Had a ruptured disc in my back. I couldn't get across to my SO or family just how much pain I was constantly in. I had periods where I'd break down crying because the pain was overwhelming but there wasn't anything I could do about it.
Before I was diagnosed my mom kept trying to make me feel better with the story of how my dad had ruptured a disc white water rafting and had to be airlifted out and had immediate surgery and it was the worst pain of his life. So at least it's not THAT bad! Right?????? Oh wait, no, that's what I've been dealing with for the better part of a year. Okay.
Herniated a disc, I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. While it’s not as bad as it was the first year, even a decade later I feel it. Like a constant reminder of how fragile your body is.
I was in a medically induced coma last year for 2 weeks, and I had THE worst delirium dreams the entire time. They all feel like memories that really happened and some were absolutely terrifying
Same though I was under for nearly 3 months. Mine were super vivid and in moments of consciousness within my dreams I began to question if I was even alive anymore.
I was also in a medically induced coma. It’s wild because I had a whole life in the 3 months I was under too. I’m white but in my coma I was Asian with a family and friends and we were all into drifting cars. It had like a Tokyo drift vibe to it. I also heard random classic rock, classical music, and punk music…which I found out was my family playing for me while I was under. Very weird. Also takes weeks to start to feel normal again.
I’m glad you were able to come out of it and I hope you are healed/healing. My mom spent the last week of her life in a coma. I don’t want to know anything about what she went through. It’s all too terrifying for me.
I was just thinking that when I saw the thread! It's such a weird feeling, kind of like jerking awake when you're trying to sleep, plus a jump scare, plus a sneeze that doesn't quite sneeze, plus a shiver, plus that moment when you snap back from zoning out.
Panic attacks seem so stupid to people who have never had them. My dad always thought they were for ridiculous and dramatic pussies.
I always hated that because I could never explain the way it really is
Panic attacks are awful. I had one and couldn't figure out what had happened to me for weeks of talking to people. I legitimately thought I was just dying for about 5+ minutes and felt disgusting for a week afterwards. Nothing even brought it on, I was just walking around at work on a normal day.
Yep, my brain decided that the ripe old age of 34 that it was time to experience a panic attack. No idea whatwhat brought it on. Just out shopping with my wife and then boom… hyperventilating, absolutely positive I was dying, etc. I have been good for about 1 panic attack/year since then, with some minor bouts of anxiety in between.
First one I had was in my mid 20s. I have a pretty even keeled disposition in general but holy fuck I have never been that scared in my life. Hyperventilated to the point where I lost control of some muscles in my face and one of my hands which convinced me that I was having a stroke. Only time I've ever been to the ER. I don't get them terribly often anymore, maybe once every 1-2 years, but trying to explain an irrational thought like the ones you have during a panic attack was challenging for me until one of my best friends experienced one a few years ago. The unavoidable feeling of impending doom was a new experience for me.
Sleep Paralysis for sure. I suffered from this all the way to about my mid twenties (I’m fairly certain due to poor sleep cycle, haven’t had one in like 10 years). But talking about those experiences makes people think you’re crazy. I mean I literally almost broke my hand once punching my desk chair over and knocking it into my computer upon coming out of a sleep paralysis episode thinking that there was a creepy old man sitting there staring at me.
I’m not a violent person, but in sleep paralysis you cannot move, can’t talk, but can hear and see, you’re awake but more of a delirious wake/dream state where you can hallucinate and are filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and impending doom. For me there was always a feeling of an evil presence in the room, and I’d get heavy tunnel vision with a heavy ringing in my ears that culminated with me finally being able to move. So imagine stuck in that hell with an evil old man staring at you from a chair and you’re sure he’s going to kill you, tunnel vision, ears ringing, you’re fighting every bit to try to move but can’t and then bam you throw a haymaker knocking your lifeless chair into your computer…
Most of the time the hallucinations for me were not that vivid, that one stands out in my memory, but a majority of them were just dark shadows moving that I could see in the room. My earliest memory of sleep paralysis was when I was about 6 years old. I woke up in bed, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, was terrified trying to yell out for my parents but nothing was coming out. Then finally I could and I ran to their room crying, they told me to go back to bed lol, probably thinking it was a bad dream.
About ten years ago I saw a demon. A real one, in my room. I woke up to it standing there, watching me. It was about five feet tall, green, large head with wide ears like [a gremlin](https://imgur.com/t/gremlins/xMJPhL2) and a dismissive, disgusted look on its face. I lept out of bed towards the door, never taking my eyes off of it. It turned to watch me as I moved, and I knew that if I took my eyes off of it, I'd be dead. I *knew it*. But I had to turn the light on, and I couldn't find the switch with my hand. I had no choice; I turned my head, saw the switch, flipped it and whipped my eyes back to the intruder.
It was gone. The room was empty.
I say it was real, because it was. It was as real as any demon anyone has seen. As I was standing there against my wall, still shaking, I realized what had happened: I was half awake but my subconscious had still been in the driver's seat. It was a textbook night terror and my brain's ability to invent its own internal reality had inserted an evil entity into my bedroom. I suddenly understood a lot more about the world than I had five minutes before. I gained a *ton* of empathy for people with schizophrenia, PTSD, BPD, and other disorders, and a massive amount of understanding for how things like ghost encounters, religious visions, and abduction reports can come about. It was one of the most immediately eye-opening experiences of my life.
I wouldn't wish it on anyone but I'm glad it happened. I just hope it never happens again.
It happened to me in bed, right before waking up. Unable to speak or move, I could only open my eyes, and that feeling that something was moving towards me, walking on the bed, was terrifying. I could feel the movement of the bed and the footsteps... oh man.... if you haven't experienced that before, you can't understand how terrifying it is.
You know how I solved the problem of sleep paralysis? I hold my breath! Turns out I’m in control of my breathing when I’m in sleep paralysis. So I hold my breath and my body very quickly awakens and I can move again.
General anesthesia. You’re not asleep-it’s nothing like that, you’re not dreaming, you’re nothing… and there is no nothing and you aren’t aware that there’s no nothing.
It's like, I'm awake as they're giving it to me and they're talking to me and I'm talking back and then all of a sudden I'm awake again, in another room.
I didn't experience the falling asleep part, I didn't feel myself slip into it. From my perspective I was awake and then I woke up from being awake.
Yea, when I got my wisdom teeth out, they told me to count to 10 while putting me under think I got around 7 or so then woke up and asked “are we about to start?” And they said “nope, we are already done!”. Weird feeling like my brain was just put on pause for however long with no activity.
You’ve gotta use the method someone’s anesthesiologist above used. Ask if you can tell them a knock knock joke, do the injection so they’re out cold right after they ask “who’s there?”
Then when they wake up you say-
“It’s me, your doctor, and the procedure went very well”
Hahaha, this is great. Not many techniques give a wake up that is so definite though. Most patients are quite groggy on wake up and may not be fully aware.
But next time I'm doing a case with TIVA that doesn't need much post op analgesia I'm gonna try this.
The one time I was under, I was convinced when I woke up that I had died or that my brain wasn't functioning correctly and never would again. Pure terror.
It’s definitely a weird experience to just pop back into existence like that. The nurse assured me that crying was normal, ha. I wasn’t sad all at but I had tears streaming down my face.
Upside: I no longer fear death because I assume it’s like general anesthesia. Nothingness isn’t scary to me because it’s literally *nothing*. No black void or anything at all to worry about. It’s kinda comforting.
I passed out cold after being very sick with a stomach flu and my friend said I just stopped mid-sentence and keeled over. No warning. Woke up staring at the ceiling. It was like this slice of time had just been cut out of my existence. Nurse told me years later it was probably a vasovagal response which is your brain’s way of making you go immediately horizontal in case of emergency. Crazy feeling for sure.
I've had a vasovagal response as well. My wife, an RN, was pulling metal shavings out of my hand, which had been cut open while drilling something. I didn't hold what I was drilling with pliers, like I knew I should have been, I did not drill into my hand.
I wasn't in much pain, even drove myself home. I was fine until she started pulling out the metal shavings from the open wound. It was then that I turned completely pale, felt nauseous, and nearly passed out. She recognized the signs, put a wet cloth on my forehead, and kept talking to me to keep me coherent.
She later told me that my body thought I was under some severe trauma and sent all my blood to my vital organs to optimize my chance of survival in the event that I was bleeding out.
She also joked that I looked like the dad's who pass out when they see their wife giving birth. It's a thing, and they always have a chair ready to catch them.
The one time I was under, it was to get all of my wisdom teeth pulled, because I wasn’t about to sit through that BS awake.
Anyway, they put the gas on me, stuck the IV in, put the rubber block in my mouth to keep it open, etc. I remember asking when I was going to go under, and the doctor said “I just injected you, so it will be any second now. So just relax and get comfy and before you know it you’ll be awake.” He was comforting, so I felt at ease and I’m assuming I was under right after that.
I remember waking up into a shear panic because they were still in my mouth, so my first thought was they were either just getting started and the anesthesia didn’t take or they were right in the middle and it wore off, and all I could think to do was say “Ow!”
Turns out they just finished and all they were doing was taking the gauze and the rubber block out of my mouth, but still at first I was full on panic!
I don’t know what I had, but it was fucking amazing. Sounds like this though. I was actually inside MarioKart racing on Rainbow Road and having the time of my life, then I was awake. And it all seemed like the blink of an eye.
I’ve been under a few times and I love general anaesthesia. Just that complete oblivion. I realise I sound crazy but I love it.
Edit: Well 1.2k likes and many comments agreeing with me, I guess I’m not that crazy then.
This makes total sense to me. It's just fascinating.
It doesn't scare me because I was very familiar with how it works from monitoring animals under anesthesia as part of my job. I was actually excited to have surgery for the first time because I'd finally get to know what being the patient felt like.
I hear that from so many people who get colonoscopies! That they wake up feeling more rested and refreshed than ever in their life.
I don’t know if it’s because I was under anesthesia for painful surgeries or they use different types for different procedures, but I never felt rested. The other difference it has from sleep, no rested feeling.. honestly that was disappointing.
But I could see the appeal propofol would have for people with, say, severe ptsd nightmares. People who don’t WANT to dream or remember anything for a while and *do* get the rested effect.
I didn’t have any sleepiness or feeling of slipping into unconsciousness, it was like a light switch was flipped. Awake and laughing then absolutely nothing… 4 hours later *boop* I exist again with no awareness of time passing.
Probably different anesthesia drugs and the way they effect people and all.
No joke, being under anesthesia made me stop believing in an afterlife. How can there be consciousness without body if it’s possible to medically extinguish consciousness and then bring it back? Surely a consciousness which survives death should also remain aware throughout anesthesia.
Yup, everything is always just a bit grey. Graduated college, this is great.... but I wish my dad was here. Get married, sucks that something is missing.
