Just can't feel right

LegacyUser

I've been having this problem for the last few months and I'm wondering if anyone is afflicted by what I'm talking about. It has only happened a handful of times.

I get this feeling all of a sudden of dissonance. As if there are two of me and they're slightly out of phase. I feel like I can't do anything that will change this feeling, no change in sitting position or what I'm doing can alter this feeling. But it goes away after about twenty minutes.

It's a very unpleasant feeling, mostly because it is beyond my own control, I can't do anything to feel different but wait for it to stop.

It seems entirely random and unprovoked. It has happened while having dinner with my family, fixing a computer, and reading the paper on break at work. Entirely seperate events. The only commonality I can find is that I was sitting down at all of these times.

I've tried googling it but come up with zilch. I don't know what to call it. My best stab is dissonance, because it reminds me of those rhythmical beats that are produced when two musical notes are played that sound bad together. I have it now, but it feels like it would have gone away if I wasn't focusing on it so much by writing about it.

Static M.e.

Sounds strange all right, unfortunatly I cant figure out what you mean by dissonance.

Could you try and tell me some more about it please.

Do get dizzy?
Is it like your looking at yourself doing something \ kinda watching yourself?
Does it stop you doing what ever your doing at the time?
Can other people notice it?

Blub2k4

A form of schizophrenia?

Go to the doctor in any case, anything here is hamfisted and guesswork.

grimsbymatt

It sounds a bit like the anxious feeling I get sometimes when I smoke a cigarette and for a short time after, caused by increased heart rate/blood pressure. Maybe it's worth getting yourself checked out by your GP.

zuutroy

I would be fairly sure it's anxiety based. Look up things like panic disorder on the internet and I'm sure you'll recognise some of the symptoms

Miss Fluff

Not a medical forum obviously, but sounds like anxiety to me. This is really common. As someone said, google anxiety and see if the symptoms correspond with what's listed. Good luck mate

LegacyUser

Unreggy wrote:

I've been having this problem for the last few months and I'm wondering if anyone is afflicted by what I'm talking about. It has only happened a handful of times.

I get this feeling all of a sudden of dissonance. As if there are two of me and they're slightly out of phase. I feel like I can't do anything that will change this feeling, no change in sitting position or what I'm doing can alter this feeling. But it goes away after about twenty minutes.

It's a very unpleasant feeling, mostly because it is beyond my own control, I can't do anything to feel different but wait for it to stop.

It seems entirely random and unprovoked. It has happened while having dinner with my family, fixing a computer, and reading the paper on break at work. Entirely seperate events. The only commonality I can find is that I was sitting down at all of these times.

I've tried googling it but come up with zilch. I don't know what to call it. My best stab is dissonance, because it reminds me of those rhythmical beats that are produced when two musical notes are played that sound bad together. I have it now, but it feels like it would have gone away if I wasn't focusing on it so much by writing about it.

i think i know what you mean. i get a kind of similar weird feeling sometimes too. i first became aware of it when i was really young, like 7 or something, because i rememeber feeling really weird, and recognising it as a weird feeling i'd had before that i knew didn't have a name like happy or sad or hurt or grumpy or anything. i tried to tell my mum but the best i could come up with was "i dont feel like myself" and of course she thought i was being silly and just repeating something i'd heard on tv, but i really didn't feel like myself, i felt really really weird.

anyway, i'm in my early twenties now, and i still get it sometimes. its jsut like a really really weird feeling, dissonance is a good description. i don't really know what brings it on either, i dont think it has to do with stress really. i can think of a few times i've gotten it while in bed after having sex (but only if i've orgasmed, if i don't its usually grand). so sometimes i think it has to do with nakedness and some kind of chemical or mental reaction to coming down from a climax. but its happened other times too, i just can't really think of them right now.

i don't know if this is a real possibility, or something i'ev invented in my head trying to work it out, but it makes me think maybe its casued by something that happened when i was a kid, and reminds me a little of things like being wet and cold for extended periods (like after swimming or when u wet your pants or if u fell into the water on a day out). like the kind of weird embarrased feeling, but more out of body. maybe it has to do with becoming aware of your body, but it seems like more of a mental thing than that.

anyway, i doubt theres anything a doctor can do about it. unless its happening to you really frequently and affecting your everyday i wouldn't worry about it.

but its good to hear that maybe someone feels the kind of same "no name" feeling i've felt.

LegacyUser

oh yeah, one more thing.

a friend of mine used to take a lot of ecstacy, like a few pills about twice or three times a week. she said she stopped doing it so much because she'd get weird out of body feelings when just lying in bed but not asleep.

so maybe u might think about that if you happen to have been doing pills recently.

my disonance is totally un-pill related though, for sure.

LegacyUser

First of all it's definitely not pill related. I'm only 18, only really started drinking within the last year. Have smoked hash fairly regularly but that phase is well over. Also took mushrooms about 8 months ago when they were legal. And LSA which made me sick and gave me flashbacks that would wake me up in the middle of the night...... Maybe you're on to something

I actually get this feeling reading back over it. I'm sorry that it's so hard to describe. I don't feel panic at all, in fact I don't think I have any other symptoms of it.

