I had never heard of depersonalization disorder until watching the very disturbing film Tarnation a few years ago. This is an incredibly difficult condition to live with, as evidenced by the following quotes from DreamChild. She has had a lifetime of dealing with depersonalization, derealization, anxiety and depression, yet is able to describe her ordeal with amazing courage and clarity.
I feel at all times that I am dreaming, or more specifically that I am half-awake, incapable of pulling myself into reality. When interacting with others, I feel as though they are on the other side of an invisible barrier or pane of glass. I feel I can’t connect with them, not 100%, though I hear, see, and understand what they are doing and saying. And I of course appear “perfectly fine” and “normal” to those interacting with me.
My arms often feel they are not attached to my body, as though they are not mine. It is as though I have phantom limbs that I can see. This is most disconcerting as one’s arms and hands are so crucial to so many daily activities. This sensation waxes and wanes and is exacerbated by various kinds of stress.
I frequently feel certain areas of my body are “numb” or have “gone to sleep.” Everyone is familiar with sitting on one’s foot, cutting off the circulation and having it “fall asleep.” I have somewhat similar sensations that occur mostly on my right side, on my cheek and on my arm — but again I don’t believe these parts of my body have actually gone numb.
The numbness feels as though it only reaches down about a few millimeters into my skin. I will sometimes rub these areas to “wake them up” knowing very well this is again some irritating somatic symptom I have no control over though I know I shouldn’t feel that way.
When my DP is at it’s worst, I don’t want to move as it feels so odd, my body is not mine, I actually can’t feel my body, it feels nonexistent — it is though I am “merely a pair of eyes” and nothing more.
I talk in a whisper as I feel my voice is not mine. The world presses against my face and my face has a burning sensation. I feel as though I am only a thought — the only thought in existence. The world exists only in my own mind. I keep asking, “Who am I? Why am I here?” Though my “reality testing” is always intact; if someone asked me my name, where I was, what year it was, etc., I would be able to answer those questions. I haven’t “lost my mind,” I have “lost my sense of Self.”
I have obsessive thoughts about my existence; who am I? why am I here? what is this “lump of flesh” that is “Me”? Another DP sufferer once described this very well as a “stinging existential angst.” But this is not a philosophical, intellectual exercise (such as a Sartre-like discussion re: the nature of “being”). This is endless questioning about the nature of my very existence, and the thoughts seem to come in tandem with my perceptual distortions.
I feel as though my Self has “pulled back into my body,” that my Self does not “fill me out to my skin.” I literally feel that when touching something, I can feel it, yet feel it from a distance as I am removed from myself, or stuck too far inside myself.
Note, at no time do I actually believe these feelings are real. I know I shouldn’t feel the way I do; I want these horrible sensations to go away. In psychiatric terminology my “reality testing is intact,” I have “insight” into what’s happening to me and I know it shouldn’t be happening. I am not delusional or psychotic in any way.
Continue reading more of her incredible story here.
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My first degree is in psych and I agree w/ you, this is really quite an amazing phenomenon.
I just added you to my feed aggregator! And since it’s a slow day at work, maybe I will update my blogroll, too.
yes it is true.
I am a 22/f and I have the same thing… I know it because what you’re describing sounds like the very experience i’ve been having and the very words i have been writing about in my journal. I have suffered from anxiety and panic for 2 years now, and they put me on these antidepressants about a month ago to help the stuff go away and because lately there have been a lot of life stresses present for me. I was unawares as to how else to handle the situation besides medication until i read this book on CBT, which is all fine and dandy. I just wish someone would have told me about CBT and other options sooner b/c now i’m taking off the pills, i have this depersonalization and derealization sensation worse than ever. I had experienced it briefly through the worst of the anxiety, but never like this. It is constant for me right now. That “lump of flesh”–yeah.. I can totally relate. Especially when I wake up in the morning. The people I know aren’t even real to me. It hurts so bad to feel so detached, knowing that once I was in this “flow of life” but now I feel like I’ve been derailed, and that my entire life up until recently has been a dream. OR that when i dream, my dreams feel more normal and in synch than when i am awake. To anyone, this would sound contradictory but to someone who is experiencing these things I guarantee it is not some philosophical exercise… It’s just plain screwy! I have suicidal ideation, and though the sense of living and death doesn’t really phase me anymore and makes me feel a bit apathetic and indifferent, it, ironically enough, it scares the living you know what out of me. I have horrible raging fits around night time, because that is when gets to be the worst, and now that i’ve been off these drugs for about 2 weeks, i begin to wonder if this isn’t withdrawls or if feeling will ever cease or if i’m ever going to get back into that “dream,” or whatever it was, where everything was essentially “connected” and i didn’t feel so estranged with my environment. It seems when i can distract myself with books, tv, or exercise, things are at their best and i’m not feeling this way. However if i’m in a crowded room, if people are still, or if things are still, or if I’m with a lot of people, it goes from bad to worse. Is there any relief from this???????