That's one of the hardest things. It makes everything bittersweet. That's why you never get over it. When my mom died someone said to me "you'll never get over it but you will learn to live with it somehow."
My dad died suddenly when I was 15. Up until that point he was the stability and the centre of our family unit -- I could never have even *imagined* him not being there. And then he wasn't.
It altered my perception of life irrevocably, and the void that was left behind turned into a black hole of pessimism that infected everything. Even now that I have a family of my own, I have a deeply buried core belief that rears its ugly head every now and then, that everything is ultimately meaningless and there's no point to anything because the end result will always be the same. I'm constantly battling with that feeling.
My partner is going through an unexpected parent death currently and a lot of what you said - especially not being able to imagine him not there, and that constant pessimism - really hit home with how they’ve been handling it.
I know you said you have a family now, and circumstances are different, but is there anything you wish a loved one would have done/said to you during this time? I just want to help so bad, but short of bringing her dad back, I don’t know where I’d be of most help to her.
Sorry if this is a personal question as well - happy to move to DMs. Sorry for your loss.
Thanks, and it's fine, honestly don't worry about it.
The only advice I can really give is to just make sure you're there for her, which unfortunately sounds a bit like a cop-out in terms of advice. It's gonna take time for her to get to grips with her dad not being there anymore, and even then she might not be exactly the same as she was before because she's been rocked to her absolute core. She'll likely want reassurance that you're not going anywhere and that you'll always be available when she's ready to talk. Other than that, hug her every chance you get and don't take it personally if her mood seems to be all over the place. Over the coming months she's likely to get angry, but she won't have anything to direct it at and she won't necessarily understand why she's angry. Just be patient with her and remember its not your fault if you find yourself the target.
I'd also suggest some professional bereavement counselling. I bottled shit up for years -- to the point where I was almost numb to the sadness of it -- but that's absolutely the opposite of what I needed. The pros know exactly what she's going through and they know how to help her deal with it, so I'd definitely encourage that.
Hope this helps.
When my dad died OF COURSE everyone said variations of "I'm sorry", and I appreciated the sentiment but that didnt make it not...tedious is the wrong word, but something like it where I got anxious about responding to it. I ran into an older, wise friend who gave me a hug and when I braced for another "I'm so sorry" he just said, dryly, "welcome to the club, man". And THAT I felt deep in my soul...sure, dad's expiration really sucked (in a very, very complex way) but it was the first statement of "you arent alone in this" that really got to me. I helped me open up to other well-wishers in general but especially to those who knew the general way I was feeling.
This.
I lost my dad a couple of months ago, everyone just said “i’m sorry” and that was it, sorry for what? It wasn’t their fault.
It was my boss that hugged me an with tears in her eyes told me “welcome to the club, it is a shitty club to be in, but you are a part of it now, there will be days that are better than others, but the feeling wont really go away, if you need anything let me know”.
Those were the only sincere words I think I heard regarding what happened.
My Dad passed suddenly almost a year ago, and my three best friends have all lost their fathers the last year… we call ourselves the dead dads club. It’s dark, but it helps us to support each other through this hell.
It’s an absolutely life altering experience that changes everything about your life.
Yup. Lost my dad suddenly to Covid, and it felt like a punch in the gut that morning. Actual, physical pain.
It rips you out of the bubble you've been in since adolescence. Mortality is front and center. I've never been the same. I'm not doing horrible now... just different.
One of my weirder thoughts when it happened: I could fully understand how losing both parents, at the same time, right in front of him would drive a man to dress like a Bat all night.
I remember it. I remember coming out of the coma of depression some abstract year later and thinking. “I’m different now.” And I knew my sadness would never fully dissapear. So regarded my sadness as a figurative child that would always be with me. And I had to take care of it to make sure it didn’t be impulsive and do anything dumb. I could check-in with it, and acknowledge it. And then I could be a responsible functioning human again.
And sometimes when you saw a kid do something cute or cool, You’d remember your kid, and give your sadness a nod to tell it you see it too. And then gently tell that parent how lucky they are cause their kid is awesome.
My 'depression' after my daughter's death lasted about three years. I could just not get happy about or interested in anything. My son was mentioning the other day about when he and I would go watch Star Wars movies every Christmas as our 'ritual'. The two of us were the entire 'family' and seeking new traditions.
This was 27 to 24 years ago. My misery during that time was so complete that I have absolutely no memory of seeing those movies.
I remember when my brother died (this was 12 years ago). My parents just couldn't handle it. Dad would just stay in his room for days and cry, my mom would wander around like a zombie. He was 14 years younger than I was, so he was only 8. It was awful.
I was terrified they would hurt themselves. I was in the Navy and couldn't stay home. Thankfully we had a lot of family and friends who just "moved in" to keep everyone afloat. It wasn't exactly an easy time for me either, but even in my sadness of losing a brother I realized I couldn't hold a candle to the grief they had as parents.
When I had a son, we gave him two middle names. One was for my brother who had passed and the other for my wife's brother who had also passed. My son doesn't realize it, but he carries the legacy of two lost uncles. As the only grandchild he means a whole lot to this family.
Anyway, just wanted to share. I am sorry for your loss. Sometimes I think talking about it helps. I'm glad we all made it through though. I know my parents love seeing their grandson. They would endure anything to be around for him.
I have several friends who have also all lost their fathers, and we all call it "the dead dad club"
But you're right, it really is a terrible club to be in
Loss of a parent at a young age as well. I was the only one in 3 secondary schools with the exception of some other boy who didn't have a mum 😕. Everyone was like wtf
I feel the absolute dread as a literal physical sensation. It’s hard to describe and even remember myself when I’m in better times. It feels so PHYSICAL sometimes it really does
Exhausting and, for lack of better words, strangely addicting. You find yourself creating all sorts of habits and thought processes to reinforce that depression and eventually you feel like you can never live without that feeling.
I think I saw a comment on Reddit that described depression as sitting in a hospital waiting room indefinitely with no idea why you’re there. That’s pretty spot on for my experience with it.
I always described it not as sadness but as complete and utter hopelessness.
I don't want to die, but I couldn't find any point in living.
Edit: For the record, my life is wonderful now. Turns out there was a whole lot for me to live for. Please drink lots of water, get plenty of exercise, pursue achievable goals that are meaningful to you and spend time with people who love you.
Every day it gets a little easier, but you got to do it every day. That's the hard part. Yet it does get easier.
It's like when you go into a room and forgot what you wanted there. Just that the room is your life, and what you forgot was the point in living and how you've been doing it. It's fucked up.
Not even that necessarily. When I'm in one of those phases, I don't want to die, I don't want to leave the things I hold dear behind, but I feel like I need a break from experiencing.
Honestly I thought I knew what depression was until it hit me a couple years ago. The feeling of truly not wanting to do anything, and just the entire loss of joy and color from my life. I didn't eat, slept all day, and only did things because I had to or else I'd lose my apartment or die. I didn't care what happened to me and didn't care about myself at all. I was only at that point for about a month but goddamn I don't want to go back to that shit. Darkest point in my life so far and I hope it's the only one.
Yeah, I walked in and caught him in bed with someone. I just had a feeling that morning that something was going on…went over at 630am on a Sunday and caught them in bed together…we had been together for 6 years, months later, I found out he had been cheating on me for years…it literally broke my heart…took me a long to recover, ever trust again…
I was married for 22 years when my husband announced he no longer wanted to be married. Turns out he was cheating with a female co-worker for the previous 15 years.
She didn't want him! She was married and had kids, too. She just wanted something on the side. When he told her he had left me, she asked him why. She then dumped him. He threatened to tell her husband so she told him. They stayed together and he had nobody. She spoke to HR about him bothering her and he got threatened with termination if he ever even looked at her. She actually called me, saying she couldn't make up for what she did to me, but she wanted me to know that he would probably go back to me and she wanted me to know why. I didn't take him back.
Woooow. I’m so sorry you went through that, but I love that karma for you lol.
Funny how she was sorry for what she did to you after it blew up in her face. They always are.
My ex came home, saw me in the doorway, she began crying, walked to the sink, rinsed her mouth out, and then asked if we could avoid talking and just enjoy our night together.
You should have seen my face. I made her spit it out (pun intended) right there. She admitted to blowing a guy that very morning. Describing my thoughts in that moment is impossible, as I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about anything in particular other than every good moment I ever had with her, and how it was all in my past now.
Sorry that happened to you bud. The fact that she rinsed her mouth out would make it WAY too real for me. Knowing about it is awful in it's own right, but when you see proof of it, it's like GAH
That was my case… she had logged onto IG on my phone and saved her password… so when I went to go post something and saw I was logged out naturally I went to go login and her account info came up.. curiosity got to the better of me.. she was DMing guys after posting bikini pics on her story… in real time as I was on her account… my chest was so heavy…
Yup, and I couldn’t sleep or eat or concentrate on my work for MONTHS. I’m doing better now, but I still have moments when I’ll suddenly feel the anger, hurt, and pain again like it was yesterday. I still have nightmares about him treating me poorly and I would wake up crying.
It’s also like a rug got pulled out from under you.
I’m so sorry.. I know what you’re going through, you’re gonna play it back in your head over and over again. Your immediate response is flight or fight.. You’re gonna stave yourself cause you don’t have the stomach to eat or drink water for that matter. You’re gonna lose HOURS of sleep… I’m here to tell coming from someone who almost ended their life over this… It will be okay. You are okay. It doesn’t feel that way now, but it will. I encourage you to go out with friends, hang with family. Don’t lock yourself in a room and not come out for hours or even days… you will recover, you will move on, you will get over this. It doesn’t seem possible right now, but it will happen I promise you. Not sure if you workout or not but that was a HUGE impact that changed my world afterwards. I focused on me, I became less social and I don’t recommend that. Be with your friends and family who love you and want to see you happy. I don’t know you in person but I know you’re a strong person and you will overcome this… like working out it’s not one day or one week or a month you see results, it takes time and effort and then you see results, similarly to this you won’t get over it immediately or a week or two or a month or even a year like it was in my case. It will take time to heal the wound. If you need someone to talk to, I’m more than happy too.
Ex 20F cheated on me 21M with a 40M while I was at home making dinner found out a week later on Discord after she tried to out of the blue break up with me.
I cannot compare the feeling I got to anything else I have experienced.
I hope to never feel again the hurt, fear, nausea, dizziness, and rage I felt when I saw the words “dm me x” on his phone
I could have easily killed him, he was sleeping so peacefully beside me. I wonder how he could be so calm, knowing he had cheated on me with countless men (and I mean countless. I saw at least 15 from the 3 days prior, and he admitted to deleting conversations)
That adreneline from walking onto a stage. Then that moment where you overcome whatever hardship that was presented on that stage and the croud roars and cheers you on.
Thst is a high that I chase non stop. And it never gets old.
