![]() I’m even starting to have nights when I get hints of my old self. And my startle reflex has returned! It’s quite exciting anytime something loud makes me jump. Coming from the initial total numbness I couldn’t escape no matter how hard I tried, I now have more true emotions, from tearing up at a friend’s pain to laughing at a movie. I have come to a point that I am getting used to the daily changes in my symptoms: morning DPD, afternoon DPD, and evening DPD. For the sake of all those struggling with this awful disorder, I wish that science begins to lend a helping hand.įortunately, I have hope. DPD can be caused from anything from prolonged stress to trauma to one bad high on marijuana (yes, just one), and the potential symptoms are even more complex and plentiful than the potential causes. The lead singer of the Counting Crows came forward with his story about it, which garnered a blip of attention. I am still baffled by the lack of attention this disorder has received from the research community and the public. I hope you never truly understand what I mean. ![]() It’s hard to explain to someone that your brain feels broken when you sound coherent, but it absolutely feels like your brain is broken. I’ve had extensive medical testing done, to no avail. Because I didn’t know what was happening to me, and because professionals could not seem to get a grasp on it, this was very confusing for everyone involved. A few of the drugs I was given early on severely exacerbated the syndrome. There are few medicinal treatments for DPD, as few clinical trials have been run and those that have been have had conflicting results. I have tried a medication from almost every class of psychotropic drugs, I’ve undergone three forms of neurofeedback, and I’ve done intensive therapy for the issue. While most interventions have somewhat alleviated the intensity of the symptoms, the DPD rages on. I live in a frightening Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray is on mild hallucinogens he never meant to take. Because this is not a psychotic disorder, I retain awareness that all of these perceptions are terribly, horribly wrong. I am hard-pressed to remember what I did in the past few days, and I often don’t feel like it actually happened. Often I feel like I am dreaming or like life itself is not real. It can seem harshly bright, with the figures of people standing out from the background too starkly or it can seem faded together two-dimensionally. For me, the world visually appears, just, wrong. “Derealization” denotes a distinct change in the appearance of reality. In my worst hours, I feel trapped in an invisible bubble, completely numb, unable to reach those I love who are standing right in front of me, unable to access the emotions I once had for them, for myself, for everything. Or I feel separate from who I am, unsure of my reflection, and wondering which part of me is speaking, as though everything is disconnected. I often feel as though I am not alive, or that I am a shadow of my former self, some sort of numb robot, living in everyone else’s world. Both precise and sadly degrading, the term “depersonalization” means to take away one’s sense of self, of being a person. If you’ve ever had a panic attack in which things briefly look unreal or parts of you feel unreal, you have had a glimpse of what someone with DPD experiences all the time. I now experience depersonalization or derealization 24 hours a day. In the past year and a half, my disorder has fluctuated. ![]() Although the symptoms I will describe may sound psychotic, they are not, as the sufferer has complete clarity that the misperceptions are inaccurate. This disorder is thought to be partly a dissociative disorder and partly an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I have been misdiagnosed with everything from bipolar disorder to panic disorder to psychosis until my treatment providers finally agreed that it was the rare condition called depersonalization disorder (DPD). ![]() A month later, I was panicking for hours a day and desperately punching my couch, trapped in a sense of unreality. I was suddenly not myself.ĭuring the eight months after that relationship quickly collapsed and I withdrew from my internship, I pieced my life back together and graduated. Though I was very anxious, I was somehow managing to keep it all together. I was on the road to graduating with a master’s degree in social work from the University of Southern California, I was in the midst of a prestigious internship, and my long-term boyfriend was moving in. But a year and a half ago, a new one blindsided me. My mental health issues, including depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, date back to when I was four and crying to my mom that life seemed pointless. ![]()
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