DPDR. What is it? (The unknown symptom of anxiety)

For so long, people have always found it hard to understand me, and here's why. I suffer witha complex condition called Depersonalisation-Derealisation Disorder. It's overwhelmingly under-researched, with symptoms including:

• Feelings that you're an outside observer of your thoughts, feelings, your body or parts of your body — for example, as if you were floating in air above yourself

• Feeling like a robot or that you're not in control of your speech or movements

• The sense that your body, legs or arms appear distorted, enlarged or shrunken, or that your head is wrapped in cotton

• Emotional or physical numbness of your senses or responses to the world around you

• Asense that your memories lack emotion, and that they may or may not be your own memories

• Feelings of being alienated from or unfamiliar with your surroundings — for example, like you're living in a movie or a dream

• Feeling emotionally disconnected from people you care about, as if you were separated by a glass wall

• Surroundings that appear distorted, blurry, colorless, two-dimensional or artificial, or a heightened awareness and clarity of your surroundings

• Distortions in perception of time, such as recent events feeling like distant past

• Distortions of distance and the size and shape of objects

I post this in the hope that someone out there suffering with this will feel less alone 💚 If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.