# Have you ever felt that you don't exist?



## SaigeJones (Mar 17, 2008)

Have you ever felt like you didn't exist? I am not referring to physical existence but existence on the level of actually being a "person" with a unique personality, relationships, friends, family, etc. 

Sometimes I feel as if I am not an actual "person". Inside I am empty and I don't have much of an ego anymore. I am in a constant state of repressing my desires, needs, and wants because I don't feel that I am actual person. It feels as if I only exist to eat, sleep and perform other functions that are necessary for survival. Occasionally I use my imagination to build my own fantasy where I can shield myself from the cruel world. 

I spend most of my time being an observer in life rather than a participant. Friends, relationships, ambitions, and goals are not factors in my life. These factors are not apart of my reality and I see them as only being factors that I can observe in others. 

I get my ideal of what it means to be an actual person from others. When I compare myself to others I see drastic differences so I am left to question who am I exactly? 

My life seems so meaningless at times. I feel no need to participate in this civilized society. My whole thought process is different from other individuals and no one can relate to me. Sometimes I fear that others will hate me for being different so I try to hide away as much as possible. 

I do have my likes and dislikes. One of the things I like doing very much is being outside and looking at the sky, trees, people, and cars. At times I become so fixated on these things that it reminds me of just how far away my mind is in relation to the minds of other individuals. But I can't deny some of the things I enjoy because it is what makes me who I am. When I look back on my life I see the faces of people, images of buildings, trees, and skies because those are the only things that were important to me. It seems as if the majority of existence has been about my ability to simply percieve the world around me through seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling. Outside of those basic perceptions I have nothing and at times that can make me severely depressed. 

Can anyone relate?


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## missem (Jan 25, 2008)

Yeah, I get that way sometimes when I'm very depressed; I don't even feel human, just some sort of empty shell that has to keep on going for some reason. I guess the main question is how often do you feel like that? Cause I spent the majority of last year feeling that way, and it caused a lot of mental and emotional damage which I still feel the effects of. Being that it seems to affect you a lot when it happens, you might want to consider getting some help, if possible.


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## gozinsky (Mar 11, 2008)

I can relate to feeling like you don't exist as a person and have no reason to be here. And the emptiness and feeling like you have nothing. I don't know why I feel that way, but it depresses me too.


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## livingnsilence (Feb 4, 2008)

I know what you mean, I slowly started to get like this when I started to get depressed, now it's pretty much a constant thing for me. I describe it more as feeling completely dead even though you are technically alive. Once in a blue moon I snap out of it for just a few seconds and actually feel life, and it's such a great feeling when I get it since I never have it, I just wish it'd stay. I pretty much feel like a robot, just going through the motions like I'm supposed to, but I have no personality, no feelings other than fear and pain.


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## UltraShy (Nov 8, 2003)

I exist. It's almost all I do. What I don't do is live.


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## wootmehver (Oct 18, 2007)

Me, too. I feel like an empty shell waiting for an eternity to become magically filled somehow with the desire to engage with life...waiting for others to reanimate me by making me feel deeply important and valuable to them. I don't feel I'm enough all by myself and sometimes get angry at how "normal" people are so slow to realize my distress. People get acclimated to people with SA and don't bother trying to help them rejoin the "real world." Too much work I guess.

The "New Thought" movement has helped me cope somewhat, the idea that the world is just a huge drama and we are all actors going around following our scripts for the roles we decided to play before we incarnated here. That we came from a place of infinite perfection (the "spirit world") and decided to play with imperfection on planet Earth (the "material world") for the fun of it. That life is like a total immersion movie experience where you have to suspend your disbelief to make it work. And negative emotional states serve that purpose to keep you stuck in it.


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## HoboQueen (Jan 25, 2008)

I've described myself as being a walking corpse. It's not that I don't have a life. It's just that I feel like the person I used to be died a long time ago. So it's like I exist but only through shallow means. There are certain things I know I will never experience. In a way that makes me feel a little less human. 

Despite all of this, I don't feel like my life is meaningless. I have a purpose. Took me 10 years to figure it out but I found it. My purpose makes me happy.


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## JMX (Feb 26, 2008)

Very much so.

Every now and then I think to myself who would attend my funeral, if I were to die this instant, and I can't think of more than a few people outside of my family. I can just erase myself from this world and nobody would really notice or care.


