Lately, I’ve been feeling very off. I know I’ve been talking about what it’s like to live on autopilot, but I really want to go a little deeper into what that actually looks like for me.
For me, it feels like being here, but not fully here. It’s like I’m living my life at a distance—going through the motions without really feeling connected to them. It’s subtle, which makes it harder to explain. Nothing is obviously wrong, but something feels off in a way I can’t quite name—like a quiet internal fog I can’t fully step out of. And for a long time, I didn’t understand what that feeling was—I just knew I wasn’t fully present in my own life.
I’ve felt that way for a long time—empty, absent, hollow. It’s a strange feeling because I’m such an emotional person. But when I’m in this daze, this heavy fog, I don’t feel very much of anything. Everything feels muted. Someone could be telling me something awful, something painful, and my mind just passes it by in an instant—like it never fully sticks. There’s no feeling, no weight, no reaction sitting in my body. It’s not done purposely. It’s just dissociation.
I used to think I was just flighty. Ditzy, maybe. Either way, I didn’t feel good about it. I didn’t like presenting myself to others when I wasn’t fully aware—fully present. It’s embarrassing to be in the middle of a conversation and completely forget what someone is saying as they’re saying it, like the words slip right through me. I’m just… lost.
I’ll sit down to do something simple, like read a book, and realize I’ve reread the same sentence multiple times without absorbing it—like my eyes are moving but nothing is registering. I’ll watch a movie or TV show and not be able to explain what it was about, like it never fully made it into me. And often, I’ll walk into a room and forget why I went there in the first place, standing there in this quiet mental blankness.
Emotionally, it feels like I’m muted. Not sad. Not happy either. Just… distant.
I remember one time a friend and I were chatting about an upcoming trip we had planned. She kept telling me the details—when we’d get into town, when we’d leave, small things like that. But I kept asking her over and over again without even realizing I had already asked. My brain couldn’t hold onto it. I was too far from the moment.
She jokingly called me out for it, but I could tell she was getting frustrated. And I just remember feeling embarrassed afterward—like a sinking feeling in my chest—like I couldn’t trust my own attention, or my own mind in that moment.
After conversations, I would replay everything in my head—not because something went wrong, but because I couldn’t trust what I experienced in the moment. I’d wonder if I seemed off, if I was engaging enough, if I missed something important without realizing it—like I was trying to reconstruct moments I didn’t fully hold onto.
And slowly, that started to shape how I saw myself in relationships. Like I wasn’t fully there for people the way I want to be. Like I was slightly out of sync with everyone else, even when I was trying my best to connect. That disconnect starts to feel like something other people might notice before I even say a word.
It also started to affect how I thought about myself more broadly.
It’s disorienting—feeling present in your life on the outside, but not fully connected to it on the inside. Like I’m doing all the “right” things, but not fully experiencing them the way I should—like life is happening slightly beside me instead of through me. And over time, it turns into this feeling of being behind in your own life.
Like everyone else is moving forward in ways I can’t quite access.
I think it happens when I’ve been overwhelmed for too long—when too much has been happening internally or externally, and something in me pulls back quickly, almost instinctively. And I don’t always notice it while it’s happening. I notice it after.
I still don’t have a perfect way of explaining it yet. But I’m learning not to be so hard on myself for it. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person because I drift sometimes, and I’m learning to stop judging myself for it. For me, it’s about learning how to notice when I’m not fully there—and to try not to abandon myself in the process.
When do you first notice yourself feeling “not fully here”—and what do you usually do in those moments without even realizing it?
“Sometimes the hardest part is not knowing you’ve drifted until you’re already far from yourself.”— Unknown
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