# Is this depersonalization?



## Sheena (Aug 13, 2006)

For me it started 6 years ago, I had already being feeling unwell, which I had forgotten at one point but then I saw in my diary I said I was scared of going nuts. At that time I was in a highly stressing period exam but it's during vacations that it all started. I think I was outside, fairly depressed, and suddenly blank, I just didn't know what to think or even just how to think... Then, it all started, I felt empty and had tons of existential questions coming to my mind, is all of this real? What is it that makes me be someone? What is it that makes people different? Are the world and people real? And I've had to find answers to these questions one after the other for my angst to go.
Later I would sometime awoke with this thought in my mind: "Oh true... I am someone". As if I had just been part of a whole and suddenly born. As if it was just hard for me to simply be someone.
I don't like to talk about it, now I just keep myself busy and try not to think about these things.
I also had some spatial problems, feeling the world wasn't straight, a kind of vertigo, and the sky weighing.
Then I developped OCDs, not that I thought something wrong would happen to me if I didn't do such or such thing but I just had panic attacks if I didn't do them.
Most of them now are in speech/thoughts/reading as when I started to no longer know what to think I just mentally phrased what I was doing and then it became compulsive to.
I went to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with depression, then as the medication didn't work and as, though I had spent hours explaining her how I felt, she thought I heard voices because I had told her I mentally phrased what I was doing, she decided that I was schizophrene, which she hadn't told me just saying that as the anti-depressants didn't work she'd give me stronger medication, but my parents told me about it later. So she gave me Zyprexa, which had no effect either but making me take 25 Kg. I moved four years ago and haven't gone to see any psychiatrist since, I just got a bit tired to talk for hours and that the only thing who changed was my weight and I haven't been able to loose this weight since.
I had asked her, as I had looked to see what I could have, if it couldn't be depersonalization and she told me it wasn't that at all. However, I feel that it looks like that.
So, I would like to have some opinions on whether this could be what I am suffering from. Thanks in advance, hoping I don't sound weird. : )


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## Don_Esporian (Aug 14, 2006)

I think it?s safe to say that you do have DP.


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## Sheena (Aug 13, 2006)

Ok, thanks. I'm angry at this psychiatrist who made me take 25 Kg (55 pounds!) just because she wasn't able to understand what I had. Not only did she decide that I had schizophrene troubles when it is apparently not that but she told me: "No, that's not that at all" when I talked to her about depersonalization. It was a free service but still, they should be careful about what they do. I had enough to be concerned about without being concerned about my weight. She had told me though that I'd take weight but I just laughed as I was used to feed my face without taking weight. Unfortunately I did take some, going from 130 pounds to 185 pounds and now having a really hard time finding clothing at my size.
I was still worried about her saying I had schizophrenia, though I don't hear voices, nor have hallucinations nor believe people want to kill me and would think it would be hard for a schizophrene to spend 4 years without medication, but you have reassured me. Thanks. : )


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## stillbornsavior (Aug 14, 2006)