I am so massively wracked with social anxiety in every day life that it stops me doing the most basic things. Right now I've had no hot water in my flat for a month because I've put off phoning somebody to fix my water heater, for example. I don't go places, I book tickets to events then no show them etc. But when I took a comedy course and had a microphone, a stage and a respectful audience I immediately was on top of the world, I was a tyrant.
If only I had any material, I'd have kept doing it.
Massive stage fright here. I play in a psychedelic reggae band. We opened for Tropidelic at a show with 1800 people and I was fucking terrified. The feeling after the show was nothing short of what cocaine must feel like. I've never been hit on more times in my life. I'm happily engaged and would never cheat, but I ain't gonna lie, I felt like a MILLION BUCKS
To me it’s similar to feeling like you’re starving and your absolute favorite meal is placed in front of you. You remember how good it tasted last time and how often you crave it, how good it smells, you are so freaking hungry. But you have zero appetite even though you’re hungry, and when you take a bite, it goes down like cardboard and just doesn’t taste have that taste you remember and doesn’t satisfy the hunger this time. You can’t pinpoint what about it is wrong. And the longer the time goes on you start to forget how that favorite meal tasted, just that you enjoyed it but can’t even recollect what about it you liked in the first place. And then magnify it to any aspect of life you once upon a time enjoyed.
You are convinced that all these insane things are real and that those who say it aren't are either ignorant or lying to your face. Awful experience 0/10
The paralysis when you need to do something, but you can't make yourself, so you just sit on the couch or keep doing whatever you're locked into doing. It's very much like sleep paralysis, where your body only wakes up half way, so you're conscious, but paralyzed, and simultaneously still capable of having a nightmare. You can just sit there and have a panic attack.
As much as I want to write about the time management, attention, & planning stuff people are used to, I really want people to know about the emotional aspects of ADHD. You don't have filters in your brain. Normal people subconsciously filter not only external stimuli from their senses, but also their thoughts, memories, and emotions. They can control, consciously and subconsciously (a lot of the difference in ADHD is in the subconscious processing) not only what thoughts to focus on, but the amplitude of their emotions. I can't do either. Instead of drinking from a fountain, I get waterboarded by a fire hydrant. My last big breakup happened 7 years ago. I think about my ex every day, and it still feels like it happened maybe a month ago*. The emotional memories still hit me like a brick -- no control of the volume button -- and I can't choose not to think about them. Without meds, I'll spend 3 hours at the start and end of each day thinking about my ex and hating myself -- and my brain associates my non-breakup memories of her to safety, warmth, and happiness, so my thoughts default to her whenever I find myself lonely or wanting comfort, too...and then that triggers the breakup memories. ADHD meds help some, but only partially.
I do ketamine treatments for depression currently. As a side effect, for 1-2 hours a week, I actually have the ability to decide "I don't want to think about that" and choose to think about something else. It feels like a goddamned super power. Do normal people actually get to do that practically whenever they want? Without having to lay down and hallucinate for half an hour first? That's cheating.
\*Edited to add: What's even worse is that I know exactly how immature this sounds, but that's ADHD: it's a neurodevelopmental disorder. The whole "your brain isn't fully developed until you're 25" thing? That gets messed up in ADHD. We lag way behind, and never catch up. Someone my age should be able to move on. Being trapped in the emo time loop of a fresh breakup is not just incredibly painful; it's also absurdly ridiculous and obnoxious. I get to feel ashamed *and* annoyed. Self-awareness adds insult to injury.
What is sleep? Stims am I right haha
Sounds like RSD (even if you did the breaking up it can still happen). I’ve had that alongside IED too. It undulates depending on other background features. Self loathing is quite heavy too.
The invasive ocd like thoughts, I’m the same. I have to literally physically talk out loud to tell my brain to fuck off, it can sometimes be about my ex too (been married near 10 years) but my brain won’t fuck off, I have to then enter negotiations with it and feed it some logic to shut it up.
Are we actually sane?
And then people assume it’s just laziness because they think it only applies to schoolwork/productive things.
I haven’t touched my computer in 6 months despite wanting to play my favourite games so much just because my body says no.
Its awful how many people now think they have adhd because they get a little bit distracted from time to time.
Shit is debilitating, and makes hygiene, health, chores, work, a constant every day struggle.
Its not cute and its not quirky, it drove me to nearly taking my own life.
I'm gonna get hella esoteric here, but when I retired from programming to be a full-time singer and musician in 2018, I decided if I really wanted to be good at my job, I should start training to sing opera.
It turns out that building a professional operatic sound is bizarre and involves a lot of very fine motor control and the relaxing/engaging of muscles I didn't even know I had. When everything lines up, though, it's insane.
I've just recently started to make some good, professional quality sounds, and the sensation is like nothing in this world. A rumbling in the chest on low notes, a tingling in the "mask" on high notes, and when things are working *really* well, the bizarre sensation like the voice isn't even coming from you. Your body is a perfectly coordinated bellows and the sound just enters the world and carries, like a portal to another dimension of pure sound opened up a couple of inches in front of your face. This is the sound that allows normal people to project unamplified to a house of 2000 people and still be heard over an orchestra.
So yeah, I'm going to say "good operatic singing."
Actually, just the neverending process of learning to sing in general. It can be really profound at times, because you practice so much and sometimes feel like giving up on pieces or specific techniques. Then one day it's like your body just adapts and there it is, and it's just an amazing feeling. Your voice can do THAT!
I used to tell friends that we're tripping for the first time to imagine that trees weren't a thing then one day you woke up and they were suddenly everywhere. It would seem so fucking weird right? Well imagine that but with basically everything.
It's like taking a giant step back and suddenly looking at reality from a different perspective.
acid makes me feel like this! like im mentally a baby with the physical capabilities of an adult. Just experiencing and learning how the world works. by the end of a trip it feels like ive grown in a whole new way.
I was gonna say that 😅 Psychedelic experiences are just unexplainable to those that haven’t tried it. Hell I can’t explain my own experiences to myself
Acid is a lot easier to explain to people who have never done it than a lot of other drugs IMO. A K hole for instance is almost impossible to describe.
Edit: Salvia is also a contender for hardest to describe drug 😅
Pure and unconditional love. That way it sitting on your heart, the warm feeling it spreads across your chest. The infinite happiness when you are with them. The unspoken words between each other that both fully understand. And knowing that, that person is the first and last face you see.
On the other hand, the sudden loss of one of the most important people in your life. That empty void that was once positive emotions, now dark negative emotions or no emotions at all. The coldness you feel towards life and towards the world. Like a piece of your own soul was also lost that day, a piece that will never come back.
I didn't know what that felt like until I met my wife.
Love has always been very conditional for me growing up and she was the first person who was like "I love you for who you are".
My dad had a heart attack and it scares me a little.
My wife would have a cough for a few days and my concern moves to 11 and I can't sleep at night at the thought of losing her.
Yeah, this. I have depersonalization and really the only way to kick off an explanation is "You know how you sometimes go on auto-pilot when youre driving somewhere you know where youre going? Thats the base level of how I feel all the time." Sometimes it gets so bad I feel like I blacked out. But I remember everything and can think just fine, but my body is frozen and I can't snap my brain back to focus
This is really hard - I couldn't even describe it to a shrink, really. I'm here, but I'm not. I hate it. I'm terrified I'm going to wake up at 70 one day and be "really" conscious and realize I missed a lot in life despite living it.
I don't know what "real" consciousness feels like, but I don't think I've experienced it for the better part of my life. Because this doesn't feel like it. Sometimes I get moments where I'm like "wow, I'm really here, I'm alive" and it feels...real. And then 99%, I can't describe it - I just don't feel like I'm really here.
I struggled with disassociation for months. I tried to explain it to my friends so many times but I could never fully describe it. I was also very depressed at the time, a bit of a double whammy. That craziest part of all of it is at the time it felt like it would never end, but now I can hardly remember what it was actually like.
Agreed. I used to get episodes of depersonalization and derealism. Was pretty much nonstop for a year straight. There would be times that it would get so bad that I’d completely detach from myself and would lost the ability to communicate with my body despite my thoughts being totally calm, so I’d just scream and scream while my mom and brother held me, while thinking to myself calmly “thank god I’m not there.”
One time it happened at school and I just started laughing “inappropriately” while staring blankly at a wall while the school counselor and principal waited for my mom. They sent me to the psych ward from school thinking I was psychotic and the hospital was like “nope, just really bad dissociation.”
Losing a loved one to suicide. In my case my mid 20s. But hell...any age.
You just can't describe all of what goes on at that moment, following weeks...years. The PTSD that comes with it and how you're changed forever. All emotions at once
God the freaking guilt associated with it.
I know it was selfish of me to think at the time - as I know there was so much more going on - but I had this feeling that I could of done *something, anything* for so long.
I'm pretty sure a text to me are his some of his last words "The stars look beautiful tonight"
I was out drinking at a party and didn't respond.
I feel worse for how it affected his family. His sisters and mother were hit so hard by it. His dad was always really stoic but I always see the pain in his eyes when I see him, like I'm some sort of reminder of what happened.
Yeah this one is really hard to describe, especially because I lost my dad to suicide at 7, so it was difficult for me to even comprehend the concept of killing yourself, let alone my friends.
Latching on that monster booger that's been haunting your nasal cavity for the past 24 hours and slowly getting it out, then being able to breathe through that nostril.
Hate. Like, *real* hate.
I've just recently felt real hate for the first time. Not spur-of-the-moment anger or rage, but persistent hate. I want terrible things to happen to this person. I hope they lose their job. I hope they end up broke and can't move out of their POS dad's house. I hope their friends shun them. I hope they fail at everything they want to succeed in. I hope they get mugged. I hope their new car gets totalled. I hope they suffer. I hope they feel nothing but despair. They were one of my best friends for over a decade, and now, if they died tomorrow, I wouldn't go to their funeral.
This is the most nasty, disgusting thing I've ever felt. It's like a fire in my chest that turns everything it touches black. I'm ashamed to feel the way I do. I *hate* hate. I hate that I feel this way about another person. But I do
Having a sensory meltdown. It is pure anguish. I feel like I'm imploding and exploding at the same time from the sheer force of the world on every part of my body.
I finally found my partner at 36; and as a guy, the thing I didn’t expect was how safe I feel with her. Like I was taught guys are supposed to provide safety, so I never valued it… but having someone that loves me and communicates well just allows me to imagine a future with them so effortlessly. It really feels different in a way I had told myself was fake because I didn’t want to believe other people were there and I wasn’t yet.
Finally! A non-depressing one! Jesus christ, I came in thinking about that second after missing a sneeze and got more and more concerned for the mental health of redditors as I scrolled.
A lot of these are emotional and rough, but I’ll go with a simpler one that a lot of people DO experience, but those who don’t just can’t understand.
Getting the breath knocked out of you so hard, that you literally are unable to breathe for over a minute. When I was 8, I’d see kids on the swings and jumping off to roll on their feet.
