Less than human

I am not certain whether my experiences even match the medical definition of DP/DR, however when trying to put into words what I have been unconsciously doing, "depersonalization of experiences" felt compelling to me, feel free to delete this post if you assess this does not belong here.

In contrast to what the title may indicate, the main intention is not to go on some catastrophising rant about how worthless I am or how terrible I feel. I just wanted to go over some developments that have occured over the past two weeks and perhaps get some insights from others.

That said, indeed starting from 2017, I've felt that I was less than human. In fact since the onset of some early age I can't quite remember, I've contended with fears of losing my value and being discarded, in of course whatever way a young child conceptualizes that. That is a thought that I felt was an exaggeration of things, I mean I knew if I told people this, they would deny it being true. I looked to why I felt that, positing that perhaps I'd felt that the actions I take, the relationships I had, the accomplishments I've made, or even the personality I had felt hollow.

Through academic success however, I thought I could justify my existence because at least if I performed better, my existence wouldn't be obsolete. I suppose this started my framing of thoughts that with improvement, I could make myself "human". Unfortunately my attempts yielded no results due to either a lack of motivation leading to the lack of the goal's realization, or simply success not feeling meaningful.

Anyway, in a brief discussion with a friend, I came to the realization (in short) that we can experience through the lens of own thoughts and emotions, and that this would give our experiences value. Something as simple as that felt like a game changer. The actions I decide to take have suddenly grown more compelling, I did things because I actually WANTED to do them.

This led to another thought though, that being that if I have been living my life without experiencing through my own thoughts and emotions, does this mean that I have been operating at the level of a toddler? Do I have less emotional development than what we generally consider the scum of the Earth, because at least they have integrated their experiences with their own emotions and values to lead to their eventual decisions? Am I in the wrong place and just dumb? This is definitely a positive development as a whole, but this aspect is also a bit worrying. I just discovered this disorder as well, so if you have any other general thoughts, I'm interested to hear as well!