Hey,

I've been having an obssessive thought recently. The thought is, that everything is not real. All of my experiences and everyone is not actually real. I have seen a doctor who prescribed 25mg of Paxil and am talking to a counselor, but I can't shake these feelings. I sometimes even find myself wondering why I'm reading about history in a textbook: "Why read about this, it never happened, all of this is in my mind."

This is really destroying me. My parents think everything is fine now, but I can't tell them I'm still struggling. They figured I should be better after getting Paxil. I've still been able to keep things together, but I'm extremely afraid that this delusion might take over and I'll actually believe myself. I don't want to end up in an institution, homeless, or failing out of college. Sometimes I just feel lost....I'm sorry if this is all a bunch of disorganized dialogue.

In my opinion this sounds like "depersonalization" to me.

Depersonalization causes symptoms very often described as feeling as if you are in a dream, or that you are floating, or derealization.

I suffered greatly with this when I was going through panic disorder many years ago, and interestingly enough, many other panic attackers have it too.

I wouldn't be alarmed by it though. In fact, being alarmed by it, only throws you more into the symptoms. It is a vicious cycle.

I personally believe it is caused by being too much concerned about your symptoms and worrying too much about yourself all the time. What happens when you do this is, sort of the same feelings you would get if you were intently watching a movie in a dark movie theatre, and then suddenly somebody threw on the lights and you had to file out into crowds of people. It is this "jolt" from one reality to another (in this case concentrating too much on yourself and then being expected to jump into everyday activities) that causes these feelings. And sensitive people who are overly concerned about themselves and their symptoms may get greatly disturbed by these feelings.

One thing you can do is try and keep yourself busy and your mind occupied on other things than thinking about your symptoms or yourself. Also, expressing your feelings to someone like a counselor "gets the feelings out on the table rather than being bottled up inside of you".

When I look back, I had depersonalization very bad when I was in high school over summer vacations. And I notice it was when I was not kept busy. As soon as I went back to school, it disappeared. So it is important to keep yourself busy and your mind on other things than yourself.

Again, being alarmed by it only makes it worse also, because it puts you back into that state of concentrating on yourself and your symptoms.