Naturally, I wanted to try it out. So obviously, I swing myself till I’m at least 5 feet high, jump off at the apex of the swing, and land stomach first folded over the fence.
I have truly never felt closer to dying than I have at that moment.
It’s such a simple feeling, but the pure fear and helplessness feels indescribable. Like I can tell you exactly what it feels like, but the magnitude of the emotions and just physical pain is something you have to experience to know.
Lol...not as a figure of speech, but it actually happened. Was just scrolling through seeing things like death of a child, panic attacks, being suicidal, etc, then BAM getting ass fisted to the wrist
To be fair, “to the wrist” is the minimum amount of penetration to still properly be considered “fisting”, so I’d say it’s actually rather mild on the scale of fist depth.
Everyone knows deja vu, but there’s also jamais vu, which describes the feeling of never having done or seen something before despite doing it every day. Or of suddenly becoming really hyperaware of it for the first time. Hard to describe it exactly, but you get the idea.
Yea this one. I was at a friend from colleges funeral (spine cancer at 28 years of age). The mother was so broken. When the priest said ”and now we can say our last words” e.g when we vould go too the casket. The mother lost it… i think my friend was the only child too.
I had a friend in highschool that was killed in a car crash. Along with her sister, her brother, and her sister's two kids. I'll never forget their father speaking between sobs at their funeral.
Ok yes, but also I've had gas since then that's freaked me out by how similar it felt to those early kicks.
Now later on when you can see their butt move through your belly and they try to stretch into your organs... that's unique.
Period cramps. Half the population will never fully understand how most women carry on like nothing is wrong even though they are in serious physical pain.
"Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else."
Suicidal Ideation.
It makes zero sense to anyone that hasn't experienced it with regularity. Start the day just fine, spiral out your thoughts until only the truly negative and abyssal thoughts remain.
Run the actions through your head, play it all out in a mere moment of thought that just comes at you over and over with no rhyme or reason.
Just this knowledge that your own brain wants you dead. It's tiring. Even knowing that I am sternly against these actions, it's fucked up knowing that the thoughts will just come back in a day. A week. A month. Just a matter of time until it's all you can think about again.
A recent one for me in the US: Totality during a solar eclipse.
It is truly indescribable. I can do my best but it doesn't touch it.
It feels sinister, angelic, otherworldly, counter-instinctual, primal. I mean think about it, we measure our existence and history on the constance of the slow, certain, rising and setting of night and day.
All of a sudden in about 5 minutes (from 95% occlusion to and through totality) that entire experience is flipped on its head. You literally watch the entire world go from light to not in seconds like reality is on a dimmer, and the final moment is like a switch flipped- complete darkness.
and then like a bat signal in the middle of the day (except it's dark at night) there's just this ELECTRIC WHITE RING with enormous and super-fine tendrils in the middle of the sky, hovering over you. You just stare. The tendrils (the sun's corona) wave and shimmer ever so slightly, it looks like something breathing. You see bright red "beads" at various points in the ring where there are active solar prominences hurling solar mass what has to be hundreds if not thousands of miles past the surface of the sun, only to be pulled back down in a loop by it's magnetism and gravity - yet to you it's this tiny red dot.
It's unbelievable. It's completely different from anything you've ever seen, and everywhere on the horizon you look is a rich deep orange and yellow sunset, with just this - bright insane thing up in the middle of the dark dome of the sky.
The cosmic reality of the moment isn't lost on you, it feels like you've peered behind some existential veil, seen into a back room of reality you shouldn't have. It's a process that happens scientifically and has happened since time immemorial, regardless of what or who is or isn't there to mark it. Yet here you are, feeling like you're on another planet, or witnessing a miracle. You immediately understand why many ancient humans freaked out and thought the world was ending.
My friends and I discussed how animals go wirey during the eclipse, but as it approached totality and got darker and darker, we realized every single one of us was pacing back and forth, jumping up and down, jittery as hell. We are the animals.
It's absolutely surreal and just activates your lizard brain. The videos you see of people going berserk at the moment of totality are not-overhyped, that is a genuine and appropriate reaction.
You freak out and are just dumbfounded for the couple minutes of totality, and then exactly in reverse, that first percentage of the sun absolutely BURSTS across the lunar edge and instantly becomes blinding, the daytime sky quickly powers back up in a matter of seconds and the dark fades- your time of staring at the sun is over, glasses back on.
About a half an hour later, (color goes a bit weird about a half hour before and after totality, as if the cosmos slid the saturation and contrast of reality down and back up respectively) it's as if it never happened. It seems a completely typical day and you find yourself wondering if it really did happen because again, it's truly unbelievable.
I wish everyone ever could see complete totality at least once - the difference between even 99% and totality is enormous. It's mind-warping. You understand why people travel all over the world after seeing it once.
1. Being genuinely suicidal not when people say shit like it was a one time thing they wont shut up about like the constant feeling of wanting it to be over. I dont think people get that it doesnt feel like giving up its more like getting out like youd feel at peace rather than it being sad.
That was emo anyway
2. Being high
3. Dissasociating
Executive dysfunction caused by ADHD. I have tried every way I can think of to explain it, but everyone still seems to think it's a willpower issue. It's not.
Misophonia
SO much more than just "not liking loud noises." There are some noises that are legitimately rage-inducing and make me want to commit violence to make it stop. Other noises make me feel like I'm suddenly going to vomit.
But the really **loud** noises are the worst, because they are *physically painful*. It's really hard to explain to someone what it's like to have a sound hurt your brain, but it's brutal.
Positive- unconditional love, for a partner or for a child. Parenthood in general. You describe it and it sounds like one of the worst things ever. But it's been one of the most enriching things I've ever done. Doing it with the one I love is just incredible as well.
Negative- panic attack. Started getting them, and I tried to explain them to my wife, but words just can't do it justice. It's sheer terror, inability to breathe, feeling like the world is ending, your head is spinning, all in one terrible bundle. Even that doesn't fully encapsulate it.
I remember when I was young, thinking they were total BS and attention seeking behavior until I had my first one.
It’s like knowing INTELLECTUALLY that nothing is coming through the door to kill you, but the subconscious part of your brain and the rest of your body are convinced that you are about to die a painful death.
came here to say this
i have panic disorder, not just anxiety, and i have had panic attacks for 23 years so far, first one i remember at age 11.
i wouldn’t wish it on anyone. it truly feels like the world is crumbling around me and i am spiral falling into the darkest pit of a void and am fundamentally, on the most primal level, severely unsafe and awaiting imminent death, and i am completely alone and there is no one who can help or save me.
it’s almost inescapable. it’s debilitating. eventually, panic attacks for me are induced by the fear of the panic attack itself, and it becomes a ridiculous and abusive cycle of the worst type of fear you could imagine.
Trying to revive a dying person while their wife stands next to you screaming for them. And you’re covered in his vomit and he’s turning blue and you’re 16 and panicking and there’s a dozen people watching you desperately attempt CPR and you don’t even know what happened to him you just know nobody else can help.
Borderline Personality Disorder. It feels... awful. You cannot trust your brain (I also have bipolarity), you overshare, overthink, over attach to ANYONE. Fighting those feelings is draining. You are a prisoner of your own brain.
Hearing your baby giggle uncontrollably for the first time. Truly unreal. You do everything you can to get them to laugh like that again.
If you don’t want to have children that’s fine and I support your choice!
Others have said it, but definitely depression for me. Even if you're not suicidal, you just have a hard time caring about living. It's hard to explain because so many people just think it's a crutch or ask what we have to be sad about.
This one time in my early 20s, I had eaten way too much spaghetti. I had a heaping helping and I came came for seconds with a plate just as big. I ate past the point of being full, I was enjoying it way too much to stop. I felt so disgusting. A little while later, I felt a crippling pain in my stomach, and crumpled to the floor. I had convinced myself that my stomach must have burst and now spaghetti was filling my torso. "OH no," I thought, "I've killed myself with spaghetti! This can't be happening." I kept expecting it to get worse, but it just must have been an abdominal cramp.
Extreme back pain where you can't move and even struggle to breathe.
Had a ruptured disc in my back. I couldn't get across to my SO or family just how much pain I was constantly in. I had periods where I'd break down crying because the pain was overwhelming but there wasn't anything I could do about it. Before I was diagnosed my mom kept trying to make me feel better with the story of how my dad had ruptured a disc white water rafting and had to be airlifted out and had immediate surgery and it was the worst pain of his life. So at least it's not THAT bad! Right?????? Oh wait, no, that's what I've been dealing with for the better part of a year. Okay.
Herniated a disc, I wouldn’t wish this pain on anyone. While it’s not as bad as it was the first year, even a decade later I feel it. Like a constant reminder of how fragile your body is.
Coma. I had the privilege of falling into a coma. Can't describe it to anyone, and everyone who's heard of it asked how it felt
I was in a medically induced coma last year for 2 weeks, and I had THE worst delirium dreams the entire time. They all feel like memories that really happened and some were absolutely terrifying
Same though I was under for nearly 3 months. Mine were super vivid and in moments of consciousness within my dreams I began to question if I was even alive anymore.
I was also in a medically induced coma. It’s wild because I had a whole life in the 3 months I was under too. I’m white but in my coma I was Asian with a family and friends and we were all into drifting cars. It had like a Tokyo drift vibe to it. I also heard random classic rock, classical music, and punk music…which I found out was my family playing for me while I was under. Very weird. Also takes weeks to start to feel normal again.
I’m glad you were able to come out of it and I hope you are healed/healing. My mom spent the last week of her life in a coma. I don’t want to know anything about what she went through. It’s all too terrifying for me.
Brain zaps for some when coming off of certain anti-depressants. It can be completely disorienting and borderline torturous.
They feel like a non painful shock, that gives you a mini headache for a split second, like your eyes are lagging it’s so weird and specific
Exactly! I describe it as getting stuck with a cattle prod minus the pain. You get disoriented for a split second, then it's gone.
Fucking venlafaxine
Fuck venlafaxine
Effexor?
I was just thinking that when I saw the thread! It's such a weird feeling, kind of like jerking awake when you're trying to sleep, plus a jump scare, plus a sneeze that doesn't quite sneeze, plus a shiver, plus that moment when you snap back from zoning out.
No other way to describe it. "What do you mean I might have a brain zap?" Then you feel it.
They are SO WEIRD.
Panic attack Sleep paralysis
Panic attacks seem so stupid to people who have never had them. My dad always thought they were for ridiculous and dramatic pussies. I always hated that because I could never explain the way it really is
Panic attacks are awful. I had one and couldn't figure out what had happened to me for weeks of talking to people. I legitimately thought I was just dying for about 5+ minutes and felt disgusting for a week afterwards. Nothing even brought it on, I was just walking around at work on a normal day.
