talk therapy (which is cognitive and logical) cannot reach the deep, subcortical areas of the brain where trauma hides.

 You were working on your mind, but your nervous system was busy running a high-alert protection program that no amount of logic could override.

 You haven't failed the therapy; the therapy was likely missing the "somatic" piece—the fact that your brain wasn't being "irrational"; it was being defensive.

The "Self" Isn't Gone—It’s Just in Hiding

You feel like you’ve lost "yourself," but you are experiencing the paradox of the survivor. The "Self" you are missing is the part of you that is open to the world. When you experienced the loss of your mother and brother, your brain decided that the "Self" was too vulnerable to be left out in the open.

It hasn't been destroyed. It is sitting behind the fortress walls you built to survive the trauma. You are not "no one." You are a person who has endured a lifetime of "no's" and "losses" and somehow managed to keep building, keep working, and keep moving forward. That is not a lack of self—that is the most resilient form of self-preservation imaginable

for the first time in 4 years I’m going on summer trips and it feels like I’m having to completely re-teach my nervous system that my home isn’t the only safe place in the world. I’m trying to apply the same logic that I used to get through the first year of being home bound due to agoraphobia. I know the first few time are going to be hard, but eventually my system will learn. I just am exhausted having to go through this like a child who has never experienced the world before and is afraid of everything.

i used to travel all the time for work, for fun, and loved it. I felt some anxiety but never like this. this constant hypervigilance and fear is 24/7 and I just have to live with it, the avoidance that my mind wants me to do, I have to fight against. it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. you’d think my DPDR would be getting better the more I explore the world and show myself the world is safe. this is a very traumatized nervous system, and it’s so hard. I’m very proud of my self for keeping trying, for starting a business through all this, for not giving up. but I am so tired. I am so sick of having to live with this constant fear, that I’ve gone numb to. I can’t even panic. it’s just none stop intrusive images and thoughts of being unsafe, unable to escape.

I’ve had this dream dozens of times, it’s so real and I can feel the pain in my sleep. I’ll pull out a bunch of nails and more come right back. I guess this is my nervous system saying it’s overwhelmed, but idk what it needs.

i feel like I’m in a prison. I’m traveling this weekend and my mind keeps telling how unreal and unsafe I am. how I shouldn’t go, I should stay home etc, I go through this all the time with the things I want to do. my survival brain is keeping me trapped.

being in this state is like hell on earth. I don’t even remember what it’s like to feel good, or to feel at all. it’s made me fat, lazy, and ugly. I have no motivation to workout, to take care of my body, to do anything. I have no energy either. I look at myself in the mirror and hate what I see. my body. my face. my eyes. it’s not even unreality or fake anymore, it’s deep hatred of myself. I feel like I’m some bad person for being dealt this chronic condition and trapped in it.

i had the whole world at my finger tips and now it’s gone. my worst fear was gaining weight and losing my health. and now it’s my reality. every single day is the same. I don’t even know how I’m still standing. some days i wish I just didn’t exist. because my own mind hates itself, and wants me to continue to suffer. im miserable in every way a person can be. this is like a nightmare I can’t wake up from.

I was just thinking about how I basically exist in my own universe. everyone around me can perceive the world, feel emotions, feel life as real and normal. and I’m cut off from all of it, deeply. no self, no past, no identity, no memories. a nervous system that is telling me all day that anywhere I can’t escape isn’t safe, anything I do that’s new isn’t safe, the world isn’t safe. I see my friends living these normal lives, and from the outside I am too. but on the inside, I have nothing. I can’t even sense the season it is, the holidays. I used to travel and each city felt different, each season, each time of day. it’s all blurred into nothing. and my mind has locked me away from it forever

does anyone else have this? I feel things so intensely in my dreams, sometimes good but mostly bad. I had a dream last night that was sexual and connected. I remember feeling, but when I wake up I have no access to those feelings at all.

i also feel like I have no history or past at all. it’s like I’m remembering someone else’s life, not my own. and over time, my ability to even remember has diminished. I feel like a blank person, not even human. It’s like the world around me is on this loop, and it never changes. I don’t feel the time, the seasons, the weather. Just blank. I haven’t had a panic attack in years, im nothing, no one. And it’s whiplash because in my dreams im something..