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## Kuromi (Mar 1, 2008)

I can relate to what everyone is saying here.. I'm not gonna restate what they said because they pretty much just said everything that goes through my mind. 

to everyone = :hug


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## livingnsilence (Feb 4, 2008)

JMX said:


> Every now and then I think to myself who would attend my funeral, if I were to die this instant, and I can't think of more than a few people outside of my family. I can just erase myself from this world and nobody would really notice or care.


Not am I only sure I'd not have people com to the funeral, if i died this summer I'm sure my family is the olnly one that would even notice I was dead.


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## lyssado707 (Oct 29, 2004)

Sometimes I feel like more of a freak of nature or something different rather than human. It's just cuz this damn SA deprived me of humanly experiences. Underneath it all I think I'm human. Just a human messed up by a disorder lol.


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## AndyLT (Oct 8, 2007)

This may be off-topic, but yesterday i read about a woman who is somewhat autistic.
She wasn't aware of this for all her life until she was asked to research autism at her work.

That's probably all i wanted to say...


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## beasty (Mar 3, 2004)

I get what your saying. My SA went away when I went from not existing around people to doing so. Before that I was an act. And that is pointless. Now I am real. 
(The indivisible soul ftw).


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## Crowe (Oct 27, 2016)

I actually came here with the hope that someone would have posted a solution, explanation, anything, for this exact thing.


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## One Armed Scissor (Nov 4, 2015)

Sure, I relate to that. Life is meaningless, it's our responsibility to give our own lives meaning. That being said, life in human society does tend to wear people down to the point where one's identity seems to be insignificant. I have felt like that. I try to recognize the ways I contribute meaning to my own existence and how I contribute to the lives of others to try and get past that hopeless feeling.


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## Rollergirl6 (Jun 30, 2016)

You just describe my perception and feelings very accurately! It could be a symptom of social anxiety. Like you I feel like a spectator to my life and the reality that surrounds me. It comes with the horrible thought that I wont be missed by others if I weren't around anymore. You can be as outgoing as possible, the feeling will stay if you are never able to be your true self and maybe love yourself.I think most people with SA don't love themselves not enough or are not aware of what it really means. Our existence shouldn't depend on others, but somehow it does. If you get too disconnected don't hesitate to find a therapy or medication as an option.


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## Allthatjazz (Aug 20, 2018)

SaigeJones said:


> Have you ever felt like you didn't exist? I am not referring to physical existence but existence on the level of actually being a "person" with a unique personality, relationships, friends, family, etc.
> 
> Sometimes I feel as if I am not an actual "person". Inside I am empty and I don't have much of an ego anymore. I am in a constant state of repressing my desires, needs, and wants because I don't feel that I am actual person. It feels as if I only exist to eat, sleep and perform other functions that are necessary for survival. Occasionally I use my imagination to build my own fantasy where I can shield myself from the cruel world.
> 
> ...


 Have you found any solutions


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## Cloudwithout (Aug 28, 2018)

I relate very much. For me, it's a feeling of extreme insignificance- that I don't matter, that the things that I do don't matter. Sometimes this feeling hits when I see acquaintances surpassing me and succeeding in life, getting tons of recognition or an award when I am never recognized for my work- like today. Then I realize just how small I am, and how little I impact anyone else, and how little they notice or value me. I like to hope that I'm paying my dues and that someday it will be my turn, but when I compare myself to others- their accomplishments and abilities and especially their confidence in self-promotion compared to mine- I doubt that I will get there. I see myself getting old and still not being seen or recognized, and my life feels empty and meaningless.

Sometimes I also feel this way when people I've made friendly overtures to move on to "better" friends and leave me behind and go out and have fun with others. Then I feel the same smallness. It makes me feel like despite trying hard and really making the effort to be a friend, no one is interested in me and no one meshes well with my interests and personality. Maybe I'm just different than everyone and I'll never again find my tribe. It's a hollow kind of feeling.

Maybe my experience of this is different than yours, but I can definitely relate to that idea that few people would come to my funeral. While I try and try to be a friendly, kind, and more outgoing person to others, I just haven't received the same in return. I try not to care too much, but it's hard sometimes when all I want is to live large and experience my youth by having fun and making friends. I just want to have a really good time with others in my peer group, and to be treated with kindness, and to have my efforts recognized. I think for me that that hollowness is those needs not being met.


