u/FunBenefit4267

Hi everyone,
I’m a 19-year-old male, and about 13 days ago I went to a boxing sparring session after recovering from a very severe anxiety episode. Looking back, it was probably a terrible decision.
During the sparring I took a couple of hard shots to the head. I never lost consciousness, I didn’t vomit, I didn’t have double vision, and I was able to go home on my own. However, shortly afterward I developed a headache, dizziness, pressure in my head, and overwhelming sleepiness.
The excessive sleepiness has improved over the last two weeks, but many other symptoms remain, and honestly they scare me more than the physical symptoms.
I constantly feel mentally “off.” It’s difficult to explain, but it’s like I’m not fully present in reality. My thoughts don’t feel normal anymore. They feel unusually vivid, almost like they become very realistic images inside my imagination. I know they’re generated by my own mind (I’m not actually seeing them with my eyes), but they feel much more intense than they used to.
Another thing that really worries me is that my brain never seems to stop analyzing itself. I’m constantly monitoring every thought, every sensation, every memory, and every little mistake I make. My mind automatically tries to find hidden meanings in normal events around me, and then immediately tells me that these thoughts must mean I’m developing schizophrenia, dementia, or some kind of brain disease.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t even think clearly anymore. It’s as if my mind becomes slow or disconnected, and that makes me panic even more because I start wondering if I’m literally losing my cognitive abilities.
Because of all these symptoms, I underwent a brain MRI yesterday.
The MRI came back completely normal.
I’ve also had blood work done (including thyroid tests), and everything has been normal so far. I saw an ENT specialist as well, and he didn’t find any significant vestibular or inner ear problem. I’m still waiting to see a neurologist.
Despite all of these reassuring tests, I still feel mentally different. That’s what scares me the most.
My biggest fear is that this is either:
Persistent post-concussion syndrome,
An early neurological disease that is still too early to detect,
Or something else affecting my brain that hasn’t shown up on any test.
I know anxiety can make symptoms worse, and I definitely have anxiety now, but it honestly feels like the anxiety is a reaction to what I’m experiencing rather than the original cause.
Has anyone here experienced something similar after a concussion?
Especially:
Feeling mentally disconnected from the present.
Feeling like your thoughts became strange or unusually vivid.
Constant brain fog.
Feeling like you’re losing your intelligence or cognitive abilities.
Having a completely normal MRI but still feeling awful.
Did you eventually recover?
I’d really appreciate hearing your experiences because, honestly, I’m scared and just trying to understand what’s happening to me.
Thank you for reading.

Hi, I recently had a crisis where I felt like the world was a simulation and nothing was real. I stopped doing many of the daily activities I used to do when I wasn't in crisis. I'm taking 100mg of Zoloft. Anyway, I recovered and resumed my daily activities. I still felt a little strange, but only slightly, which allowed me to do things as I normally did. After three weeks of feeling better, I made the terrible mistake of going to a sparring class (boxing, gloves, and no headgear). I did about three rounds, during which I obviously took some blows to the head. I didn't lose consciousness or anything like that, but I had sparred before. In total, I went to sparring sessions about seven times, and I took some blows each time. In one of those sessions, I got very dizzy and thought I was going to faint. I'm going to stop doing all these sparring sessions because I know they're bad for me, but I'm afraid that because of these sessions or this... My last sparring session may have affected my brain, which is why I'm experiencing these current symptoms. Even after recovering, I'm having things like strange thoughts that come suddenly and last only a few seconds (nonsensical thoughts), a feeling that something is wrong with my functioning and perception of reality, and constant fear. I'm still taking 100mg of Zoloft.

"Lately, I've been waking up with a lot of physical anxiety. I'm constantly questioning my reality, looking for clues to convince myself that these thoughts about unreality are true. I doubt my own senses. I read a post somewhere that said: 'This type of OCD is the hardest to deal with because you doubt everything, including your psychiatrist, medication, and your entire reality: I really identified with that, and the derealization intensifies everything, making it even worse. Is anyone else going through this?"

Hi everyone,
I’m writing this because I’m going through a very dark and terrifying spike, and I really need to know if anyone else has experienced this exact manifestation of OCD and DPDR (Depersonalization/Derealization).
A few weeks ago, after a period of intense stress and lack of sleep, my brain completely short-circuited. I suddenly fell into a state of severe derealization—everything around me started looking and feeling fake, plastic, or like a movie set. Because my brain is naturally analytical and logical, it couldn’t just accept the feeling, so it started trying to "solve" the mystery of why the world felt so weird.
That’s when the Existential OCD kicked in. My mind latched onto the concept of the world being a matrix or a simulation.
Right now, I am caught in a brutal cycle of Hypervigilance and Apophenia (pattern seeking). My brain has chosen the number 67 as a "threat signal." I see it everywhere. If I join a livestream, there are 67 people. If I look at a clock, or a license plate, my eyes instantly filter out everything else and hook onto that number. During my worst panic attacks, my brain undergoes a temporary "hijack"—for a few minutes, the simulation theory feels 100% physically real, and I interpret normal human behaviors around me as "proof" or part of a script.
Once the adrenaline drop cools down, I "land" back into reality. My insight is completely intact; I know these thoughts are strange, I don't want them to be true, and I actively fight them. But the physical anxiety and the flat feeling of derealization are so strong that they make the thoughts stick like glue. I also happen to be on day 10 of increasing my Sertraline (Zoloft) to 100mg, so my brain chemistry is currently in a total storm.
I’m not looking for reassurance on the simulation theory itself—I know it’s just a modern OCD theme. What I really need to know is: Has anyone else experienced this combo? Have your panic attacks made an existential obsession feel completely real in the moment, only for you to regain your logic afterward? How did you stop hyper-focusing on number patterns?
Thank you for reading. I just need to feel less alone today.