i'm not exactly sure what it is that I am experiencing, but from what i've read depersonalization fits the bill. I am trying to conjure the words but all that is coming forth is a chaotic jumble of thought. Every day feels like the same day to me. Time moves neither forward or back for me, I don't sense any type of growing, almost as if my mind and it's experiences are either at max capacity or has no desire to expand. It's all a blur, and bad memories do the majority of the occupation of my consciousness, whether I like it or not. I spend most days avoiding contact with other humans, even family. When I need to approach anyone with even the simplest request, i feel deep fear of rejection and humiliation before and throughout the encounter. I don't "feel" love or friendship, I know what it is supposed to be but the ideas are foreign to me, as are the ideas of "family", "community", "hope", "contentedness", "satisfaction", "pride", and the like. I suppose being normal is to know these things but even when presented with the opportunity, which I am conscious enough to recognize, I do not experience these emotions. Family gatherings and nights out with "friends" are nerve-wracking to me. When I am alone, isolation is comforting and I feel almost a connection of myself with a universal spirit. Not a god, I know such things are nonsense, but I realize that I am one with infinity, this universe has existed eons before me and i will soon perish and become one with it's future. there is no human personality in that realization. life on this earth, among these creatures, in this body, it is all a facade to me, a moving storybook to distract me from my own consciousness. At times, I feel the desperate want to be ignorant of facts and of my own thoughts. I want to feel the urge to spend my money on "nice" clothes and go out at night and flirt and do the things that people my age do, the human rituals of courtship and mating, the whole thing. But I am detached from that life and I don't know what to do with myself now that I live inside my own head. College is something I "should" be focusing on, but that is meaningless to me. I have a talent for art that amazes artists twice my age but I have no desire to do anything with it in this mentally superficial society. Nothing outside of me has any substance or importance in this mind and even typing this, i feel like i'm just shouting into nothing. I want someone to relate to, I need someone to talk to so that I can know I'm not going crazy. I'm 21 and I understand that I could be doing so much with myself right now, there are opportunities for distraction out there but i cannot ignore the fear and force myself to interact with a society I don't relate to. Maybe I just need advice, or a friend, or someone who can tell me that feeling this way will pass, because everyone I know is starting to think that I am losing my mind with all the questions and advice that I request of them. Psychotic things like "Describe my personality to me." and "Do I seem like the same Jordan from yesterday?". I am intelligent, talented, healthy, but it doesn't matter at all if I spend everyday mulling over these thoughts and staying up every night to do the same. I just want it to end, one way or another. Help?


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## Vargas (Apr 26, 2006)

Sheena,

I've got a bachelor's in psychology, and have suffered from DP and the same existensial questions, and so I have a very strong grip on what is going on. I've been to a counselor and described my symptoms, telling her I thought it was DP, and her relpy was "Oh, well there's no such thing as depersonalization disorder...depersonalization is a symptom, but I really don't think it is a disorder..." I slapped my forehead and asked her to look through the DSM, a psychiatric book which lists psychological disorders. After flipping through it she finds it and says, "Oh wow, I guess it is a disorder..." True story. Had a master's degree and everything. And yes, I've gone to the campus doctor, only to be prescribed anti-depressive medication.

I think psychologists and psychiatrists would be the people to go to.

You know it's funny...when I got first DP (drug induced, about 8 months ago) I had some perceptual symptoms, like things looking off and places feeling unfamiliar, but only recently have I started having the existential questions. Frankly I still wonder if I have DP at all...sometimes I'll feel a little out of it, but generally I feel like I'm in my body. I don't know whether the constant questioning of reality is a part of the DP or not. Questions like, "What makes me me and that person him?" Thougts like "Oh man, my loved ones are completely different people than me, and so I don't really love them, or can't, because love is only chemicals in my head! Help me!" Bizarre thoughts that I understood and acknowledged before, but now kind of get to me. Two weeks ago is when the perceptual symptoms started to subside and these questions started. Last week, interestingly, was very good for me...with each passing day I got better and better. That weekend I was a little depressed but for the most part I'm recovering, and I really feel it is a phase.

Immerse yourself in life. You are so interested in the details of what life and reality are that you are missing the big picture. Humans were never meant to break every thought and idea down into it's most rudimentary components...at least not the happy humans. Be content with what you know and understand that you exist whether or not you realize it. Whether you are alive, dead, asleep, happy, sad, depersonalized or perfectly normal, the Universe is unfolding as it should.

Peace out and good luck. PM me if you want to talk, know that I understand the questions you are asking. Maybe not the answers, but the questions are old hat for me.


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## Sheena (Aug 13, 2006)

Jordan, I understand your feelings as I lived that too in the beginning and even after all this time I still had somewhere this feeling of shooting into nothing when asking myself if it was depersonalization that I had. Also anyway I prefer to avoid thinking about it. I prefer to let all these anguishing moments behind me and I'm not so happy to say I've been living with it for 6 years as I don't want to depress others. But tg, most others seem to get rid of it quicklier than me I wish I could too. I manage to live normally but this feeling of insecurity is still there.
What I clung to at the hardest moments was love, it was the only thing I was still sure of, it was a bit "I love so I am". I do think that love helps a lot.
I don't know if you've wondered about it too but one of my first angst was: "Who really knows who I am?". I just felt like the world was a big hypocrisy and we were all just very lonely in fact as people didn't seem to see who I really was and maybe they were different from who I thought they were.