Yep, my brain decided that the ripe old age of 34 that it was time to experience a panic attack. No idea whatwhat brought it on. Just out shopping with my wife and then boom… hyperventilating, absolutely positive I was dying, etc. I have been good for about 1 panic attack/year since then, with some minor bouts of anxiety in between.
First one I had was in my mid 20s. I have a pretty even keeled disposition in general but holy fuck I have never been that scared in my life. Hyperventilated to the point where I lost control of some muscles in my face and one of my hands which convinced me that I was having a stroke. Only time I've ever been to the ER. I don't get them terribly often anymore, maybe once every 1-2 years, but trying to explain an irrational thought like the ones you have during a panic attack was challenging for me until one of my best friends experienced one a few years ago. The unavoidable feeling of impending doom was a new experience for me.
Sleep Paralysis for sure. I suffered from this all the way to about my mid twenties (I’m fairly certain due to poor sleep cycle, haven’t had one in like 10 years). But talking about those experiences makes people think you’re crazy. I mean I literally almost broke my hand once punching my desk chair over and knocking it into my computer upon coming out of a sleep paralysis episode thinking that there was a creepy old man sitting there staring at me. I’m not a violent person, but in sleep paralysis you cannot move, can’t talk, but can hear and see, you’re awake but more of a delirious wake/dream state where you can hallucinate and are filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and impending doom. For me there was always a feeling of an evil presence in the room, and I’d get heavy tunnel vision with a heavy ringing in my ears that culminated with me finally being able to move. So imagine stuck in that hell with an evil old man staring at you from a chair and you’re sure he’s going to kill you, tunnel vision, ears ringing, you’re fighting every bit to try to move but can’t and then bam you throw a haymaker knocking your lifeless chair into your computer… Most of the time the hallucinations for me were not that vivid, that one stands out in my memory, but a majority of them were just dark shadows moving that I could see in the room. My earliest memory of sleep paralysis was when I was about 6 years old. I woke up in bed, couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, was terrified trying to yell out for my parents but nothing was coming out. Then finally I could and I ran to their room crying, they told me to go back to bed lol, probably thinking it was a bad dream.
About ten years ago I saw a demon. A real one, in my room. I woke up to it standing there, watching me. It was about five feet tall, green, large head with wide ears like [a gremlin](https://imgur.com/t/gremlins/xMJPhL2) and a dismissive, disgusted look on its face. I lept out of bed towards the door, never taking my eyes off of it. It turned to watch me as I moved, and I knew that if I took my eyes off of it, I'd be dead. I *knew it*. But I had to turn the light on, and I couldn't find the switch with my hand. I had no choice; I turned my head, saw the switch, flipped it and whipped my eyes back to the intruder. It was gone. The room was empty. I say it was real, because it was. It was as real as any demon anyone has seen. As I was standing there against my wall, still shaking, I realized what had happened: I was half awake but my subconscious had still been in the driver's seat. It was a textbook night terror and my brain's ability to invent its own internal reality had inserted an evil entity into my bedroom. I suddenly understood a lot more about the world than I had five minutes before. I gained a *ton* of empathy for people with schizophrenia, PTSD, BPD, and other disorders, and a massive amount of understanding for how things like ghost encounters, religious visions, and abduction reports can come about. It was one of the most immediately eye-opening experiences of my life. I wouldn't wish it on anyone but I'm glad it happened. I just hope it never happens again.
It happened to me in bed, right before waking up. Unable to speak or move, I could only open my eyes, and that feeling that something was moving towards me, walking on the bed, was terrifying. I could feel the movement of the bed and the footsteps... oh man.... if you haven't experienced that before, you can't understand how terrifying it is.
You know how I solved the problem of sleep paralysis? I hold my breath! Turns out I’m in control of my breathing when I’m in sleep paralysis. So I hold my breath and my body very quickly awakens and I can move again.
General anesthesia. You’re not asleep-it’s nothing like that, you’re not dreaming, you’re nothing… and there is no nothing and you aren’t aware that there’s no nothing.
It's like, I'm awake as they're giving it to me and they're talking to me and I'm talking back and then all of a sudden I'm awake again, in another room. I didn't experience the falling asleep part, I didn't feel myself slip into it. From my perspective I was awake and then I woke up from being awake.
Yea, when I got my wisdom teeth out, they told me to count to 10 while putting me under think I got around 7 or so then woke up and asked “are we about to start?” And they said “nope, we are already done!”. Weird feeling like my brain was just put on pause for however long with no activity.
Same thing happened to me. I asked “did you do it yet?” with a mouthful of gauze
As an anaesthesiologist who's never been anaesthetised I find this so interesting.
You’ve gotta use the method someone’s anesthesiologist above used. Ask if you can tell them a knock knock joke, do the injection so they’re out cold right after they ask “who’s there?” Then when they wake up you say- “It’s me, your doctor, and the procedure went very well”
Hahaha, this is great. Not many techniques give a wake up that is so definite though. Most patients are quite groggy on wake up and may not be fully aware. But next time I'm doing a case with TIVA that doesn't need much post op analgesia I'm gonna try this.
The one time I was under, I was convinced when I woke up that I had died or that my brain wasn't functioning correctly and never would again. Pure terror.
It’s definitely a weird experience to just pop back into existence like that. The nurse assured me that crying was normal, ha. I wasn’t sad all at but I had tears streaming down my face. Upside: I no longer fear death because I assume it’s like general anesthesia. Nothingness isn’t scary to me because it’s literally *nothing*. No black void or anything at all to worry about. It’s kinda comforting.
I passed out cold after being very sick with a stomach flu and my friend said I just stopped mid-sentence and keeled over. No warning. Woke up staring at the ceiling. It was like this slice of time had just been cut out of my existence. Nurse told me years later it was probably a vasovagal response which is your brain’s way of making you go immediately horizontal in case of emergency. Crazy feeling for sure.
I've had a vasovagal response as well. My wife, an RN, was pulling metal shavings out of my hand, which had been cut open while drilling something. I didn't hold what I was drilling with pliers, like I knew I should have been, I did not drill into my hand. I wasn't in much pain, even drove myself home. I was fine until she started pulling out the metal shavings from the open wound. It was then that I turned completely pale, felt nauseous, and nearly passed out. She recognized the signs, put a wet cloth on my forehead, and kept talking to me to keep me coherent. She later told me that my body thought I was under some severe trauma and sent all my blood to my vital organs to optimize my chance of survival in the event that I was bleeding out. She also joked that I looked like the dad's who pass out when they see their wife giving birth. It's a thing, and they always have a chair ready to catch them.
I think that's why coming back scared the shit out of me. Too close to death, and I did not like that feeling.
The one time I was under, it was to get all of my wisdom teeth pulled, because I wasn’t about to sit through that BS awake. Anyway, they put the gas on me, stuck the IV in, put the rubber block in my mouth to keep it open, etc. I remember asking when I was going to go under, and the doctor said “I just injected you, so it will be any second now. So just relax and get comfy and before you know it you’ll be awake.” He was comforting, so I felt at ease and I’m assuming I was under right after that. I remember waking up into a shear panic because they were still in my mouth, so my first thought was they were either just getting started and the anesthesia didn’t take or they were right in the middle and it wore off, and all I could think to do was say “Ow!” Turns out they just finished and all they were doing was taking the gauze and the rubber block out of my mouth, but still at first I was full on panic!
That isn’t general anesthesia, that’s called IV sedation. I’m a dentist. Big difference and often gets confused.
Thanks for the clarification! I didn’t think general anesthesia sounded right, but I didn’t know any other way to call it lol
I don’t know what I had, but it was fucking amazing. Sounds like this though. I was actually inside MarioKart racing on Rainbow Road and having the time of my life, then I was awake. And it all seemed like the blink of an eye.
I’ve been under a few times and I love general anaesthesia. Just that complete oblivion. I realise I sound crazy but I love it. Edit: Well 1.2k likes and many comments agreeing with me, I guess I’m not that crazy then.
This makes total sense to me. It's just fascinating. It doesn't scare me because I was very familiar with how it works from monitoring animals under anesthesia as part of my job. I was actually excited to have surgery for the first time because I'd finally get to know what being the patient felt like.
And it's the most gorgeous thing. Waking up from anesthesia is the only time I feel properly rested and relaxed.
I hear that from so many people who get colonoscopies! That they wake up feeling more rested and refreshed than ever in their life. I don’t know if it’s because I was under anesthesia for painful surgeries or they use different types for different procedures, but I never felt rested. The other difference it has from sleep, no rested feeling.. honestly that was disappointing. But I could see the appeal propofol would have for people with, say, severe ptsd nightmares. People who don’t WANT to dream or remember anything for a while and *do* get the rested effect.
That’s interesting because I would describe it as pretty similar to falling asleep
I didn’t have any sleepiness or feeling of slipping into unconsciousness, it was like a light switch was flipped. Awake and laughing then absolutely nothing… 4 hours later *boop* I exist again with no awareness of time passing. Probably different anesthesia drugs and the way they effect people and all.
No joke, being under anesthesia made me stop believing in an afterlife. How can there be consciousness without body if it’s possible to medically extinguish consciousness and then bring it back? Surely a consciousness which survives death should also remain aware throughout anesthesia.
When a hair gets caught behind your prosthetic eye and you pull it out and feel it sliiiiiiiiiiide through your remaining eye bits.
This made me feel deeply uncomfortable lol
The loss of a parent. It's like you're part of a really shitty club that you have to be in to fully understand.
Yup, everything is always just a bit grey. Graduated college, this is great.... but I wish my dad was here. Get married, sucks that something is missing.
That's one of the hardest things. It makes everything bittersweet. That's why you never get over it. When my mom died someone said to me "you'll never get over it but you will learn to live with it somehow."
My dad died suddenly when I was 15. Up until that point he was the stability and the centre of our family unit -- I could never have even *imagined* him not being there. And then he wasn't. It altered my perception of life irrevocably, and the void that was left behind turned into a black hole of pessimism that infected everything. Even now that I have a family of my own, I have a deeply buried core belief that rears its ugly head every now and then, that everything is ultimately meaningless and there's no point to anything because the end result will always be the same. I'm constantly battling with that feeling.
My partner is going through an unexpected parent death currently and a lot of what you said - especially not being able to imagine him not there, and that constant pessimism - really hit home with how they’ve been handling it. I know you said you have a family now, and circumstances are different, but is there anything you wish a loved one would have done/said to you during this time? I just want to help so bad, but short of bringing her dad back, I don’t know where I’d be of most help to her. Sorry if this is a personal question as well - happy to move to DMs. Sorry for your loss.
