Feel so spaced out and distant all the time

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Recently I've been feeling extremely spaced out and foggy. I don't know what's happening to me but it feels like there is a cloud or fog engulfing my brain and preventing me from interacting with the outside world properly. It's such a strange feeling.
It came on very suddenly about a month ago. I remember waking up one day and just feeling this overwhelming sense of dizziness and disconnection. It was extremely scary and I had a panic attack. Ever since then it's been getting progressively worse. However there are times when I feel normal but these are becoming rarer and rarer.

My life is actually becoming a living hell. I can no longer concentrate on the most basic of tasks, my attention span is completely out of whack and my communication skills are even more impeded than they were before. I also can feel my memory getting worse and worse.

and the worst of it is is that I can't tell anyone or seek help. I've just started a degree that requires CRB checks and health screening (including mental health screening) and if I am found to have any serious mental health problems in my recent medical history I fear they won't let me study the degree.

My greatest fear is that I'm in the beginning of some form of psychosis. I haven't experienced any hallucinations or delusions or anything like that but I can't help but feel that this may be the beginning of something particularly nasty.

I guess I'm just clinging onto the hope that someday soon I will wake up and I will feel okay.

Has anybody else got any experience of this and how to get rid of it?

It also could be a depresion.

I had those symptoms in a depression, even together with memory problems when the depression was severe.

But of course theoretically it could also be a beginning psychosis or something else.

Is there no way, you could get checked?
What other symptoms do you experience?
How did these symptoms start?

There is no way I could get checked. If I was doing a course that didn't have a mental health screen I'd do something about it. If it was the beginning of something nasty I definitely wouldn't be able to complete the course.

The main symptoms I've been experiencing recently besides the weird fog are: feeling completely apathetic about everything, sleeping all day, feeling generally fatigued and not really being interested in anything other than lounging about.

I'm not sure how these symptoms started. I've been depressed for years. I'm used to the symptoms I've been having besides the brain fog but the brain fog is like a whole new territory for me.

I just feel like I'm a blank canvas. With nothing to contribute to anything. Life pretty much sucks for me. I suppose I need to get off my arse and stop feeling sorry for myself but these new experiences are making it extremely hard. I don't understand why I have to suffer so much.

There are a number of possible causes.

1. Are you getting enough sleep? If you have been studying/working too much and not sleeping enough, then this can cause the symptoms you have been having, so get more sleep.

2. Depression can often cause such symptoms. You could go to a clinic anonymously--as Mr./Miss Smith to get checked out and get help for that, if that's the problem.

3. Are you on meds of any kind, for any type of health problem. Sometimes meds can cause weird side effects, either when taken alone, or with other meds or booze, or illegal drugs. If you are taking meds, tell the doc about your recent problems. Maybe they can prescribe something else.

4. It might be some form of mental illness. Again, go to a clinic under another name, if you can afford to pay cash, to get checked out for that.

5. There are a number of other non mental health conditions that can cause weird symptoms, so you should have that looked into if none of the other possibles is the answer.

Sleep, medication problems, and depression are the most likely causes of these syptoms, so try getting more rest first, then if you still have a problem talk to your doc about any meds you are on and about depression. The other items listed are less likely, but still possible, so if the first three are not the problem, then you will have to look into the others.

I was once in a simmilar situation.
I had depressions since allready a long time, but suddenly I started to get memory loss and it totaly freaked me out and I also thought that's propably a psychosis. My brother was schizophrenic, and under stress I can develop symptoms close to a psychosis like hearing and seeing thinks but they are still in my haed and more like a dream and sometimes fear that is very close to paranoia, but I still know that it's not true (but on tests for it I still score negative in those times because all the other symptoms are missing). I didn't tell a doctor about my sudden memory loss, eventhought I had a psychiatrist at this time, I was seeing regularly. But he didn't know much about me anyway. But in the end it was really "just" a major depression and my memory came back.
A very heavy depression can even go along with psychotic symptoms and a very heavy depression can also be very nasty. But it just last max. a fiew months, because then the brain switches back to "normal" or "dysthymia" (chronic, mild depression).

If you are having depressions since years and learned to cope with it than it is propably "just" dysthymia and that's "just" the "soft" version of it. Depression also has a totally other demention where you can get temporary memory loss how I experienced it, psychotic symptoms to it and so on. But the good news it, those heavy episoseds are just temporary.

Is there a possibility that you can take an antidepressent or a mood stabalizer?

This could be a big deal. If you are not okay, if you are seriously unwell, then you will have to put off the course. It could mean your life. Please, please, get it checked out. You can't just make it go away. Most health checks are confidential anyway.