So hey guys, I'm kinda new here, so pardon me if this isn't the right place for this post Last winter I was diagnosed with cotard's syndrome, which, is quite bizarre. If you're unfamiliar here's a short blurb from wikipedia "The Cotard delusion (also Cotard's syndrome and walking corpse syndrome) is a rare mental illness in which the affected person holds the delusional belief that he or she is already dead, does not exist, is putrefying or has lost his or her blood or internal organs" Even getting the diagnosis was a major pain in the ass, as this is a pretty rare condition I'm at a point now in therapy and treatment where my treatment team has just sort of thrown up their hands in trying to help me. No one is really sure what to do to help and I'm feeling pretty stuck in a rut. So I guess like, advice maybe? Or something? I kinda just wanted to vent about it too. Nothing seems to help or alleviate symptoms and I'm kind of at a loss. My life is spiralling out of control and I'm kinda up the creek here
I don't know much about cotards but, i'm sure it's difficult for you. would it help to talk about your experiences? like when it started/what it's like/etc? We'll listen. kintsugi's good at listening. it's a pretty safe place.
Its one of the weirdest feelings ever. You wake up every morning not feeling like youre alive, it's really bizarre. it's been going on for almost ten years now - it comes with near constant dissociation and weirdness and I'm not really sure how to carry on anymore. Everything feels off, if that makes sense, off in a way that can't ever be remedied.
I've said it before, but I hope you find something which can help. There are some folks here who are really experienced at dealing with mental illness, and maybe somebody will have some useful advice?
Maybe you already have it covered, but is there any self-care stuff that you don't do enough because you feel dead? There's already a bunch of advice threads people have made about getting enough food or sleep, if that's a problem for you. does it cause executive dysfunction? I don't think we have a thread about managing it so much as just complaining, but there's probably a few resources floating around somewhere. do you already have tools to deal with dissociation? (I hope this isn't condescending, I'm bad at advice and I don't know much about this condition, ahhhh)
(Stop me if i'm being rude or stupid) Is there anything that makes you feel 'alive' even a small thing? maybe only for a second?
My self-care habits are really lacking, I don't really eat or sleep much and my executive dysfunction is pretty bad. As far as dealing with dissociation goes, I'm pretty miserable at it. You aren't being condescending at all btw, thanks for the reply! You aren't being rude or stupid, don't worry. Honestly I've been coping by drinking a lot. it doesn't make me feel alive per se but it makes me feel SOMETHING ya know?
this is a thing I've found v interesting since like elementary school. don't even remember how I found out about it then but I did and a fascination was born is it ok if I ask a few questions about treatment?
Hey, so I live with delusions too. A delusion I sometimes I have is that I think I'm already dead or have died and that this life I'm experiencing is the last rush of DMT to the brain.. at least I think it's called DMT. I can't be fussed looking it up. Luckily for me, I have an amazing support system (looking at you @seebs and @Beldaran) who remind me that it's my "traitor brain" tricking me again. I use a lot of logic too, reality-testing. If you have people you trust you can ask them "hey, am I alive?" and they can tell you one way or the other. I don't know if this helps or not. Best of luck to you!
The thread necromancy jokes have never been more appropriate. So anyway, hi, I'm pretty sure I died about two years ago and am kind of in Hell right now? It's just. A thing, I guess.
Oh wow, I was kinda assuming the usual Pop-Psych Bullshit™ was gonna happen when looking stuff up about Cotard's syndrome/delusion, but this is way worse than I thought. The amount of misinformation (whether or not I actually have outright clinical Cotard's, more concrete info I found definitely disproves a lot of bullshit Tumblr claims) is just incredible. Allegedly, people with Cotard's have the brain function of a person who should be vegetative ("Which means really they might be actual ghosts possessing their own corpses! Makes U Think"), and they don't have any memories from before getting it (that's apparently originating from some YA book, we all know just how much authors of those like research), and-- Ah, apparently it got featured on Hannibal. Everything makes sense now. Anyway, it's apparently much more general than what I had initially heard, and my main delusion-type things for the last... Idk, two years (so basically since I killed myself) apparently count. Namely, "I'm a fictional character" --> "The real Alix died in 2016 and I'm a replacement" --> Current thing as above, which all fit the general nihilistic category. However, the earlier stuff felt more like magical thinking, while this is much more like a delusion in that, while on a rational level I understand this is probably one, I can't stop believing it. Not a huge fan of possibly having a psychotic disorder or brain damage (since, ironically enough, these started when I got put on antipsychotics, which had ridiculously strong overall side effects on me), but hey, since this is gonna apparently be a thing, I might as well find some resources about it.