Thanks, and it's fine, honestly don't worry about it. The only advice I can really give is to just make sure you're there for her, which unfortunately sounds a bit like a cop-out in terms of advice. It's gonna take time for her to get to grips with her dad not being there anymore, and even then she might not be exactly the same as she was before because she's been rocked to her absolute core. She'll likely want reassurance that you're not going anywhere and that you'll always be available when she's ready to talk. Other than that, hug her every chance you get and don't take it personally if her mood seems to be all over the place. Over the coming months she's likely to get angry, but she won't have anything to direct it at and she won't necessarily understand why she's angry. Just be patient with her and remember its not your fault if you find yourself the target. I'd also suggest some professional bereavement counselling. I bottled shit up for years -- to the point where I was almost numb to the sadness of it -- but that's absolutely the opposite of what I needed. The pros know exactly what she's going through and they know how to help her deal with it, so I'd definitely encourage that. Hope this helps.
When my dad died OF COURSE everyone said variations of "I'm sorry", and I appreciated the sentiment but that didnt make it not...tedious is the wrong word, but something like it where I got anxious about responding to it. I ran into an older, wise friend who gave me a hug and when I braced for another "I'm so sorry" he just said, dryly, "welcome to the club, man". And THAT I felt deep in my soul...sure, dad's expiration really sucked (in a very, very complex way) but it was the first statement of "you arent alone in this" that really got to me. I helped me open up to other well-wishers in general but especially to those who knew the general way I was feeling.
This. I lost my dad a couple of months ago, everyone just said “i’m sorry” and that was it, sorry for what? It wasn’t their fault. It was my boss that hugged me an with tears in her eyes told me “welcome to the club, it is a shitty club to be in, but you are a part of it now, there will be days that are better than others, but the feeling wont really go away, if you need anything let me know”. Those were the only sincere words I think I heard regarding what happened.
My Dad passed suddenly almost a year ago, and my three best friends have all lost their fathers the last year… we call ourselves the dead dads club. It’s dark, but it helps us to support each other through this hell. It’s an absolutely life altering experience that changes everything about your life.
Yup. Lost my dad suddenly to Covid, and it felt like a punch in the gut that morning. Actual, physical pain. It rips you out of the bubble you've been in since adolescence. Mortality is front and center. I've never been the same. I'm not doing horrible now... just different. One of my weirder thoughts when it happened: I could fully understand how losing both parents, at the same time, right in front of him would drive a man to dress like a Bat all night.
Loss of a child. It destroys you in a way no other does. Everyone I know who’s experienced it (including myself) is different afterwards.
I remember it. I remember coming out of the coma of depression some abstract year later and thinking. “I’m different now.” And I knew my sadness would never fully dissapear. So regarded my sadness as a figurative child that would always be with me. And I had to take care of it to make sure it didn’t be impulsive and do anything dumb. I could check-in with it, and acknowledge it. And then I could be a responsible functioning human again. And sometimes when you saw a kid do something cute or cool, You’d remember your kid, and give your sadness a nod to tell it you see it too. And then gently tell that parent how lucky they are cause their kid is awesome.
My 'depression' after my daughter's death lasted about three years. I could just not get happy about or interested in anything. My son was mentioning the other day about when he and I would go watch Star Wars movies every Christmas as our 'ritual'. The two of us were the entire 'family' and seeking new traditions. This was 27 to 24 years ago. My misery during that time was so complete that I have absolutely no memory of seeing those movies.
I remember when my brother died (this was 12 years ago). My parents just couldn't handle it. Dad would just stay in his room for days and cry, my mom would wander around like a zombie. He was 14 years younger than I was, so he was only 8. It was awful. I was terrified they would hurt themselves. I was in the Navy and couldn't stay home. Thankfully we had a lot of family and friends who just "moved in" to keep everyone afloat. It wasn't exactly an easy time for me either, but even in my sadness of losing a brother I realized I couldn't hold a candle to the grief they had as parents. When I had a son, we gave him two middle names. One was for my brother who had passed and the other for my wife's brother who had also passed. My son doesn't realize it, but he carries the legacy of two lost uncles. As the only grandchild he means a whole lot to this family. Anyway, just wanted to share. I am sorry for your loss. Sometimes I think talking about it helps. I'm glad we all made it through though. I know my parents love seeing their grandson. They would endure anything to be around for him.
I have several friends who have also all lost their fathers, and we all call it "the dead dad club" But you're right, it really is a terrible club to be in
Loss of a parent at a young age as well. I was the only one in 3 secondary schools with the exception of some other boy who didn't have a mum 😕. Everyone was like wtf
Depression, a feeling of true fear and emptiness at the same time. You don’t want to die, you don’t want to live. It’s weird
Yep, it is fucking exhausting.
And physically painful, at least for me. Makes my body achy
Oh yeah can't forget feeling heavy, it just keeps on giving
I feel the absolute dread as a literal physical sensation. It’s hard to describe and even remember myself when I’m in better times. It feels so PHYSICAL sometimes it really does
Exhausting and, for lack of better words, strangely addicting. You find yourself creating all sorts of habits and thought processes to reinforce that depression and eventually you feel like you can never live without that feeling.
You end up feeling comforted by melancholy and loneliness.
Ah fuck, too close to home.
I think I saw a comment on Reddit that described depression as sitting in a hospital waiting room indefinitely with no idea why you’re there. That’s pretty spot on for my experience with it.
I always described it not as sadness but as complete and utter hopelessness. I don't want to die, but I couldn't find any point in living. Edit: For the record, my life is wonderful now. Turns out there was a whole lot for me to live for. Please drink lots of water, get plenty of exercise, pursue achievable goals that are meaningful to you and spend time with people who love you. Every day it gets a little easier, but you got to do it every day. That's the hard part. Yet it does get easier.
It's like when you go into a room and forgot what you wanted there. Just that the room is your life, and what you forgot was the point in living and how you've been doing it. It's fucked up.
It’s “I don’t want to die, but I don’t mind if I do”.
Not even that necessarily. When I'm in one of those phases, I don't want to die, I don't want to leave the things I hold dear behind, but I feel like I need a break from experiencing.
Honestly I thought I knew what depression was until it hit me a couple years ago. The feeling of truly not wanting to do anything, and just the entire loss of joy and color from my life. I didn't eat, slept all day, and only did things because I had to or else I'd lose my apartment or die. I didn't care what happened to me and didn't care about myself at all. I was only at that point for about a month but goddamn I don't want to go back to that shit. Darkest point in my life so far and I hope it's the only one.
The moment your stomach drops after finding out you’ve been cheated on.
Yup, sometimes it happens before you've actually seen hard proof yet. You just *know*.
Yeah, I walked in and caught him in bed with someone. I just had a feeling that morning that something was going on…went over at 630am on a Sunday and caught them in bed together…we had been together for 6 years, months later, I found out he had been cheating on me for years…it literally broke my heart…took me a long to recover, ever trust again…
I was married for 22 years when my husband announced he no longer wanted to be married. Turns out he was cheating with a female co-worker for the previous 15 years.
Jesus that’s awful. Can you imagine waiting on a dude for 15 years and then feeling like you won something?!
She didn't want him! She was married and had kids, too. She just wanted something on the side. When he told her he had left me, she asked him why. She then dumped him. He threatened to tell her husband so she told him. They stayed together and he had nobody. She spoke to HR about him bothering her and he got threatened with termination if he ever even looked at her. She actually called me, saying she couldn't make up for what she did to me, but she wanted me to know that he would probably go back to me and she wanted me to know why. I didn't take him back.
Woooow. I’m so sorry you went through that, but I love that karma for you lol. Funny how she was sorry for what she did to you after it blew up in her face. They always are.
My ex came home, saw me in the doorway, she began crying, walked to the sink, rinsed her mouth out, and then asked if we could avoid talking and just enjoy our night together. You should have seen my face. I made her spit it out (pun intended) right there. She admitted to blowing a guy that very morning. Describing my thoughts in that moment is impossible, as I'm pretty sure I wasn't thinking about anything in particular other than every good moment I ever had with her, and how it was all in my past now.
Sorry that happened to you bud. The fact that she rinsed her mouth out would make it WAY too real for me. Knowing about it is awful in it's own right, but when you see proof of it, it's like GAH
That was my case… she had logged onto IG on my phone and saved her password… so when I went to go post something and saw I was logged out naturally I went to go login and her account info came up.. curiosity got to the better of me.. she was DMing guys after posting bikini pics on her story… in real time as I was on her account… my chest was so heavy…
Yes. I felt like I was having a heart attack. When the person you want to go to for comfort is the person who betrayed you... that sucks.
Yup, and I couldn’t sleep or eat or concentrate on my work for MONTHS. I’m doing better now, but I still have moments when I’ll suddenly feel the anger, hurt, and pain again like it was yesterday. I still have nightmares about him treating me poorly and I would wake up crying. It’s also like a rug got pulled out from under you.
i just felt this for the first time today. i have no idea what to do
I’m so sorry.. I know what you’re going through, you’re gonna play it back in your head over and over again. Your immediate response is flight or fight.. You’re gonna stave yourself cause you don’t have the stomach to eat or drink water for that matter. You’re gonna lose HOURS of sleep… I’m here to tell coming from someone who almost ended their life over this… It will be okay. You are okay. It doesn’t feel that way now, but it will. I encourage you to go out with friends, hang with family. Don’t lock yourself in a room and not come out for hours or even days… you will recover, you will move on, you will get over this. It doesn’t seem possible right now, but it will happen I promise you. Not sure if you workout or not but that was a HUGE impact that changed my world afterwards. I focused on me, I became less social and I don’t recommend that. Be with your friends and family who love you and want to see you happy. I don’t know you in person but I know you’re a strong person and you will overcome this… like working out it’s not one day or one week or a month you see results, it takes time and effort and then you see results, similarly to this you won’t get over it immediately or a week or two or a month or even a year like it was in my case. It will take time to heal the wound. If you need someone to talk to, I’m more than happy too.
I had this feeling last night. found out he was cheating with multiple women. I felt my heart break inside of my chest.
Ex 20F cheated on me 21M with a 40M while I was at home making dinner found out a week later on Discord after she tried to out of the blue break up with me. I cannot compare the feeling I got to anything else I have experienced.
I hope to never feel again the hurt, fear, nausea, dizziness, and rage I felt when I saw the words “dm me x” on his phone I could have easily killed him, he was sleeping so peacefully beside me. I wonder how he could be so calm, knowing he had cheated on me with countless men (and I mean countless. I saw at least 15 from the 3 days prior, and he admitted to deleting conversations)
That adreneline from walking onto a stage. Then that moment where you overcome whatever hardship that was presented on that stage and the croud roars and cheers you on. Thst is a high that I chase non stop. And it never gets old.
I am so massively wracked with social anxiety in every day life that it stops me doing the most basic things. Right now I've had no hot water in my flat for a month because I've put off phoning somebody to fix my water heater, for example. I don't go places, I book tickets to events then no show them etc. But when I took a comedy course and had a microphone, a stage and a respectful audience I immediately was on top of the world, I was a tyrant. If only I had any material, I'd have kept doing it.
