WHAT IS IT?!

[alice-acid]

i suspect i may have mild forms of dp and more strongly dr but im not sure because i really dont understand it properly :S i read up on it on the internet but it doesnt help they put it all too medically and not really personally if you get me,... can any1 help? from your point of view how would you describe it

[John Smith]

Derealization is lookin at the world and having it seem strange, like sometimes when i look at a tree I KNOW it's a tree, but it just looks strange, or if the leaves on it are moving and to me it seems like the tree itself is doing it, not the wind...depersonalization is just looking at the world with an outsiders perspective, watching yourself go through it, like looking at your hands doing things instead of you having your hands move kinda...

[alice-acid]

hmm yeah that makes sense to me, right thankyou you've helped alot haha

[VisualDude]

There seems to be a broad range of severity and overlapping stuff

Depersonalization - http://en.wikipedia....personalization "an anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self-awareness ... a feeling of watching oneself act ... they have changed, and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance ... feel that they are living in a "dream"."

Derealization - http://en.wikipedia....i/Derealization "an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal ... feeling as though one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring and depth."

"Derealization is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside world, while depersonalization is unreality in one's sense of self"

This crap gets complicated, but when you read on DP/DR forums, DPers vary from not feeling strong love towards people they love, not feeling ANY emotions (though their posts express emotion), suffering fears that they don't really exist because this non-feeling is so strong. Some are terrified that they are going schizophrenic.

The DR people mostly feel disconnected from the world or it looks weird. Many HPPD symptoms are weird/unreal (static, jiggling objects, CEVs, ...).

Traditionally, DP is from an abuse background and/or chronic high stress. DR tends to be more 'neurological'. Recreational drugs are now common causers of these problems - often the 'high' one seeks is one or more of these effects ... they just get stuck with it.

[alice-acid]

well i do feel that the world looks strange quite alot, like not real its weird i can understrand that definately

but im not sure about being disconnected from myself and id guess im lucky not too apart from sometimes when my hppd is bad i feel like im just watchin my hands do stuff rather than im making them do it but tbh i dont mind that compared to some of the crazy stuff thats goin on around me haha