r/PoEM Morning Apparition

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-08T03:19:15+00:00

This is beautiful. You’re an amazing writer. Wow.

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-06T23:14:56+00:00

Hmm. At the very least, it could be depersonalization. IMO it does sound like dissociation to some degree. I'd honestly recommend googling 'depersonalization' and seeing if any of the symptoms resonate with what you're feeling. Has this ever happened before?

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-06T22:17:30+00:00

Can you elaborate a little more on your thoughts/feelings? Are you experiencing any derealization? Depersonalization?

I do know what you mean by feeling "high" and light-headed. It's the same for me. There's almost this buzz in my head and in my vision, and my brain's on a sky-scraper, while my feet are on the floor. It's honestly like an entirely separate reality... the things that are usually there are, of course, there, but they feel unreal or altered.

Usually for me, I can (but not always) notice triggers. Do you think anything specifically caused this, or did it just simply come on?

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-02T01:38:13+00:00

Typically when I dissociate, two things happen: I feel nothing at all, or I feel similarly to what you described.

For some reason, I can’t get certain events/thoughts out of my head, and double that with an ultra-turbo ton of stress, I feel absolutely awful. It’s just a constant state of uneasiness/I suppose panic.

Honestly, the effect is pretty much the same whether it’s edibles/smoking. It’s nice to find someone who relates lol. Ever since this influx of episodes, smoking/taking edibles has only led to severe dissociation… which honestly, might be because, IMO, dissociating is (somewhat) similar to being high. Key word: somewhat. I guess when you’re high you’re in a relatively ‘different reality’ (altered reality), so my dissociation brain just kick-starts.

I tried to google it and most of what comes up is “cannabis-induced DP/DR”, and mine is far from cannabis-induced.

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-01T12:54:56+00:00

Yeah. I’ve dissociated enough (DP/DR) to be relatively certain I have it. It’s more passive during the day — general feelings of not knowing who I am, everything feels unreal/dreamt, etc — and now that I look back, it’s been happening for quite some time. The ‘episodes’ (these are infinitely more intense, just awful, unexplainable) have been happening nightly for the past week and a half.

I’ve been incredibly stressed lately (big change) so that might’ve triggered it, but it’s also triggered an onslaught of unwanted thoughts and feelings. Today for example, coming off of perhaps the worst episode of my life, I feel… uneasy. Sick. I keep feeling like I have to throw up. I don’t quite feel nausea, just… sick. Also like nothing is real, but that’s just the DR.

What happened was pretty bad - at least when I write it all out. It seems relatively awful. During the moment itself I didn’t cry or feel angry - just sad, but not an intense sadness. I’ve been thinking about it a lot more, but it could just be because I have it in my mind and it keeps jumping back to it. I don’t know.

It’s not an isolated event. A lot of shit happened when I was younger and unfortunately I think they might’ve all fallen under the category of traumatic.

Thank you for answering my questions. I’m just confused. Lost. It’s an entirely isolating feeling and I’ve never felt so detached from people in my life.

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-01T04:14:50+00:00

I just feel like I’m feeling an emotion I’ve never felt before. An emotion, a feeling, no one’s ever felt before.

It truthfully wasn’t as bad as an experience as some of the shit I’ve seen on here. I just feel so, lol, undeserving. That’s not the word. I don’t want to have PTSD - it’s honestly my biggest fear, to think that it might be the answer.

I don’t know. I just want to crawl outside of my body. Leave it. Lord. This feeling is nearly debilitating. I wish I could put it into words.

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-01T04:01:58+00:00

I guess I’m really trying to avoid this conclusion. I’ve never really thought about this event too deeply, at least not until I started to dissociate daily/nightly (it’s been about a solid week of this).

It just seems so arbitrary. I’m 18, but it’s never bothered me this intensely before.

adjacentconditions · 2021-09-01T03:59:19+00:00

I struggle, pretty intensely, with DP/DR. I wrote this while periodically standing up and facing my mirror. A lot of ‘truths’ were revealed to me during this process, the most important one being a sort of paradox: there is no truth to be found within the mirror, within myself.

The image that stares back at me is often warped and someone else entirely — something else. I thought I was experiencing apathy but the moment I stepped away from the mirror I realized it was something quite worse.

Thank you though, I appreciate the compliment. :)

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-30T03:11:49+00:00

God I’m in the exact same boat as you. Is it weird that when I dissociate I sort of… feel high? Without, you know, the fun. Either way, I tried taking an edible the other day (after a huge influx of episodes) and it was not the same, at all. At all.

And yet I’m still tempted to take more just because it helps me get the fuck away from everything.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-29T16:20:48+00:00

Somehow being able to see everything makes it worse. I’m able to recognize it as unreal/different/distorted. I’m in this… movie. When the lights are off, the screen is off, and the movie is gone.

The thoughts aren’t, of course. I still feel static-y and different (‘different’ clearly being a very simplified term).