It must be hard at college, I was studying too when it started, thanks God I had already done two years and managed to do the two following years and graduate. I still wonder how I did in the state I was in as I had panic attacks for unimportant things.

But on the contrary at first I couldn't stand being alone, I regressed a bit needing a lot of presence beside me and my parents.

I wish I could help you better, my medicine was love. These last months unfortunately I've been lacking it why I am completely depressed. I've become very dependent on love and we're in an individualist society so it's hard.

How did it start for you? For me it wasn't at all drug related, rather stress and depression related, like a nervous breakdown, the bottom of my depression.

Thanks Vargas , I wish I had had a book to show this psychiatrist maybe she would have changed her mind too lol. Probably she wasn't familiar with it.

I think I may have wondered too about love but still as I told Jordan love was one of the few things I was still sure of at one point.

Many of us seem to have had the same questioning but yes I suppose it's a time at which we start to dissect everything. For me it has been long now, six years, so now, these questions are behind me but I still have this feeling of insecurity. I am actually not sure it will ever go but I hope and go on.


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

sheena,

it definitely sounds like depersonalization disorder to me. and your experiences with psychologists/psychiatrists is not uncommon. i was originally diagnosed with clinical depression, but fortunately my psychiatrist was astute enough to rule out schizophrenia. apparently depersonalization can be a symptom of schizophrenia, but you need to be showing a lot of the other symptoms of schizophrenia like the ones you mentioned (e.g. paranoia, hearing voices, hallucinations etc.). unfortunately, too many doctors in general don't seem to know what they're doing. they haven't read a book about their area of "expertise" since they were in school. and if they never read anything about depersonalization disorder while they were in school, then they just think it is a symptom of anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, etc.... sadly, even the mayo clinic apparently seems convinced it is merely a symptom of anxiety disorder.

it is definitely of a fabric with depression and/or anxiety for a lot of people. for me, i started with symptoms of depersonalization and it was these feelings that triggered anxiety and depression in me. the zoloft they put me on helped the depression, but it did nothing for my depersonalization.

have you read dr. simeon's "feeling unreal"? it's not going to provide you with a magic "cure." and in many ways it is a frustrating read because it shows how little research has been done on this disorder compared with other psychological disorders. but it will help you understand the disorder better and it will be a good book to take with you to a psychiatrist/psychologist. also, check out http://www.issd.org if you want to find a doctor that specializes in dissociative disorders like depersonalization. they also probably won't provide a quick fix, but at least they won't tell you that you have some disorder that you don't and put you on anti-psychotic drugs for schizophrenia.

i fully understand what you mean about "i love so i am." this is a fundamental principle for me, because i think most people who have suffered from depersonalization know that descartes "i think, therefore i am" is a load of unhelpful crap. but love, especially the purer it is and the less selfish it is, can really establish a sense of being. of course, maybe this is why it is the central tenet of many religions. i try to channel it into a conscious love of all of nature and of all mankind. that way i don't fall into an obsessive need to always be with my wife or parents in order to have a sense of sanity. but it's certainly not always easy to do this.


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## Sheena (Aug 13, 2006)

Yes, I was diagnozed with depression too at first but as the anti-depressants didn't work she tried schizophrenia. God knows what she would have tried next.
After thinking about it I think she might have concluded I had schizophrenia because I told her I had problems with my own thoughts but I didn't mean I felt someone was talking to me, it's just that I felt so empty that I didn't feel much the power to think.
It doesn't motivate me much to go see a psy to think I have talked hours and hours to this woman about this while I just try to go on and forget about it for her not to understand in the end.
And thanks, maybe I'll read this book (if I can save the money for that but maybe it could help me).


