Detached Feeling...Please Help!

To all who can help,

I've done a lot of research into what is commonly known as the "detached feeling" that some people with anxiety & depression get. I know there's two kinds: the kind where you feel mentally detached, and the kind where you feel physically detached. Well, ever since the middle of October of 2007, I've had the physical side of the detached feeling; and it has not gone away yet. I've heard of some people who have had it for as long as a month...but never this long. Is this stuck with me now, permanently? It's weird, because as of October, I was having a lot of problems with anxiety attacks and constantly thinking I was getting diseases (the most common fear I had was getting cancer)...and I was figured once I got those thoughts and feelings cleared up, the detached feeling would go away. So I started going to a therapist, who put me on Celexa (it may not be spelled right) about a month ago. That semi-helped the anxiety...I haven't had an anxiety attack in 3 weeks, and my thoughts of diseases are about 85% gone. Yet the detached feeling is as strong as it ever was. Is there anything I could do to try and get this to go away? It's really playing a big role in my life right now, because I'm gonna be graduating high school soon, and going off to college; and going to college is going to be hard enough without being in a detached fog all of the time. So if anybody has any suggestions, please let me know. Thanks so much!

-Jim

[amish1979]

Welcome Jim!

I have had the detached feeling for 2 1/2 years now (I am not trying to scare you.)

Within the past month I have started seeing a counselor and reading books to address the anxiety in a more engaging way than just suppressing it with medications (which never worked for me anyway).

Let me tell you that the past two weeks I have had moments of extreme clarity, like the way I was before my first panic attack.  I think I am on the right track now with addressing the panic/anxiety instead of suppressing it. You may want to look into therapy and self-help books, they are working pretty well for me.

Heck, they might even work faster/better for you since you'd be addressing the feeling a lot quicker than I did.  Whatever you do, do not just take the medications.  You had to get to the root cause of your anxiety.

[cj29]

When I had my first panic attack three years ago it really through me into a downward spiral.  I felt detatched from reality in a very bad way. Through counseling and medication I started to recover.  At first, my anxiety started to subside, then the health worries.  It took me months to really feel like myself again.  It did not just happen overnight though, it was a slow and fairly steady recovery.  I noticed that I started enaging in normal social activities, started talking more with my family, and becoming interested in the world around me again even while I was on an antidepressant.  In my experience, medication helped, but you also need to continue talking to a therapist to understand the causes and effects of your anxiety.