Dissociation?

I'm not really part of the world, of society. I'm just a sort of passive viewer of life, not really engaged with any of it. At most I'll post on an imageboard or talk on IRC, but beyond that I'm nowhere except in a book. And Lately I've felt disassociated from everything. For example, I can't watch/interact with any visual media, be it a movie, show, video game, or an anime due to the fact that not only do the interactions seem contrived but they're also so absurd, they don't feel real in any sense. Everything I see seems like a parody, every person I encounter (online usually) that acts emotionally I'm so surprised by it I feel like it itself is a show, an act, and I can't possibly understand them. I'm slowly losing the ability to connect with people, be it online or in some visual media. My saving grace is books where characters feel the most real, and the subject matter interesting. Why do my books seem more real than what surrounds me? Do you feel as detached from everything as me? It's not "everything is meaningless" as in nihilism but there's just this overwhelming sense of a loss of understanding, of people seemingly completely alien and foreign, where it's just you with your anxiety isolated from any interaction that would give you a kind of human connection, be that online discourse or visual media. I don't know if this is a problem really, or just a concluding state due to the nature of my hikikomori isolation. I've been a hikki for 3 or 4 years now, but this past month something drastically changed for no apparent reason. My medication is stable, there hasn't been any life-changing events, I have money, so I don't know what happened but I'm disconnected. You?

The modern physical world is an illusionary construct to me, detachment is given. I cannot get involved in mainstream society, however i found another bizzare world on top of this one where i feel comfortable. There are people and things out there that are not really part of mainstream life where people like us can blend in and even thrive. I used to be a heavy hikki too so i know how that goes, depression can cause that dissasociation and the real world causes depression.

>>12913 this reminds me a bit of a book I haven't read, but plan to: Simulacra and Simulation according to wikipedia: > Baudrillard claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is a simulation of reality. Moreover, these simulacra are not merely mediations of reality, nor even deceptive mediations of reality; they are not based in a reality nor do they hide a reality, they simply hide that nothing like reality is relevant to our current understanding of our lives. you might like it, it seems to fit your worldview quite well

>>12913 This is what happened to me. It's hard to explain to people, I brought it up last night and people said "did you watch Mean Girls or something?"

>>12913 I have experienced something that seems similar to what you're describing in my past. At the end of the day, though, it was like any of my moods: I don't know where it came from, and I don't know where it went, but it was temporary. I think the work from which this site gets its name deals with these feelings pretty obviously, though, so there's no need to feel like your experience is completely unique to you. It's apparently just one of the many states of mind that a human can end up in. The first Kara no Kyoukai movie touches a bit on how some people will find a sense of detachment distressing while others will find it thrilling. I'm not sure that I necessarily want to contribute to the development of megalomaniacal delusions, but you might get something worthwhile out of trying to understand what could be thrilling about the experience. We are complex individual beings with complex social inclinations. This means that it shouldn't be too surprising if we find our conceptions of the relationship between self and others sliding between detachment and integration without obvious cause. Further, learning to get the most out of both frames of mind when they develop may be useful for a human being. Now that I've said that, I wonder how detached you felt from me while you were reading this. Remember that even this kind of interaction is a legitimate form of contact between you and another mind. There's no reason to think that this kind of contact or the contact between you and the author of a book are less legitimate forms of contact than a face-to-face conversation, so there's no need to be distressed for as long as you can feel connected in these ways...and arguably no need to be distressed if you can't feel connected at all. Well, that's how I see it, anyway. Maybe I didn't address your concerns, but I'm filling in the gaps in your explanation with my own experiences.