Depersonalization: what's been your experience?

[Georgie Girl]

I am sitting reading this and I feel like my head and chest is going to explode. I suddenly remembered the little girl who who lived almost completely in an imaginary world and I realised that when the adults in my family joked about my behaviour in front of me like Ai was defective I felt even more isolated. I ran headlong into tree and cut my face up as a four year old because I was playing hide and seek with myself. They took photos and I felt soooo inadequate.
Now as an adult when I do small silly things they feel huge.

[ElizabethGenevieve]

I have the exact same thing happen to me, since childhood. When I get especially stressed I automatically dissociate and shut down. I think it's a means of self-protection. I hate that I can't control it and it seems to come out of nowhere. I know it's hard and weird and makes you feel crazy sometimes (or at least it does for me). Big  for you.

[bazou]

I am sitting reading this and I feel like my head and chest is going to explode. I suddenly remembered the little girl who who lived almost completely in an imaginary world and I realized that when the adults in my family joked about my behaviour in front of me like Ai was defective I felt even more isolated. I ran headlong into tree and cut my face up as a four year old because I was playing hide and seek with myself. They took photos and I felt soooo inadequate.
Now as an adult when I do small silly things they feel huge.

I know what you mean. As I am working through the process, big chunks of my childhood are starting to come back to me. Most of it are memories of me in that imaginary world I created for myself as well.

When I had my first son and started watching kids movies again. All of a sudden, I discovered this utter fascination and love of fantasy movies like Narnia, for example. It came out of left field, all of a sudden, I was watching all sorts of epic movies and fairytales, I couldn't get enough. I didn't know where that came from specifically, just attributed it it to nature of being a creative mind and a dreamer. I'm now starting to remember the worlds I created for myself as a kid, those worlds where I spent most of my childhood, where I hid from the pain.

My sister has been telling me - and insisting - I was obsessed with Star Wars and idolized Princess Leia. Yet I still maintain I've never seen that movie in its entirety, let alone be obsessed with it.

It's scary... yet when you finally understand that all this is probably the one thing that saved your life... it's comforting

[sigiriuk]

Hi
I often leave my body, and feel like a bird of prey that hovers over real life. When a siutaion gets intense, or a get a trigger this often happens.
It is a way of ptoecting myself, but nowadays the threats are not as horrible, and sometimes, not even there.
So it gets in the way.
S