[Nalek]

About 6 months ago, I started to change. I've been dealing with social anxiety for all my life, but it started to slowly dissappear, but that wasn't the only change that happened. As time passed, I started to become less sensible. It started with small things, like not empathising with people, and it eventually lead to a lack of empathy and very shallow emotions. Though this has made it very hard to keep relationships, I've learned how to live with it, and I strictly follow certain rules to avoid harming people that I care about/care about me. Last but not least, the scariest change I'm going through is depersonalization. I have very varied episodes, from feeling that everything is fake to thinking that I'm dead and being scared of finding my own corpse anywhere. They can happen anywhere, but they usually occur at night when I'm alone or if something triggers it (eg. certain types of music). I can cope fairly good with them, but they're still a pain in the ***. I think my brain uses depersonalization and apathy to cope with the anxiety, and though I'm very happy with my life right now as it's not that difficult for me to meet new people or to cope with depersonalization, the episodes are getting worse and I'm scared I'll become even more apathetic and feel nothing. Is there any way I can get my emotions back and 'teach' my brain to cope with anxiety differently? Thank you so much!

[Skeezyks]

Hello Nalek: I'm sorry you're experiencing this difficulty. I'm afraid there's not much I can offer personally with regard to this. However, here's a link to an "Ask the Therapist" article from PC's archives. In this article a therapist replies to someone wrote about having experienced a loss of the ability to feel emotions:

https://psychcentral.com/ask-the-the...gs-for-others/

Likewise, here's a link to another "Ask the Therapist" article where a therapist replies to someone who wrote saying that they feel reality is unreal:

https://psychcentral.com/ask-the-the...ity-is-unreal/

Ultimately, my personal feeling is that this is probably something that would be best explored with the help of a mental health professional. Perhaps some other members, here on PC, will have some similar experiences they can share. I wish you well...

P.S. Here's a link to a third "Ask the Therapist" article wherein a therapist replied to a person who wrote they were experiencing "weird and crazy thoughts and questioning reality." The reply this therapist offered was a bit darker than the two above. But I thought it might be worthwhile to provide you with the link:

https://psychcentral.com/ask-the-the...oning-reality/

I'm curious to know if anything happened 6 months ago that you could possibly attribute to your current loss of feelings? It sounds like you are someone who is pretty stoic already by your description of how you cope. The other thing I would think of is, did you increase a dose of something, or take something new, even herbal supplements? I, too, have social anxiety my whole life, but have had sudden onset of new symptoms that I found had an external cause.