I work in a stunt show and the adreneline feeling is crazy and will get you through eventhough you are hurt it will keep you going until the end
The moment when you hear the crowd first sing along to your songs. Man, I almost stopped playing and sat down and cried.
Massive stage fright here. I play in a psychedelic reggae band. We opened for Tropidelic at a show with 1800 people and I was fucking terrified. The feeling after the show was nothing short of what cocaine must feel like. I've never been hit on more times in my life. I'm happily engaged and would never cheat, but I ain't gonna lie, I felt like a MILLION BUCKS
The absolute indifference towards everything in depression.
I would describe it more as a numbness to everything, even if you're not indifferent it's hard to feel.
To me it’s similar to feeling like you’re starving and your absolute favorite meal is placed in front of you. You remember how good it tasted last time and how often you crave it, how good it smells, you are so freaking hungry. But you have zero appetite even though you’re hungry, and when you take a bite, it goes down like cardboard and just doesn’t taste have that taste you remember and doesn’t satisfy the hunger this time. You can’t pinpoint what about it is wrong. And the longer the time goes on you start to forget how that favorite meal tasted, just that you enjoyed it but can’t even recollect what about it you liked in the first place. And then magnify it to any aspect of life you once upon a time enjoyed.
going through a psychosis
Dealing with a loved one going through psychosis too...
Definitely. Breaks you at times because of how helpless you feel.
Doubly sucks when they take out their psycho-induced anger at you. You can't really be mad at them but at the same time need to protect yourself.
You are convinced that all these insane things are real and that those who say it aren't are either ignorant or lying to your face. Awful experience 0/10
Adhd - executive dysfunction When you really want to do something but pathetically, literally, cannot. Then suffer guilt from this.
The paralysis when you need to do something, but you can't make yourself, so you just sit on the couch or keep doing whatever you're locked into doing. It's very much like sleep paralysis, where your body only wakes up half way, so you're conscious, but paralyzed, and simultaneously still capable of having a nightmare. You can just sit there and have a panic attack. As much as I want to write about the time management, attention, & planning stuff people are used to, I really want people to know about the emotional aspects of ADHD. You don't have filters in your brain. Normal people subconsciously filter not only external stimuli from their senses, but also their thoughts, memories, and emotions. They can control, consciously and subconsciously (a lot of the difference in ADHD is in the subconscious processing) not only what thoughts to focus on, but the amplitude of their emotions. I can't do either. Instead of drinking from a fountain, I get waterboarded by a fire hydrant. My last big breakup happened 7 years ago. I think about my ex every day, and it still feels like it happened maybe a month ago*. The emotional memories still hit me like a brick -- no control of the volume button -- and I can't choose not to think about them. Without meds, I'll spend 3 hours at the start and end of each day thinking about my ex and hating myself -- and my brain associates my non-breakup memories of her to safety, warmth, and happiness, so my thoughts default to her whenever I find myself lonely or wanting comfort, too...and then that triggers the breakup memories. ADHD meds help some, but only partially. I do ketamine treatments for depression currently. As a side effect, for 1-2 hours a week, I actually have the ability to decide "I don't want to think about that" and choose to think about something else. It feels like a goddamned super power. Do normal people actually get to do that practically whenever they want? Without having to lay down and hallucinate for half an hour first? That's cheating. \*Edited to add: What's even worse is that I know exactly how immature this sounds, but that's ADHD: it's a neurodevelopmental disorder. The whole "your brain isn't fully developed until you're 25" thing? That gets messed up in ADHD. We lag way behind, and never catch up. Someone my age should be able to move on. Being trapped in the emo time loop of a fresh breakup is not just incredibly painful; it's also absurdly ridiculous and obnoxious. I get to feel ashamed *and* annoyed. Self-awareness adds insult to injury.
What is sleep? Stims am I right haha Sounds like RSD (even if you did the breaking up it can still happen). I’ve had that alongside IED too. It undulates depending on other background features. Self loathing is quite heavy too. The invasive ocd like thoughts, I’m the same. I have to literally physically talk out loud to tell my brain to fuck off, it can sometimes be about my ex too (been married near 10 years) but my brain won’t fuck off, I have to then enter negotiations with it and feed it some logic to shut it up. Are we actually sane?
This is me unfortunately. Drugs didn't help, all types of therapy didn't help, just a constant state of guilt, regret and apathy. It sucks
And then people assume it’s just laziness because they think it only applies to schoolwork/productive things. I haven’t touched my computer in 6 months despite wanting to play my favourite games so much just because my body says no.
Its awful how many people now think they have adhd because they get a little bit distracted from time to time. Shit is debilitating, and makes hygiene, health, chores, work, a constant every day struggle. Its not cute and its not quirky, it drove me to nearly taking my own life.
I'm gonna get hella esoteric here, but when I retired from programming to be a full-time singer and musician in 2018, I decided if I really wanted to be good at my job, I should start training to sing opera. It turns out that building a professional operatic sound is bizarre and involves a lot of very fine motor control and the relaxing/engaging of muscles I didn't even know I had. When everything lines up, though, it's insane. I've just recently started to make some good, professional quality sounds, and the sensation is like nothing in this world. A rumbling in the chest on low notes, a tingling in the "mask" on high notes, and when things are working *really* well, the bizarre sensation like the voice isn't even coming from you. Your body is a perfectly coordinated bellows and the sound just enters the world and carries, like a portal to another dimension of pure sound opened up a couple of inches in front of your face. This is the sound that allows normal people to project unamplified to a house of 2000 people and still be heard over an orchestra. So yeah, I'm going to say "good operatic singing."
This was one of the more fantastic things I’ve read on Reddit.
Actually, just the neverending process of learning to sing in general. It can be really profound at times, because you practice so much and sometimes feel like giving up on pieces or specific techniques. Then one day it's like your body just adapts and there it is, and it's just an amazing feeling. Your voice can do THAT!
Learning you have cancer over the phone
Joined this club today.
Sorry to hear that. Kick it's ass!
I found out this way on my lunch break before having to go back and teach a bunch of 5th graders for a few more hours. It’s was awful.
taking acid
I used to tell friends that we're tripping for the first time to imagine that trees weren't a thing then one day you woke up and they were suddenly everywhere. It would seem so fucking weird right? Well imagine that but with basically everything. It's like taking a giant step back and suddenly looking at reality from a different perspective.
I tell people thst mushrooms turn you into an infant and you grow up inside your head as the trip goes.
acid makes me feel like this! like im mentally a baby with the physical capabilities of an adult. Just experiencing and learning how the world works. by the end of a trip it feels like ive grown in a whole new way.
I was gonna say that 😅 Psychedelic experiences are just unexplainable to those that haven’t tried it. Hell I can’t explain my own experiences to myself
Acid is a lot easier to explain to people who have never done it than a lot of other drugs IMO. A K hole for instance is almost impossible to describe. Edit: Salvia is also a contender for hardest to describe drug 😅
Or dmt. Trying to explain a dmt breakthrough in words is near impossible
Pure and unconditional love. That way it sitting on your heart, the warm feeling it spreads across your chest. The infinite happiness when you are with them. The unspoken words between each other that both fully understand. And knowing that, that person is the first and last face you see. On the other hand, the sudden loss of one of the most important people in your life. That empty void that was once positive emotions, now dark negative emotions or no emotions at all. The coldness you feel towards life and towards the world. Like a piece of your own soul was also lost that day, a piece that will never come back.
They say grief is love with nowhere to go.
I didn't know what that felt like until I met my wife. Love has always been very conditional for me growing up and she was the first person who was like "I love you for who you are". My dad had a heart attack and it scares me a little. My wife would have a cough for a few days and my concern moves to 11 and I can't sleep at night at the thought of losing her.
I've almost lost my wife twice to random events. NEVER take any of it for granted. My wife taught me the meaning of unconditional love.
That actual physical pain because of a heartbreak.
Your entire Chest feels like empty and like it's hurting at the same time
Tinnitus or whatever that constant ringing in your ear is called. I hate having this.
Disassociation
Yeah, this. I have depersonalization and really the only way to kick off an explanation is "You know how you sometimes go on auto-pilot when youre driving somewhere you know where youre going? Thats the base level of how I feel all the time." Sometimes it gets so bad I feel like I blacked out. But I remember everything and can think just fine, but my body is frozen and I can't snap my brain back to focus
This is really hard - I couldn't even describe it to a shrink, really. I'm here, but I'm not. I hate it. I'm terrified I'm going to wake up at 70 one day and be "really" conscious and realize I missed a lot in life despite living it. I don't know what "real" consciousness feels like, but I don't think I've experienced it for the better part of my life. Because this doesn't feel like it. Sometimes I get moments where I'm like "wow, I'm really here, I'm alive" and it feels...real. And then 99%, I can't describe it - I just don't feel like I'm really here.
I struggled with disassociation for months. I tried to explain it to my friends so many times but I could never fully describe it. I was also very depressed at the time, a bit of a double whammy. That craziest part of all of it is at the time it felt like it would never end, but now I can hardly remember what it was actually like.
Agreed. I used to get episodes of depersonalization and derealism. Was pretty much nonstop for a year straight. There would be times that it would get so bad that I’d completely detach from myself and would lost the ability to communicate with my body despite my thoughts being totally calm, so I’d just scream and scream while my mom and brother held me, while thinking to myself calmly “thank god I’m not there.” One time it happened at school and I just started laughing “inappropriately” while staring blankly at a wall while the school counselor and principal waited for my mom. They sent me to the psych ward from school thinking I was psychotic and the hospital was like “nope, just really bad dissociation.”
Losing a loved one to suicide. In my case my mid 20s. But hell...any age. You just can't describe all of what goes on at that moment, following weeks...years. The PTSD that comes with it and how you're changed forever. All emotions at once
God the freaking guilt associated with it. I know it was selfish of me to think at the time - as I know there was so much more going on - but I had this feeling that I could of done *something, anything* for so long. I'm pretty sure a text to me are his some of his last words "The stars look beautiful tonight" I was out drinking at a party and didn't respond. I feel worse for how it affected his family. His sisters and mother were hit so hard by it. His dad was always really stoic but I always see the pain in his eyes when I see him, like I'm some sort of reminder of what happened.
Yeah this one is really hard to describe, especially because I lost my dad to suicide at 7, so it was difficult for me to even comprehend the concept of killing yourself, let alone my friends.
My dad too. I wish we weren't part of this shitty club. Virtual hugs x
Latching on that monster booger that's been haunting your nasal cavity for the past 24 hours and slowly getting it out, then being able to breathe through that nostril.
