Anxious people will often say that sometimes they feel like the world isn't real anymore, or they feel like they're not real anymore. That's an actual anxiety symptom. It's incredibly common, and we call it depersonalization or de-realization. Sometimes you might hear it called DPDR for sure. When you experience depersonalization or de-realization, suddenly either you don't feel quite real anymore, or you feel weird, or you feel detached from your own self. You might look in the mirror and really feel strange about what you see looking back at you, or you might look down at your hands and have a hard time sort of recognizing them, or you might feel like you're detached from your body. When you look around you, the world just seems off, like there's a pain of glass between you and it, and it's not real anymore, and you can't connect to it. Sounds are strange, colors are strange, smells are strange. This is really, really common. It's very scary, and it's very disturbing, but it's also not dangerous. Many anxious people experience this and mistakenly become afraid of that sensation because they interpret it as a sign that they are slipping away, disintegrating, losing themselves, dying, or maybe having a psychotic break or losing their sanity. But that's not what that is. It's just another symptom of anxiety. And down the road we'll talk about it more, but if you are frantically trying to make that go away when it happens, you may actually be making it worse, and then you're learning to be really afraid of the next time it happens, even though it never really hurts you. So that's DPR and a nutshell. It feels really bad, really scary, and really disturbing, but I promise it's not dangerous. You'll be okay.