@ Maggie: My heart goes out to you. I have had my own experiences with this condition, but I’m not sure that mine has ever been as severe as what you are describing.
My own problems with this started after my bad experience with marijuana (which I’ve also written about), and left me in a surreal, dream-like state for several weeks. I had panic attacks constantly, to the point that I would start blacking out. I could literally watch my field of vision narrow down to a small circle and my ears would ring. My problems with this and panic disorder have gradually lessened to the point that I seldom notice either one, but it’s taken over 10 years.
Although I sometimes get a terrible sensation of disconnectedness for no reason, I seem to have most of my problems at night while driving. I start feeling like the road is two-dimensional and that I’m playing a video game instead of actually steering a car. That feeling often sends me into panic mode, where I feel like I’m going to have to pull over or have an anxiety attack. It’s quite embarrassing when anyone besides my partner is in the car.
I was originally placed on Paxil, an antidepressant that is really good for panic disorder. I don’t like taking medication, so I probably took it for only a year or so. It did help and my life has become as normal as is probably possible.
It sounds like you have a really good idea of how you’re feeling, so just talk to someone about it - whether it’s a friend, a doctor, or God. For what it’s worth, I’ve often found comfort in the words from Psalm 23 when it says, “He restoreth my soul.”
I believe that everything happens to us for a reason and that we usually don’t see what that reason is until later in life, so hang in there! I’ll be praying for you.
thank you Brian, for your words of encouragement.
I started having feelings of deja vu, about 4 years ago. Then, they turned into feelings of terror for no reason. I paid close attention, and soon realized that if I remembered something I’d dreamed last night, I would be overcome by the terror — heart pounding, nauseated, hot and cold tingles all over, and unreasonable terror.
The fear had nothing whatsoever to do with what I had dreamed. It had to do with the REMEMBERING the dream. I’ve had that for about 4 years, and tried various anti-depressants, etc. for it, without much success. Finally, I took myself off the medications and started taking an herb called St. John’s Wort. The panic attacks stopped within 2 or 3 days — completely.
Within the past 7 months, however, I have had another severe emotional shock, and just within the past 3 months have started feeling as if things around me aren’t real. I’ll be sitting talking with someone, and all of a sudden, it’s as if I’m seeing the room through a filter of some kind, and everything looks as it does in a dream. And sometimes when I’m riding in a car, somewhere, I’ll look out the window, and the landscape doesn’t look real. It looks as if it’s painted or something.
Anyway, I’ve been preparing myself to be hauled off to a rubber room somewhere, because I decided I had to be going totally insane, or else I had a brain tumor. An MRI showed a spike in my frontal lobe, so the MDs decided I was having fugue states caused by that, and my therapist told me, for the first time, about Derealization Disorder. In all my years, I had never heard of it, nor had I heard of people who had the same symptoms I have.
I came home and immediately looked it up on the internet, and I’m sitting here with tears streaming down my face, because I’M NOT ALONE!!! There are others who understand what I’m going through. It’s a revelation to me, and now I have an explanation for so much. The relief is overwhelming. Now, I can research it, and go forward with some kind of healing process.
Thank you all for posting, and may we all find health and peace very, very soon!
I had my first panic attack when I was 12 years old. That’s 46 years ago. The Dr. had no clue what I was going through nor did he have a name for it. He blamed on my watching too many episodes of The Twilight Zone and told my mother to have me take a nap everyday.
It got worse in my 20’s. I was living in a different area and this Dr. gave me valium and elavil. I certainly didn’t have the severe depersonalization that DreamChild had but I remember feeling disconnected to my body. I never even bothered telling the Dr. because I just didn’t think he would understand so I kept it to myself. Sometimes I felt as if my face wasn’t part of my body. I just couldn’t feel it. I stayed on the elavil for a couple of weeks then had the worse panic attack of my life. In my mind I blamed it on the elavil and weaned myself off of it and only took the valium during bad episodes of panic. I was also smoking pot and got so paranoid from it I had to stop that too.
