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Pennkid: How I feel is that I feel that I am in a dream a lot of the time, I get disoriented sometimes. I cant do physical things as good anymore and I get confused a lot. Its really hard for me to concentrate on things in this world and I find that I get lost in my mind a lot of the time, and I can stare at nothing for a long time. Other people will usually be able to tell when you are not right or not all there. I can function right now but only for the main things. The things I cant do are things like work or things where you have to pay attention. I hardly drive anymore either because of it.

That sounds a lot like my first year or so after my break.

I attribute how I felt then to a number of factors. For starters, I wondered if I'd managed to fry my adrenal glands in the previous phase -- my ability to tolerate stress was practically non-existent. I also had very little motivation. I needed to rest a lot but not necessarily sleep a lot. In fact, my sleeping patterns were all over the place. I wouldn't have said I was in a state of psychosis at that point, but the boundaries of reality were a little blurry at times.

In spite of the apparent pointlessness of it all, there was actually a lot going on during that time. For one thing, my body was healing. To do that, it required rest. For another, I was doing a lot of active grieving, and that was neccessary too. That was also the stage when I began earnestly looking for answers for myself, which was also productive because that helped take me forward.