Hi everyone,
I’m writing this because I’m going through a very dark and terrifying spike, and I really need to know if anyone else has experienced this exact manifestation of OCD and DPDR (Depersonalization/Derealization).
A few weeks ago, after a period of intense stress and lack of sleep, my brain completely short-circuited. I suddenly fell into a state of severe derealization—everything around me started looking and feeling fake, plastic, or like a movie set. Because my brain is naturally analytical and logical, it couldn’t just accept the feeling, so it started trying to "solve" the mystery of why the world felt so weird.
That’s when the Existential OCD kicked in. My mind latched onto the concept of the world being a matrix or a simulation.
Right now, I am caught in a brutal cycle of Hypervigilance and Apophenia (pattern seeking). My brain has chosen the number 67 as a "threat signal." I see it everywhere. If I join a livestream, there are 67 people. If I look at a clock, or a license plate, my eyes instantly filter out everything else and hook onto that number. During my worst panic attacks, my brain undergoes a temporary "hijack"—for a few minutes, the simulation theory feels 100% physically real, and I interpret normal human behaviors around me as "proof" or part of a script.
Once the adrenaline drop cools down, I "land" back into reality. My insight is completely intact; I know these thoughts are strange, I don't want them to be true, and I actively fight them. But the physical anxiety and the flat feeling of derealization are so strong that they make the thoughts stick like glue. I also happen to be on day 10 of increasing my Sertraline (Zoloft) to 100mg, so my brain chemistry is currently in a total storm.
I’m not looking for reassurance on the simulation theory itself—I know it’s just a modern OCD theme. What I really need to know is: Has anyone else experienced this combo? Have your panic attacks made an existential obsession feel completely real in the moment, only for you to regain your logic afterward? How did you stop hyper-focusing on number patterns?
Thank you for reading. I just need to feel less alone today.

Hi, exactly three weeks ago I started having a severe panic attack which led to derealization. The first sensation was as if I had gone back in time to a year (2022) when I used THC and it triggered severe anxiety and derealization. It felt like I had literally returned to that time. Then I started having conspiracy theories about TikTok and Reels, which gave me extreme panic and despair. I was afraid that this reality is simulated, or that it was created by someone and nothing else is real, or crazier things like we are in a simulation controlled by aliens or beings from another dimension, things we can't see or feel but that control us. With all of this, I got scared because I thought it could be a delusion, which wasn't true since I went to therapy and they prescribed 100mg of sertraline and told me I wasn't crazy, that it was extreme anxiety, OCD, and derealization. Sometimes I get desperate because this storm of doubts and thoughts about conspiracy theories returns, to the point where the derealization and the thoughts are so severe that my brain can no longer differentiate the truth; it doesn't know whether to believe in the conspiracies or stick with the psychiatric diagnosis. I've only been taking 100mg of sertraline for a week (I was already taking it before, but at 50mg) and I need help, please.

Hi, exactly three weeks ago I started having a severe panic attack which led to derealization. The first sensation was as if I had gone back in time to a year (2022) when I used THC and it triggered severe anxiety and derealization. It felt like I had literally returned to that time. Then I started having conspiracy theories about TikTok and Reels, which gave me extreme panic and despair. I was afraid that this reality is simulated, or that it was created by someone and nothing else is real, or crazier things like we are in a simulation controlled by aliens or beings from another dimension, things we can't see or feel but that control us. With all of this, I got scared because I thought it could be a delusion, which wasn't true since I went to therapy and they prescribed 100mg of sertraline and told me I wasn't crazy, that it was extreme anxiety, OCD, and derealization. Sometimes I get desperate because this storm of doubts and thoughts about conspiracy theories returns, to the point where the derealization and the thoughts are so severe that my brain can no longer differentiate the truth; it doesn't know whether to believe in the conspiracies or stick with the psychiatric diagnosis. I've only been taking 100mg of sertraline for a week (I was already taking it before, but at 50mg) and I need help, please.

I was in a place I hadn't visited in a long time, since a traumatic event happened to me a year ago. I returned to that place and since that day I feel as if I'm trapped in that year again and that everything is unreal, as if everything has changed since that day: the people, their behaviors, and my surroundings. I need to hear that this is normal and i will recover, because Every time I think I'm in a simulation or that my surroundings feel like they did in the year of my traumatic event, I have panic attacks (I've been like this for a week).

I was in a place I hadn't visited in a long time, since a traumatic event happened to me a year ago. I returned to that place and since that day I feel as if I'm trapped in that year again and that everything is unreal, as if everything has changed since that day: the people, their behaviors, and my surroundings.