The day I lost all emotions
Hello. I'd like to share my experience because I think venting would help a lil. Befor I start, I'd like to share what I've been feeling. Past few months I've lost the ability to feel emotion and that was very traumatic. I've mostly recovered from the anxiety of it but once I lost all emotions and desire to socialize, I've been hyper aware of my mental state and constantly am in reflection of myself, and double down on it when I talk to others.
It's a long, but complete story. So without further ado, here's my story on how I ended up in this mess.
I use to be a sucker for love, would do anything just to be loved. I wasn't the most attractive before hand because I was overweight and didn't have any social experience. But then I got vrchat and it's like a switch went off, I started losing weight so I can be cute like my avatars, and the constant socializing helped me mature and learn to be social. Things climaxed when for the first time, others had feelings for me, two people. I caught feelings for them in return quickly but realized it would be a situationship at best because of compatibility issues so I didn't persue. Additionally I developed feelings for another friend but she's still doing gender discovery (amab and she's still unsure of herself). I haven't seen her irl and I don't want to stress her especially since she's still working on herself, so again, I didn't persue.
I was biking home from a doctors appointment and realized I had no interest in love anymore. It caused me to freak out a lil bit, but as the days continued, I noticed I was feeling emotions less and less and was no longer interested in socializing. I spiraled and was dissociating more and more. Every day I'd wake up and do a self mental check to see if I was the old me again. Spent an entire week in third person perspective, until finally, nothing felt real. Everyone felt like NPCs including myself.
I've largely recovered from that state, but even as I write this, I'm constantly thinking on how others would read this. I found a post here that comes to mind that best highlights how I feel. https://www.reddit.com/r/dpdr/comments/15l9ff6/hyper_awarenessdpdr_need_ppl_to_relate/
Eventually I went to see the doctor to get lab work done, read up that low testosterone could explain my emotional numbness and depersonalization. The results came back with my testosterone at 1327 when the upper limit for my age was 916 ng/dl. Everything else mostly came back clean. High testosterone for sure can cause issues, I'm having my estrogen and cortisol checked next.
I also have been doing some gender questioning myself. I plan on eventually trying hrt short term and see how I feel. Especially because recently I've noticed my entire life I've been depersonalizing to a much lesser degree, a common symptom of trans people.
Finally we catch up to yesterday, when I got high, I felt my emotions coming back completely when hanging out with a friend. I was able to feel love again and was crying tears of joy until my emotions went numb again 10 minutes later. I tried getting back to that point again to no avail. Now my mind is hyper aware of that mental state and won't stop thinking about it