I googled anxiety and it doesn't sound familiar to me. I have had a mental history of pushing things down, concealing thoughts from myself and I'm half afraid that I'm doing it on an extreme level and repressing things that I can't even consciously acknowledge.

But this feeling comes out of nowhere. And nobody seems to know what it is. To the first reply, it's not like coming out of myself physically or anything paranormal.

It feels like I can't do anything. Like I have this feeling right now lying in bed, I got it reading over this thread, and I was thinking god what can I do about this feeling. I went to move my hand to the mouse pad and I just felt like, that won't change this feeling.... blah this sounds nuts. It's like being extremely reluctant to do anything and being extremely reluctant to do nothing simultaneously.

I'm better at describing in images so I'll just say, imagine if there are two of you occupying the exact same space and suddenly one of you is slightly moved to one side but still occupying most of the space you are. That's the image I have in my head of how it feels, and what I mean by dissonance and being out of phase.


To answer the questions I don't get dizzy, other people don't notice except that I find it extremely difficult to continue on with a conversation if I get this feeling, I can't seem to focus on it, no words come by themselves, they have to be forced out and seem to mean nothing. I suppose in a way it does feel like an OOBE, as if I'm detached from the body but only very slightly. I'm going to talk about it to an old friend of mine who said she had involuntary OOBEs but found it to be a very unpleasant and indescribable feeling

To the last poster, does it still sound similar now that i've elaborated? Mine doesn't bring back any sort of childhood feelings

Nevyn

Record the sympthoms and when they happen and go to your dr about it.

metrovelvet

Do you feel like you are disconnected from your own skin, your body?

LegacyUser

unreggie wrote:

To the last poster, does it still sound similar now that i've elaborated? Mine doesn't bring back any sort of childhood feelings

well, its still similar. but i wonder about your drug use, just because i saw a film once - i really can't remember the name of it, but it was made entirely in iMovie by a young gay actor from his old home movies and photos, it showed in the IFI about a year and a half ago - anyway, the guy said that when he was 14 or something he'd been given a joint laced with PCP (angel dust), and said that it affected him really intensely and that from that day on he had a feeling like what you were saying about having weird disconected feelings.

i don't really do drugs, so i knwo thats not really my problem, and cause i've had the feeling since childhood. i might get stoned once a month watching a movie with a friend, and would take a few drags at a party, but i've never smoked regularly. i took pills 3 times, and mushrooms once. i never did LSD, and never had a particularly bad experiance with drugs. one month a few years ago i happened to get stoned maybe 5 or 6 times in a fortnight, and it deffinately affected my mind for a few weeks (like while sober). my thoughts would be less tangible and run in weird tangents kind of, but its totally different to the weird feeling.

i never did PCP, but when i saw that movie it made me wonder and think back if there was anytime that i'd been passed a joint that might have been laced, but i've neer really had an intense experiance while being stoned, except for maybe once or twice when i might have gone a little "green" from unexpectedly strong weed.
anyway, it would be worth thinking back if there was anything drugswise that happened around the time this started, just incase, what you're feeling is actually the remnants of PCP in your system, its a bit of a long shot though. i've never really heard of it being used in ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phencyclidine - wikipedia on PCP
"It may be that a moderate amount of PCP will cause users to feel detached, distant, and estranged from their surroundings....
High doses can cause symptoms that mimic schizophrenia, such as delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, disordered thinking, a sensation of distance from one’s environment, and catatonia. Speech is often sparse and garbled."


but what you say sounds really similar to my experiance. like being paranoid that you're repressing something you don't even know about. and like not wanting to physically move, but being really mentally uncomfortable where you are. whenever its happend to me around another person, and they're maybe like touching me i'll have to push their hand away and just be like "sorry, not right now, i feel kind of weird". but if i try and explain why it doens't help or make any sense to them, like when i was around 17 i was in bed with a girlfriend, and after we were done messing around we were lying naked, but we were in her parents house and the window was open a little or something, and i that might have helped trigger it but just suddenly got that feeling really intensely, i told her but she didnt understand (and she had a lot of experiance with mental issues, depression and sober hallusinations). the only thing i could think of to help was put my clothes on, which caused her to want to get into a discussion with me about how being naked is so nice, and why would i be uncomfortable, which really didn't help.

nowadays if i get it with someone else, i know that it only a short thing and i just let it pass and don't really talk about it. and its really such a small part of me that i don't bother tell anyone. i've never said it to my friends, i tried to explain it to that one girl when i was in school, and my longest term boyfriend. i sometimes worry that it might be some kind of repressed sexual thing from childhood, but at the same time i worry that i'm just inventing that as an explainaton, because i had an ok childhood (aside from my being a really stubborn cranky child a lot).

anyway, i kind of think it probably something most people feel sometimes, but just because it was a feeling without a word other than weird, i always assumed that if someone said "i feel weird" thats what they meant. i suppose it sounds a little bad when its described like how you did, and from other peoples responces it sounds like its not that common.

but i kind of find that hard to believe, everyone must feel weird sometmes? but how do other people describe a weird feeling? if its not how you described.. i think if the people who think its abnormal and suggest seeing a doctor could think for a minute if they ever felt weird for no obvious reason, and describe how that felt, it would really help understand if this is abnormal, or if it just sounds abnormal because its something most people don't think about too much....?

sorry this reply is so long!

marie_85

I think I know exactly the feeling you're talking about, it actually happened to me yesterday again but I've had it ever since I was a kid.

