Do you ever feel "not real" or robotic?

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I am wondering how many of you ever feel distanced from your body, or if you ever feel "not real" or robotic... or if you ever wonder if you exist or if you are a construct of some other sort. Existential doubt, whether it is something you physically feel or ruminate over mentally.

I do.

also editing to add this link:

http://www.depersonalization-home.com/forum/index.php

A support forum for people who are or feel depersonalized.

Last edited by en_una_isla on 06 Jan 2006, 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yes. i "feel" that i'm not real sometimes. But the real existential inquiry rests in "what is reality?" Another question to ponder is emotions and thinking. which controls which, or are thoughts just feelings transcirbed into ideas. There is a bit of confusion here. I experience the doubt of self on an almost constant basis. Even if my performance contradicts that feeling. So, the detachment is there. But in some ways, logically speaking, i know emotion plays a vital role in decision making.

to err....is human...
so i suppose that we are not robots...

I felt this way a lot when I was in elementary school and now still do.

That state is my "default" state of thinking. I tend to get detached real easily.

BTW: Kind of interesting that, as of the time of this post, no one has said they never felt that way.

That would be because the question is for who has felt that way. Why would someone who hasn't felt that way answer? I haven't felt that way. Often I ruminate that I merely react to stimuli, I don't actively control anything in my life, but not robotic, that I have no control over myself, cause I do.

I really hate it when I look at my hand and it seems alien to me - so familiar and yet so... not mine.

I did once, after downing a lot of Robitussin. I came to the conclusion that I was a beta version of a robot that was intended to emulate a human, but still had quite a few bugs that needed to be worked out.

That really is a very good metaphor for what it feels like to have AS.

I would quite like to be a robot...

yes i always had that feeling. you just know that you're diffrent.

I sometimes get a bit fed up with living inside a walking corpse. Being trapped inside a bag of meat can feel somewhat oppressive.

Yes!! Its sort of like an all the time out of body experience. Kind of like you're standing outside looking in, and barely controlling what is happening.. For example, when I come into work, I am on autopilot. I don't even think about what train I need to catch or where I need to get off, it just happens, since Ive done it so often i the past. I check in every once in a while, but I would say 80% of the time, I am not really here. I can be entranced in some thought about what it would be like to Fly or maybe mentally repeating a song or phrase, and othertimes playing pokemon and completly oblivious to what is going on around me.

I believe that this is probably something that us Aspies aquire throughout life. We subconsiously learn how Hurtful and Cruel the "REALWORLD" can be, and learn to flip the switch to AUTOPILOT, just to avoid as much stress as possible...

I just know that it feels really damn good when I'm in ROBOT MODE.

I prefer to behave unemotional, like a robot almost, so as not to imply anything about whats going on in my head to others. Why? Because that makes people all the more interested in following up on me. Unfortunately this just makes some people more interested in testing my patience.

Oh, and sometimes I imagine waking up as a toddler and realizing that all the years of my life past that have been just one big dream.

I have thought this too; that the world is simply too much and I "shut down."



Not for me. I wish I could snap out of robot mode.

Yes. When I feel that way I sometimes end up behaving in bizarre ways or posting threads that I know will get me flamed or doing other things that are designed to get a reaction and prove that yes, I do exist.

It's hard to explain, but at times I feel almost frantic for some kind of a response or acknowledgement of my existence, even if it is a negative one.

Yep. Probably more than I realize.

This sounds typical of the derealization/depersonalization syndrome of schizophrenia.