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## Sheena (Aug 13, 2006)

I think her bad diagnose may be because of such definitions: http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Dep ... order.html

My depersonalization has never really been in feeling outside of my body just all the questionning but some problems with my own image too.
It was: how is it that I am, what makes me me, in what are we all different, how can I be when I don't feel this power? It was not much physical mainly mental, a fear of my own being and the being of others, life in general.


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

obviously, i'm not a doctor, but i thought i'd pass this on that i learned from simeon's book.

1) there are many different manifestations of dp/dr. some people have extreme anxiety, others don't. some people have extreme physical symptoms, others don't. some people have obsessive existential questionings (like you and me), others don't. i often feel somewhat like i am alienated from my body, or like it too isn't real, but i've never felt "out" of my body, for example.

2) there definitely is a link in dp/dr with the functioning of the temporal lobe and its interaction with the occipital and parietal lobes. this area of the brain has to do with sensory processing, but it also has to do with emotional memory. perhaps in your case sensory processing is largely intact (thus, not affecting your sense of being in your body) but the emotional memory is impaired. simeon's book suggests that this impairment of emotional memory is what allows dp sufferers to intellectually recognize our surroundings and cognitively function while feeling like things seem bizarre/foreign/odd. everything is still perceived, it is just not matched up with an appropriate emotion of familiarity, reality, etc. the intellectual part of the brain then (in some dp sufferers anyway) starts obsessing over how to prove that everything is real/normal, etc. and freaks out when it realizes it can't really do that.

for me, at least, it is somewhat comforting to know what is going on in my head. i can at least explain to myself in some sort of intelligent way why i feel like this and it allows the obsessive thoughts component a chance to relax a little bit.

3) the link you posted is a bit out of date now. the most recent research on it looks like it was from 2001, and simeon's book includes five more years of research since then (although the most frustrating thing about her book is that it makes you realize how underresearched this disorder is). one med that she reports as having some promise is clomipramine (called anafranil in the states). clomipramine's intended usage is to treat OCD's and is therefore particularly promising in dp sufferers with obsessive tendencies. some people on this site have used it with varying success.

hope that helps at least a little bit. it helped me to recently go to a clinical psychologist who listened to me and affirmed what i had was not depression and was indeed depersonalization disorder.


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## chiendeguerre (Nov 12, 2006)

Hi

Jeepers, everyone is so unhappy. I know it seems hopeless but, honest to god its not that bad.

I believe I have become "human". I think thats what this is. We are supposed to feel this way. When we talk of the facric of time and space and how we mesh with it in a cosmic dance of creation, we feel that. We don't say it like a pot head then ask for someone to pass the peanuts.

You just have to learn to use it I feel.

Animal off the muppets ROCKS!


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## chiendeguerre (Nov 12, 2006)

Hi

Jeepers, everyone is so unhappy. I know it seems hopeless but, honest to god its not that bad.

I believe I have become "human". I think thats what this is. We are supposed to feel this way. When we talk of the facric of time and space and how we mesh with it in a cosmic dance of creation, we feel that. We don't say it like a pot head then ask for someone to pass the peanuts.

You just have to learn to use it I feel.

Animal off the muppets ROCKS!


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## californian (Jul 24, 2006)

chiendeguerre said:


> Jeepers, everyone is so unhappy. I know it seems hopeless but, honest to god its not that bad.


i appreciate the sentiment, but it is a mistake to take our experiences and decide how bad or not that bad something is for someone else. even if you have dp, you don't know exactly how someone else with it feels.



chiendeguerre said:


> I believe I have become "human". I think thats what this is.


no, this is not becoming human. it clearly is a malfunction (or at least abnormal function) of the brain. it does allow us to see and understand the world in ways we ordinarily would not. but whether you believe in pure darwinistic evolution or you believe in a divine creator, it's pretty obvious that our brains are not supposed to act this way normally.



chiendeguerre said:


> You just have to learn to use it I feel.


this is true. it is a valuable experience if it can be appropriated the right way.

but as someone who has episodic bouts of dp/dr and then connection with reality, it is pretty obvious this is not how humans are supposed to feel.


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