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## Peaceislove (Nov 3, 2015)

SaigeJones said:


> Have you ever felt like you didn't exist? I am not referring to physical existence but existence on the level of actually being a "person" with a unique personality, relationships, friends, family, etc.
> 
> Sometimes I feel as if I am not an actual "person". Inside I am empty and I don't have much of an ego anymore. I am in a constant state of repressing my desires, needs, and wants because I don't feel that I am actual person. It feels as if I only exist to eat, sleep and perform other functions that are necessary for survival. Occasionally I use my imagination to build my own fantasy where I can shield myself from the cruel world.
> 
> ...


yes i have no friends at all


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## OcularZero (May 17, 2017)

I've dealt with that and another similar feeling too. Has been from depression for me: being stripped of emotional range/intensity and energy down to basic functions - and barely doing those. Similarly, situations of deep isolation/loneliness made reality feel less real without anyone to mutually perceive things with; and made me feel like I was fading away into nothing without having anyone to perceive me.



Crowe said:


> I actually came here with the hope that someone would have posted a solution, explanation, anything, for this exact thing.


There may be several different issues contributing to this. And for just one, such as depression, there are many different approaches for recovery. This has mostly reminded me of phenomenological views of depression, though. To compare SaigeJones' description with Thomas Fuchs' phenomenological description of depression:

*1.* Relationships and sense of being



SaigeJones said:


> Have you ever felt like you didn't exist? I am not referring to physical existence but existence on the level of actually being a "person" with a unique personality, relationships, friends, family, etc.
> 
> Sometimes I feel as if I am not an actual "person". Inside I am empty and I don't have much of an ego anymore. I am in a constant state of repressing my desires, needs, and wants because I don't feel that I am actual person. It feels as if I only exist to eat, sleep and perform other functions that are necessary for survival.
> 
> ...


*Thomas Fuchs*


> Since the affective contact to the environment is also essential for our basic sense of reality and belonging to the world, a loss of body resonance always results in a certain degree of derealisation and depersonalisation. Therefore, affective depersonalisation is a core-feature of severe depressive episodes. Patients do not experience sadness, mourning or grief; they rather feel empty, blunt, dull, or rigid. However, there is a special kind of melancholic depression in which depersonalisation is the prominent symptom; in German psychopathology it is called "Entfremdungsdepression" (depersonalised depression). Here the emotional quality of perception is lost completely, objects look blunt or dead, and space seems emptied, as in the following reports:
> 
> "Everything around me seems far away, shady and somehow unreal - like in a strange dream" (own clinic, T.F.).
> 
> ...


___________________

*2.* Relationships and sense of time



SaigeJones said:


> I spend most of my time being an observer in life rather than a participant. Friends, relationships, ambitions, and goals are not factors in my life. These factors are not apart of my reality and I see them as only being factors that I can observe in others.
> 
> [...]
> 
> When I look back on my life I see the faces of people, images of buildings, trees, and skies because those are the only things that were important to me. It seems as if the majority of existence has been about my ability to simply percieve the world around me through seeing, hearing, tasting, and feeling. Outside of those basic perceptions I have nothing and at times that can make me severely depressed.


*Thomas Fuchs*


> The capacity of taking the perspective of others is not only a cognitive feat but depends on a common interaffective sphere that is part of the "bedrock of unquestioned certainties". It provides a foundational, nonrepresentational structure of mutual understanding that underpins our shared view of reality. In delusional depression, however, the loss of the pre-predicative relation to others makes it impossible to take their perspective and to gain distance from oneself, thus forcing the patient to completely equate his self with his current depressed state. This present state means being thrown back upon oneself, feeling rejected and expelled.
> 
> [...]
> 
> ...


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## sick + lonely NEET ShutIn (Aug 26, 2018)

thats exactly how i feel.


i feel like i am slowly degenerating. i even think back at times of life where i still had real wishes, or ambitions or emotions like love. even that seems like millions of years away. in my world nothing really changes.

i am the complete standstill.


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## ShotInTheDark (Nov 4, 2017)

Everyday, everytime. I'm not even sure if I actually know what is it like to actually fully exist like normal people.


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## andy1984 (Aug 18, 2006)

i relate 100%.

when i was with my ex who i loved more than anyone, i used to tell her she makes me feel like a real person. i don't think she really understood that. i wish i could get back to that feeling. i was really functional during that chapter of my life. before and after - a constant feeling of disconnectedness and disability.


