Do you feel disconnected from your thoughts?

[LiveAboveIt]

Someone used the term "thought dissociation" and that really rang a bell with me. My worst complaint is feeling detached from my thoughts and feeling like my thought processes and mental activity is not conscious. Like there is a wall between my awareness and what I am thinking. Is this the case for all?

I found this message on another message board that I thought really did a good job of explaining how I feel on a daily basis. But I also suffer from intrusive thoughts about suicide which only scare me, but do not cause any actual desire for suicide.

I feel like I can't control anything that goes on in my head and I'm tired of just having thoughts pop in on their own. It also feels like nothing makes sense anymore. I feel like a robot. For example when I have attempted to work on CBT with my therapist, the entire process terrified me.. The idea that we don't have control over our thoughts and that we need to form new habits and NEW automatic thoughts.. I don't know, I can't feel connected to this idea and my brain wants to dismiss and deny that this is even possible, because I can't handle the fact that we actually NEED to brainwash ourselves to think a certain way through repetition.

I pretty much feel that way about everything now. Everything feels so out of control and just.. wrong, I can't help but question everything, to the point that it feels almost automatic. But feeling like my thoughts are not my own is probably the most terrifying symptom that I have right now. I also suffer from symptoms of OCD like constantly repeating things in my head, obsessive rumination over my anxiety and the way I feel/think.

Is this really JUST DP/DR? Is it possible for this thought process to ever end once the door has been opened?

[jonowalks]

Theres a real irony about what you're saying about CBT and having to brainwash ourselves through repetition and how much it worries you. None of us who suffer from DP/DR have been born this way, it's not a 'normal' way of thinking. Rather we've brainwashed ourselves, often without realising, over time through repetition. Exactly what CBT is trying to counteract.

I too suffer greatly from DP and DR. Very much similar to yours in the respect that I'm concerned that my brain has been forever changed. A metaphorical Pandora's box if you will. In some respects I suppose that's true but what I try and believe, and I must emphasise TRY, is that it hasn't always been this way. Instead of new thought processes try and think of it as trying to return to your old thought processes. The thought processes that "normal" people have and how they interact and cope with pressures and stresses of the world we live in. It's so easy to be overwhelmed, even typing this I feel like I've had the worse day yet with my anxiety and DP but it's not by a long stretch. It's like getting a tooth pulled out or having an operation, it never seems like it was that bad in retrospect but at the time it was terrible. You just forget, most of the time on purpose. You've just got to get through each day hoping that one day you'll sit there, feeling infinitely better and thinking that this time in your life wasn't as bad as it seems now. You're not alone.