In my thirties I had children and that helped. I guess because it took the focus off myself. I had them to think about. I also read a book called “Peace from Nervous Suffering” by Claire Weeks which described all the feelings I was having. That book saved me. I finally understood what was happening to me.
Now I am in my late 50’s and on a beta blocker which for some reason has stopped my panic attacks but a few years ago (when I found my son was a heroin addict) I became depressed and didn’t even know it. My sister and daughter convinced me to see a Dr. Now I am on Zoloft and seeing a therapist and for the first time in a long time, I am feeling really good. During all this time I became a food addict and got up to 344 pounds. I have lost almost 70 pounds in the past year.
I live on Cape Cod and drove myself over the bridge for the first time in 25 years a month ago. Driving out of my comfort zone of Falmouth gave me severe panic attacks. I was a danger to everyone because the road seemed to move around a lot.
So for 46 years I’ve been going through all of this but I improve everyday. Believe it or not blogging has helped me a lot. It is so therapeutic for me.
Brian, I love your blog. I am a friend of Wendy’s. Her son and my son grew up together and Wendy and my sister worked together for many years and are best friends. Moonbeam is one of my best blogging friends along with many others. Blogging friends are perfect for me–you don’t have to clean your house for them because they don’t visit you, you don’t have to cook for them and if you get sick of them, you just turn off your computer.
@ Syzyx: I am so glad you found this just when you needed to. You are definitely NOT alone!
I’ve heard great things about St. John’s Wort, but I didn’t realize that it could stop panic attacks. I had a terrible problem with them several years ago, but haven’t had a bad one in quite some time, thank God.
@ joanharvest: I’m so sorry that you’ve had to battle these things your whole life, but it sounds like you are getting a handle on things and changing your life for the better. Congratulations on having the willpower and the courage to move outside your “comfort zone!”
I remember you from Wendy’s blog, too. Isn’t she fantastic? I absolutely love what you said at the end about blogging friends!
not sure what i have. i took the DES (Dissassociation Test) in during a hurried visit to my therapist. Not quite sure it’s what I have, but do identify with some of the symptoms. The derealization i have is usually upon waking, following a nocturnal panic attack. i was diagnosed with sleep apnea. wonder if there’s a correlation. anyone have any info on that?
i am a 23yr old male and one day woke up to find i was in some sort of matrix kind of world form everyone else. Though i could talk to my friends and family it feels like im on the outside looking in. Everything around me just doesn’t seem to be real. i went to my local GP and she told me that i was suffering from anxiety but i didn’t really believe it as all i was doing was questioning myself whether or not everything around me was real. So i decided to look this up online and came across a website http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk, i then found out about de-realization and what it meant. i could of cried as it felt that i was the not only person who was suffering but it turned out that there were many more and i didn’t feel alone anymore. On reading through this website i found comfort from the fact that it told me to embrace my fear and that its just your minds way of telling you that its tired. Everytime that i feel that things around me are not real i tell myself two words ‘EMBRACE IT’ whats the worst that could happen. i hope that everyone who suffers from this manages to find their own way of coping with it, my heart goes out to you all, take care
This is truly amazing. I can’t believe i’ve been able to find people that can so truly relate. I feel like I was born an anxious person - maybe just because i’ve had it for long. But, nothing as bad as i’ve been feeling for the past couple of months. Syzyx - I can’t even tell you how similiar our stories sound. It started one day I kept having flashbacks to dreams I had had and it totally freaked me out and gave me my 1st panic attack in a long time. That’s also where the depersonalization started. Just always feeling like things don’t look right or don’t feel right. Constant state of worry - about feeling this way or having another attack. I’m trying to still live my life as normal as possible but it’s always there. Amazingly, when i’m out or with friends - i’m fine. As soon as i’m distracted by something - I don’t worry about it. Anyway, i’ve started seeing a therapist and hoping some audiobooks (Pass through Panic by Claire Weekes) will help. I’ve also been considering St. John’s Wort - not a big fan of pills but at this point - i’ll try anything. I’m frustrated and upset and confused but - i’m trying to be positive. I tell myself i’m not losing it…it’s just exaggerated thoughts caused by too much anxiety, panic and stress. Long story short - I can sympathize and would LOVE to talk anytime.
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