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## Shy extrovert (Dec 6, 2017)

I think everyone feels like this because we dont really see ourselves. We dont see how we interact with the world and our thoughts are just the default since they are all we know, so theres no mystery. And mystery is a lot of what we find so captivating about others. Some of us are unaware of our unique mannerisms, i sure was for a while. And i think those mannerisms make your just as much of a person as any idea, belief, or value. Look inside, you must find something that you strongly believe, or are passionate about, or want to do one day. How do you process things? Do you strive for novelty? When i was having these feelings and i told a friend, he was extremely surprised, and it made me feel better when he said the fact that being a robot concerns me does mean i have a personality and what some may consider to be a soul. If you were a mindless atomoton, you wouldnt be worries


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## Persephone The Dread (Aug 28, 2010)

In a sense yeah.


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## Everlily (Sep 14, 2018)

I can relate to your post completely! I don't feel like a human being, more like a ghost. No relationship, no friends, no social circle... All the dreams, wishes and goals have vanished. Just surviving each day, hoping to be really seen and heared someday.


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## rmb1990 (Jan 16, 2015)

I relate 100%. I want to have a life instead of living through others.


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## Mystical95 (Jan 3, 2018)

I've finally found someone and a whole lot of people right here that understands. I usually look at the world around me and people going about their day doing typical things while here I am thinking why am I physically here while I feel like I don't. And often times I question if this world is even real or if it's a dream. Lately I've been feeling that my dreams are reality and reality is the dream. What would people think of themselves and reality if they just took the time to stand where they are and look around them? Right now I'm starting to question everything that stemmed from the question "am I actually existing".


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## Mlt18 (Jun 29, 2016)

Yes. I sometimes wish my body would just die because the way my brain is wired doesn't make me functional enough to even cut it as a human


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## Kittycatt (Dec 7, 2012)

A few times in my life I've felt like I was outside of my body looking around. It's an odd sensation. But I just felt detached for a moment. There's actually a religion that believes life is sort of like a dream. They are "Christian scientists". They believe the world is not real and do not believe in sickness, etc (I'm rusty on the facts)


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## Deaf Mute (Jun 12, 2017)

Yes lol, I can't believe things ended up the way the way they are lmao. :haha I want to be like others, but I can never be like them. I need so much affection to make up for everything that's happened the past 20 years, but I can't get any. I basically need someone to give me all their love and their soul probs, to make up for me destroying myself which is unrealistic. :3 

I don't feel like a real person and I can't relate to the people I meet in person because their lives are so different. They're so "beautiful" and I'm worthless trash, that's why I have so little in me probably.

Hahaha..ahhahhaha..a..ahaa..ahahahahhaa..a..a...ahahahah :laugh:


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## Bojack (Oct 7, 2018)

Yes, I do. I feel invisible most of the time. I don't feel like a human being, I feel I'm a quantity of meaningless organic material in the space.


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## SunshineSam218 (Dec 6, 2013)

Yes, I can relate to how you're feeling. Anytime I get deeply depressed, I sort of feel this way and not able to connect with anyone. My mind tends to wander a lot and my mind races about so many different things. I start to question everything and see's things in a different way. If I ever told anyone what I thought what I was thinking when I felt this way, they'd look at me like I'm crazy or something, so I sort of keep it in pent up inside which isn't good or healthy. My stress levels gets pretty bad too, where I end up getting horrible stomachaches and I'm unable to do anything for myself. Once I get out of this mood, I feel a lot better and able to talk to people once again. 

I think everyone thinks and feels differently when their in this state of mind. There's nothing wrong with you though. Just keep that in mind. Everyone experiences at least once in their lifetime or more. For me anytime I write down what I'm feeling, thinking or have these sort of thoughts, it helps me get so much off of my mind and I'm able to think clearly. Please don't think as if there's something wrong with you though. *safe hugs* I hope things get better for you soon.


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## Suchness (Aug 13, 2011)

I feel like I'm very out of place.


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## harrison (Apr 14, 2012)

Suchness said:


> I feel like I'm very out of place.


How do you mean?


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## WillYouStopDave (Jul 14, 2013)

No. Unfortunately, I have felt like I exist every moment of my life.


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## Suchness (Aug 13, 2011)

harrison said:


> How do you mean?


Like when I'm out in public, I feel alienated because I think I'm the only one who's anxious.


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