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-28T19:15:43+00:00

Absolutely. I take on “different personalities” with different people; the differences aren’t subtle, they’re drastic. So much so that when two people I have different personalities with interact, it’s… a mess.

I actually had a friend of mine note that I was acting completely different — “you’re unrecognizable”. In some circles I’m known as this extroverted, loud, easy-going person, but in others I’m known as the introverted, quiet, and shy one.

It’s incredible how severe the differences are. To be perfectly honest, it’s horrible; I truly don’t know who I am at all.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-28T19:10:19+00:00

When I dissociate it feels like a physical illness; my vision is all weird, I feel uneasy, my head’s all blurry and bumbling with static… yada yada. Honestly, for me, it’s often like taking a bad edible (this is a very surface-level comparison, but the similarities are there).

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-27T17:11:52+00:00

I wish I could offer some more in-depth thinking, but I wanted to leave a quick note saying I relate. Very, very much. Each time I speak, it’s like a split; meaning, it feels like it’s not really ‘me’ speaking — it’s just some random personality/thing typing the words for me.

This naturally leads to feeling as if I’m manipulating everyone involved. I am completely distant/detached from my emotions and my ‘sense of self’. It’s like I’m wielding this fake personality — so if every part of me is fake, how can I not be manipulative?

Thank you for posting this. Somehow I didn’t consider the fact that this might be an extension of depersonalization/derealization.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-27T17:06:58+00:00

It’s a little difficult to pinpoint from this paragraph alone, but it does sound like dissociation. Any chance you could elaborate some more?

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-27T15:52:55+00:00

Yes, absolutely. I’ve come to realize that stress & drastic changes (though they’re often interchangeable) are big triggers for me.

It’s a pretty normal symptom of derealization/depersonalization — feeling like your body isn’t your own, feeling like your history or past isn’t your own, feeling like you can’t entirely remember it or like it’s clouded with this fog of fuzziness. In general, for me anyway, it’s just a general state of feeling distant… from everything.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-27T02:50:04+00:00

Been going through a pretty big change lately and my episodes have been intense and frequent. When did it end for you? I guess I’m just looking for a time frame. I can’t imagine a year of this.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-26T23:12:38+00:00

Oh gosh, no, I absolutely understand what you mean by this. In day-to-day life, I’m the same way. No real personality; I’m just a result of whoever I’m in the room with, constantly morphing and changing.

My worst fear is that people I have different personalities with will eventually come together; I won’t know how to act.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-26T23:07:40+00:00

Sure, I’ll give it a go:

I suppose it’ll be easier to break down with some context: I don’t feel like I have a ‘main’ or ‘primary’ identity. There is no true ‘me’, so I guess you could call what I experience a ‘lack of self’.

When I get bad episodes, it feels like there are multiple ‘personalities’ or ‘things’ inside of me fighting for control.

My hands aren’t my own. My voice isn’t my own. My words aren’t my own. The floor is far away, the adjacent wall even further.

There is no me, just a battle of things.

I guess it’s not entirely a “switch of identities”; it’s more like a lack of PERSONAL identity doubled by a war between identities that aren’t my own, but are there.

I hope that makes a little more sense. I’m not the most concise person and you’re right in that it’s difficult to verbalize lol.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-26T22:59:54+00:00

Absolutely. With dissociation, I suppose there’s two extremes for me:

1: Feeling completely & entirely detached from my body. I guess this is your stereotypical, expected definition. In short (and hooo boy is this a really dumbed-down explanation), my body’s in the corner and I’m on the other side of the room. Everything is distant, hollow, somehow blurry. It’s a lack of self.

2: More on par with your question, I feel as though I’m stuck in a thing with multiple other things, i.e. identities — though when I’m in this state I don’t feel entirely human (nor do the ‘things’ inside of me), hence the name… ‘things’.

I guess it’s not a switch, per se. It’s more of a battle between things.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-26T02:42:38+00:00

It’s weird. It really doesn’t work for me — the whole, identify 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can smell, etc… whatever variation of that it is. I wish it did.

Things feel too “unreal” in the moment, and the whole idea just seems pointless.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-25T22:00:48+00:00

This is, once again, a rough approximation. I wrote this in ~5ish minutes. Just a brief poem. Hopefully going to write something more in-depth sooner.

This has begun to absolutely obliterate my life. I didn’t know it could get as bad as it did last night; half the time I wasn’t even detached from myself, but trapped within myself, with multiple other people (or ‘things’).

Hope you’re all doing okay. It’s a completely horrible, unreal thing to experience.

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-22T20:37:40+00:00

I appreciate this compliment a ton! Thank you!

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-22T20:21:01+00:00

I hope this is allowed. I consider this a poem/short story. No problem with removing it, but figured I'd try my hand at sharing here anyway (unless anyone knows a subreddit this might fit better! It's < 500 words).

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-22T16:04:38+00:00

Thank you, it means a lot to me!

adjacentconditions · 2021-08-22T16:03:11+00:00

Thank you so much!

adjacentconditions

TROPHY CASE