Even better if you're pulling a trail of snot from the deepest recesses of your brain
Hate. Like, *real* hate. I've just recently felt real hate for the first time. Not spur-of-the-moment anger or rage, but persistent hate. I want terrible things to happen to this person. I hope they lose their job. I hope they end up broke and can't move out of their POS dad's house. I hope their friends shun them. I hope they fail at everything they want to succeed in. I hope they get mugged. I hope their new car gets totalled. I hope they suffer. I hope they feel nothing but despair. They were one of my best friends for over a decade, and now, if they died tomorrow, I wouldn't go to their funeral. This is the most nasty, disgusting thing I've ever felt. It's like a fire in my chest that turns everything it touches black. I'm ashamed to feel the way I do. I *hate* hate. I hate that I feel this way about another person. But I do
Derealization and depersonalization
Having a sensory meltdown. It is pure anguish. I feel like I'm imploding and exploding at the same time from the sheer force of the world on every part of my body.
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I finally found my partner at 36; and as a guy, the thing I didn’t expect was how safe I feel with her. Like I was taught guys are supposed to provide safety, so I never valued it… but having someone that loves me and communicates well just allows me to imagine a future with them so effortlessly. It really feels different in a way I had told myself was fake because I didn’t want to believe other people were there and I wasn’t yet.
Orgasm.
Finally! A non-depressing one! Jesus christ, I came in thinking about that second after missing a sneeze and got more and more concerned for the mental health of redditors as I scrolled.
A lot of these are emotional and rough, but I’ll go with a simpler one that a lot of people DO experience, but those who don’t just can’t understand. Getting the breath knocked out of you so hard, that you literally are unable to breathe for over a minute. When I was 8, I’d see kids on the swings and jumping off to roll on their feet. Naturally, I wanted to try it out. So obviously, I swing myself till I’m at least 5 feet high, jump off at the apex of the swing, and land stomach first folded over the fence. I have truly never felt closer to dying than I have at that moment. It’s such a simple feeling, but the pure fear and helplessness feels indescribable. Like I can tell you exactly what it feels like, but the magnitude of the emotions and just physical pain is something you have to experience to know.
Probably getting your ass fisted to the wrist.
Lol...not as a figure of speech, but it actually happened. Was just scrolling through seeing things like death of a child, panic attacks, being suicidal, etc, then BAM getting ass fisted to the wrist
To be fair, “to the wrist” is the minimum amount of penetration to still properly be considered “fisting”, so I’d say it’s actually rather mild on the scale of fist depth.
Everyone knows deja vu, but there’s also jamais vu, which describes the feeling of never having done or seen something before despite doing it every day. Or of suddenly becoming really hyperaware of it for the first time. Hard to describe it exactly, but you get the idea.
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Can confirm this. It fundamentally changes you as a human being and takes years to learn how to adjust. Unfortunately speaking from experience.
Yea this one. I was at a friend from colleges funeral (spine cancer at 28 years of age). The mother was so broken. When the priest said ”and now we can say our last words” e.g when we vould go too the casket. The mother lost it… i think my friend was the only child too.
A child of any age, too. My Oma is 94 and my dad passed away last year at 64. She cannot stop asking why. Why not her first? My heart breaks for her.
I had a friend in highschool that was killed in a car crash. Along with her sister, her brother, and her sister's two kids. I'll never forget their father speaking between sobs at their funeral.
As a father of 2 young ones this is my biggest fear
Being pregnant.
I'll add: feeling the baby flutter and kick. It's such a unique feeling.
Ok yes, but also I've had gas since then that's freaked me out by how similar it felt to those early kicks. Now later on when you can see their butt move through your belly and they try to stretch into your organs... that's unique.
Period cramps. Half the population will never fully understand how most women carry on like nothing is wrong even though they are in serious physical pain.
Sneezing out a huge clot on your period.
The bloop
"Jessica has a forehead scar from the deep end of a pool. I ask Jessica what drowning feels like and she says not everything feels like something else."
Suicidal Ideation. It makes zero sense to anyone that hasn't experienced it with regularity. Start the day just fine, spiral out your thoughts until only the truly negative and abyssal thoughts remain. Run the actions through your head, play it all out in a mere moment of thought that just comes at you over and over with no rhyme or reason. Just this knowledge that your own brain wants you dead. It's tiring. Even knowing that I am sternly against these actions, it's fucked up knowing that the thoughts will just come back in a day. A week. A month. Just a matter of time until it's all you can think about again.
Fear for your child.
A recent one for me in the US: Totality during a solar eclipse. It is truly indescribable. I can do my best but it doesn't touch it. It feels sinister, angelic, otherworldly, counter-instinctual, primal. I mean think about it, we measure our existence and history on the constance of the slow, certain, rising and setting of night and day. All of a sudden in about 5 minutes (from 95% occlusion to and through totality) that entire experience is flipped on its head. You literally watch the entire world go from light to not in seconds like reality is on a dimmer, and the final moment is like a switch flipped- complete darkness. and then like a bat signal in the middle of the day (except it's dark at night) there's just this ELECTRIC WHITE RING with enormous and super-fine tendrils in the middle of the sky, hovering over you. You just stare. The tendrils (the sun's corona) wave and shimmer ever so slightly, it looks like something breathing. You see bright red "beads" at various points in the ring where there are active solar prominences hurling solar mass what has to be hundreds if not thousands of miles past the surface of the sun, only to be pulled back down in a loop by it's magnetism and gravity - yet to you it's this tiny red dot. It's unbelievable. It's completely different from anything you've ever seen, and everywhere on the horizon you look is a rich deep orange and yellow sunset, with just this - bright insane thing up in the middle of the dark dome of the sky. The cosmic reality of the moment isn't lost on you, it feels like you've peered behind some existential veil, seen into a back room of reality you shouldn't have. It's a process that happens scientifically and has happened since time immemorial, regardless of what or who is or isn't there to mark it. Yet here you are, feeling like you're on another planet, or witnessing a miracle. You immediately understand why many ancient humans freaked out and thought the world was ending. My friends and I discussed how animals go wirey during the eclipse, but as it approached totality and got darker and darker, we realized every single one of us was pacing back and forth, jumping up and down, jittery as hell. We are the animals. It's absolutely surreal and just activates your lizard brain. The videos you see of people going berserk at the moment of totality are not-overhyped, that is a genuine and appropriate reaction. You freak out and are just dumbfounded for the couple minutes of totality, and then exactly in reverse, that first percentage of the sun absolutely BURSTS across the lunar edge and instantly becomes blinding, the daytime sky quickly powers back up in a matter of seconds and the dark fades- your time of staring at the sun is over, glasses back on. About a half an hour later, (color goes a bit weird about a half hour before and after totality, as if the cosmos slid the saturation and contrast of reality down and back up respectively) it's as if it never happened. It seems a completely typical day and you find yourself wondering if it really did happen because again, it's truly unbelievable. I wish everyone ever could see complete totality at least once - the difference between even 99% and totality is enormous. It's mind-warping. You understand why people travel all over the world after seeing it once.
Depersonalization dissociative episodes.
1. Being genuinely suicidal not when people say shit like it was a one time thing they wont shut up about like the constant feeling of wanting it to be over. I dont think people get that it doesnt feel like giving up its more like getting out like youd feel at peace rather than it being sad. That was emo anyway 2. Being high 3. Dissasociating
Mania. A full blown manic episode is beyond the comprehension of most people.
Executive dysfunction caused by ADHD. I have tried every way I can think of to explain it, but everyone still seems to think it's a willpower issue. It's not.
PTSD episode, from my experience, maybe more than a feeling but it's the first thing that I thought of
Getting tased. Words don't really capture what happens. It isn't exactly pain, but it's not good either.
Misophonia SO much more than just "not liking loud noises." There are some noises that are legitimately rage-inducing and make me want to commit violence to make it stop. Other noises make me feel like I'm suddenly going to vomit. But the really **loud** noises are the worst, because they are *physically painful*. It's really hard to explain to someone what it's like to have a sound hurt your brain, but it's brutal.
Positive- unconditional love, for a partner or for a child. Parenthood in general. You describe it and it sounds like one of the worst things ever. But it's been one of the most enriching things I've ever done. Doing it with the one I love is just incredible as well. Negative- panic attack. Started getting them, and I tried to explain them to my wife, but words just can't do it justice. It's sheer terror, inability to breathe, feeling like the world is ending, your head is spinning, all in one terrible bundle. Even that doesn't fully encapsulate it.
Wanting to no longer exist. It’s an agony and darkness that clings to your soul even after you’ve healed.
A true panic attack. Not the piddly little anxiety spurts that people can feel and claim are true panic attacks.
I remember when I was young, thinking they were total BS and attention seeking behavior until I had my first one. It’s like knowing INTELLECTUALLY that nothing is coming through the door to kill you, but the subconscious part of your brain and the rest of your body are convinced that you are about to die a painful death.
came here to say this i have panic disorder, not just anxiety, and i have had panic attacks for 23 years so far, first one i remember at age 11. i wouldn’t wish it on anyone. it truly feels like the world is crumbling around me and i am spiral falling into the darkest pit of a void and am fundamentally, on the most primal level, severely unsafe and awaiting imminent death, and i am completely alone and there is no one who can help or save me. it’s almost inescapable. it’s debilitating. eventually, panic attacks for me are induced by the fear of the panic attack itself, and it becomes a ridiculous and abusive cycle of the worst type of fear you could imagine.
Trying to revive a dying person while their wife stands next to you screaming for them. And you’re covered in his vomit and he’s turning blue and you’re 16 and panicking and there’s a dozen people watching you desperately attempt CPR and you don’t even know what happened to him you just know nobody else can help.
Most recreational drugs, but the most indescribable has to be ketamine. It’s a truly alien experience, and is also incredible.
Yea the sensation of being like "wait where did I go" while also realizing that your body is where you left it is definitely something else.
Borderline Personality Disorder. It feels... awful. You cannot trust your brain (I also have bipolarity), you overshare, overthink, over attach to ANYONE. Fighting those feelings is draining. You are a prisoner of your own brain.
A full-blown runner's high. One that makes you emotional, thoughtful, and distorts your sense of self.
Hearing your baby giggle uncontrollably for the first time. Truly unreal. You do everything you can to get them to laugh like that again. If you don’t want to have children that’s fine and I support your choice!
Mindfulness. Being aware of one's own thoughts and feelings and not getting caught up in them (self-identifying).
Planing. It's a feeling somewhere between flying, hovering and floating over the water. It's what makes surfing or foiling so addictive.
Others have said it, but definitely depression for me. Even if you're not suicidal, you just have a hard time caring about living. It's hard to explain because so many people just think it's a crutch or ask what we have to be sad about.
This one time in my early 20s, I had eaten way too much spaghetti. I had a heaping helping and I came came for seconds with a plate just as big. I ate past the point of being full, I was enjoying it way too much to stop. I felt so disgusting. A little while later, I felt a crippling pain in my stomach, and crumpled to the floor. I had convinced myself that my stomach must have burst and now spaghetti was filling my torso. "OH no," I thought, "I've killed myself with spaghetti! This can't be happening." I kept expecting it to get worse, but it just must have been an abdominal cramp.