The best way I can describe it is that you become kind of disconnected from your body and everyone around you, its almost like stepping outside yourself and watching yourself from a distance, your mind begins working independently to your body... if that makes sense.

I've never taken pills or anything, so its not connected to that, the first time I remember feeling like this was when I was about nine or ten. In fairness, I was very hungover yesterday when it happened.

lost_for_words

I think I know what you are talking about, I've had similar experiences since I was very young. It's the strangest feeling and for me happens randomly with no specific pattern. I've always tried to describe it as if I'm not really me when it happens, it's like being outside of myself watching someone be me (even though I know it is me - sounds nuts). It doesnt last long and it doesnt really feel like anything, not anxious, or sad, or elated....just detached or something. I'd never heard of anyone else having it and my own friends think its really weird, so it's nice to know other people experience similar things.

metrovelvet

Could it be depersonalization? a type of dissociation?

http://www.mental-health-matters.com/disorders/dis_details.php?disID=32

Depersonalization Disorder is where a person "looks at themselves from the outside", and observes their own physical actions or mental processes as if they were an observer instead of themselves. This often brings a sense of unreality, and an alteration in the perception of the environment around them, as well as the person fearing they are not in full control of themselves. Depersonalization can occur during a number of different times, and not be a disorder. In order to qualify as a disorder, it must be recurrent to the point that it interferes with daily functioning in at least one major area of life.

DublinWriter

zuutroy wrote:

I would be fairly sure it's anxiety based. Look up things like panic disorder on the internet and I'm sure you'll recognise some of the symptoms

I was about to say the same. So see your GP, get some BP and allergy tests done.

If these turn out negative, then you may be suffering from Clinical Depression - again, you'll need to seek out proper medical counsel to establish a proper diagnosis.

LegacyUser

I've already considered depersonalisation, and i don't think that's it. It doesn't sound familiar, that watching yourself from the outside stuff. Describing that there's a copy of myself slightly outside me was only really sort of a metaphor to describe it, I didn't mean it as anything spiritual or anything like that.

It's happening much more frequently since I posted this because it's triggered off by thinking. It's not like this is a massive deal or anything, it's easy to deal with because it doesn't ever happen but

Sounds exactly like my situation. With regards to drugs, I haven't done LSD either, LSA is Hawaiian Baby Rose seeds that are sold in the head shop. Smoking hash has dropped down from a peak of 4 or 5 times a week to about once every three weeks, out of lack of interest. It has been 4 months since I have done any other drug, also out of general lack of interest.

I see the commonality between us with drugs but it just doesn't feel like it's anything to do with drugs. I do totally agree with you about hash though, regular smoking does muddle up your your head, make your thoughts intangible and just muddle up your brain in general. I think I'll keep off the smoke for a month or two and see how it affects this feeling.

"It may be that a moderate amount of PCP will cause users to feel detached, distant, and estranged from their surroundings....".... that sounds quite familiar, but is that side effect not a temporary one.... Maybe half the hash in Ireland is laced with PCP for all we know...

I don't think that most people experience this same feeling that we do, because if someone tried to describe it to me I'd know exactly what they were talking about.

The repressing things is in my mind a lot lately, I know habitually that I do this about some issues that I do this, but at least I recognise that I repress them and avoid thinking about them as much as possible.

LegacyUser

unreggie wrote:

The repressing things is in my mind a lot lately, I know habitually that I do this about some issues that I do this, but at least I recognise that I repress them and avoid thinking about them as much as possible.

do you think that maybe its like u don't deal with negative feelings properly at the time, and try and move on too fast, so theres like a residue of weird negative feelings that surfaces kind of intensely sometimes? i dunno.. thats just a theory i came up with right now since u said that.

i've had my fair share of being depressed and upset about different things, but a friend recently told me how he thinks i rationalise everything hurtful i do to people as not being my fault in some way, like i make excuses for myself or say that i couldn't help it because of some other outside influence.. so maybe i'm like not feeling the level of guilt/embarrasment about those situations that i should? and so my mind is releasing the feelings at another time for no reason? i dont know, the mind is totally complicated, so who knows what goes on half the time.

at the same time, i do appologise a lot, and i really mean it if i've hurt someone, but maybe part of me is just really sorry for a situation that i caused but that i think was beyond my control.

i dont know. thats probably just some other issue that i need to deal with about myself. i would doubt it would fix/stop the weird feeling ever happening..

Nevyn

metrovelvet this is NOT a medical advise forum we do not diagnoise people here.