Severe Anxiety about Reality

[AnxietyRob]

Hi I'm Rob,

I'm 23 and have been suffering from severe anxiety since I was 15.

It started out of the blue with panic attacks which caused me to feel like everything around me wasn't real. This terrified me as I didn't know what was happening to me and caused me to become depressed and agoraphobic.

I have overcome my fear of panic attacks and my agoraphobia over the years but I have always been left with a fear of what reality is.

I have managed this fear for much of the last 5 years with only a few really really low points which lasted for a few months each.

However things have got horribly bad recently. I am terrified that everything I am doing, seeing, touching etc is a construct of my mind based on a physical reality which I can never actually experience directly. A programme on BBC 4 last night called 'The Brain with David Eagleman 1. What is Reality?' seemed to confirm my worst fears and I can't cope with it.

I don't understand how other people can be happy thinking that the life each of us is living is merely a kind of image in our heads and not the actual physical thing at all. How do people cope with this truth?

Whenever I've worried about this before I've always thought that this was just a ridiculous theory and tried to keep going but now I just feel like I am lying to myself because there is a BBC documentary confirming my worst nightmares!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[uru]

http://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/#H2

---------- Post added at 15:19 ---------- Previous post was at 15:18 ----------


I am terrified that everything I am doing, seeing, touching etc is a construct of my mind based on a physical reality which I can never actually experience directly

That is necessarily exactly what is happening. What I can't understand is why that scares you?

[AnxietyRob]

I guess growing up I was naïve and just thought that the world existed physically around me.

It scares me because it means that nothing that is going on in my life is actually happening around me. Even I'm not actually physically here. I don't understand how people know this but still live and act like everything around them is physically there. How do you just accept it and act like it is physically real anyway?

[uru]

Everything around you is physically there.

You do not and cannot experience it 'as it is' because your brain interprets the data in a way that is useful for you.

For instance your brain takes much more notice of human faces than it does of legs or arms. Faces are useful for your survival.

it's not true that what you experience isn't happening. That would be like saying if you look through a camera at the world, the image 'isn't really happening'.

[TalkTonight]

Hi Rob

I'm sorry you're going through such a perplexing time.

I too experience the sensation you're describing. Have you researched derealisation and depersonalisation? I wonder if you might, as I do, relate to these anxiety-related symptoms.

A psychiatrist once assured me that if everything seems unreal, it's anxiety. It's when everything seems real and is not that something more worrisome might be at play.

I hope you feel better soon.

[AnxietyRob]

Everything around you is physically there.

You do not and cannot experience it 'as it is' because your brain interprets the data in a way that is useful for you.

For instance your brain takes much more notice of human faces than it does of legs or arms. Faces are useful for your survival.

it's not true that what you experience isn't happening. That would be like saying if you look through a camera at the world, the image 'isn't really happening'.

I know that the physical world does really exist outside of what I am experiencing in my brain. I just am scared of the fact that my life and everything that exists for me is basically an image made up of pixels on a digital camera screen rather than actually looking through the lens of the camera at the existing physical object. Does that make sense?

---------- Post added at 18:45 ---------- Previous post was at 18:42 ----------


Hi Rob

I'm sorry you're going through such a perplexing time.

I too experience the sensation you're describing. Have you researched derealisation and depersonalisation? I wonder if you might, as I do, relate to these anxiety-related symptoms.

A psychiatrist once assured me that if everything seems unreal, it's anxiety. It's when everything seems real and is not that something more worrisome might be at play.

I hope you feel better soon.

Thanks for the advice and support.

I have seen details of those two conditions and do relate to them a lot too.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Have you thought of looking on the DP/DR board as there are similar threads to this. Also, the solipsism/existentialism on the OCD board where there are some long running threads. They may be helpful to you as people have discussed how to deal with this.

---------- Post added at 06:40 ---------- Previous post was at 06:37 ----------


It's when everything seems real and is not that something more worrisome might be at play.

Yes, and then you wouldn't realise it either as you would believe it completely as seen in delusional disorders, schizophrenia or episodes of psychosis. Other people would see it and alert someone to the behaviour.

I think the fact someone is posting is always reassurance that things tend to be ok on this front since they wouldn't be questioning why, they would believe it without question and argue against those who questioned it regardless of all proof. For instance, if I suffered from a delusional disorder I might truly believe I had 3 arms and would disagree with anything anyone said otherwise no matter how many pictures of myself they showed me. It must be awful to suffer from disorders or episodes like that.

[TalkTonight]

Hi again Rob

I have just watched the documentary that you mentioned in your original post and it got me thinking (always an ominous sign!).

If reality is present not in the outside world but in our heads, then that gives us licence to challenge any and all of our negative beliefs, many of which may be causing, or at least contributing to, our anxiety. This might be especially pertinent when considering other people's behaviour and our perception of their opinion of us. I suppose what I'm trying to communicate in (characteristically) protracted fashion is that if there is no concrete reality, we can (within the boundaries of 'sanity') create our own. Might this be what is often termed 'looking on the bright side'? Or is it more 'seeing only what we want to see'?

Sorry for the deviation. Thank you for drawing my attention to the programme. Interesting...

[MyNameIsTerry]

This comes up from time to time. The thing is, how can you possibly create so many things in such detail? How can you know I'm going to post this and what will I say. You can't.

Everything around you is too complex to be created by the brain.

If it's all in my mind, why aren't I flying through the sky like Neo and winning the lottery each week? Why am I damned to a poor life compared to how great it could be? Why have I chosen to limit my life from birth? And speaking of birth, what about all the things we have seen growing up when out brains were still forming - how could we have created all those things our parents show us?

Really, can I affect this? No. So, I don't worry about it. Just like I can't stop myself from dying from some cancer in fifty years, only limit things, so why worry every day about cancer?

[uru]

I know what you mean but I'm just not really sure how you could experience the world 'as it is.' I don't think that concept has any meaning.

Any apparatus used to experience the world is going to be relative to the world. There is no 'real world' that can be experienced.