My experience with Depersonalisation/Depersonalisation

I would like to share my own experience with DPD - Depersonalisation disorder- since it isn't a well known condition yet, but one of the most mentally devastating.

I have a history of depression, yet I lived most of my life carefree and happy. But when the DP syntoms started to grow on me, my mood and general life condition went down in a negative spiral. I don't want to scare anybody writing this, but let anybody who will read this and feels related in some way to seek treatment, talk about it before it grows stronger.

Like many cases, my experience started with a strong emotional PTSD. I am quite an introvert an reflessive person so at first I found it normal to ponder about alternative livepaths. The first year was my lighter phase, I had a normal social life, yet I felt more gloomy and scared about important life choices. There were occasional times where I felt dissociated, had automatism or brief amnesia. As since the last year this thing grew bigger, I would be more anxious about everyday tasks, and I started to hide. Hide from social relations, hide from obbligations, hide from my own ambition and pleasures as the remember of past moment of joy took place of the memories of what was inside my head in those moments, which was worse and worse.

I was in denial, feeding my DP with the same broken mechanism "I am not happy because I didn't/did that". In my mind, at every little choice I'd create a different persona who was living the life I would live. This was the main cause of my gloominess when it started to become an obsession.

I recall fighting every day with this image I created, feeling anxious, then jealous, then miserable. while reality was moving on. Eventually, I gradually lost control of time. As I was living more inside the "thoughtful bubble" of alternative realities and past memories, I let the real world pass and go. Time whould shrink and fasten. Months became weeks and weeks became days. I'd come to saturday without knowing what happened, not understanding how does time work anymore.

Still unaware of what was happening to me, I was scared and didn't know how to act against it. Everything seemed futile as any action, hobby, everything I did was losing its meaning because I simply wasn't there. I could go to class, to a party or a night walk, yet it all felt numb. Spacial alienation was the second big effect. I started to get phisically lost, not knowing were I was and looking at places i crossed multiple times as new, finding myself in a spot not knowing how did I end there.

After the denial, came the surrender, which was probably my worst move. Everything lost its meaning, I woke up everyday feeling like in the wrong place, in the wrong body. Things like eating, talking, listening to music, even having sex were just grey. I kept feeling trapped in my own head and it seems like anything could bring me back to "reality"

At this point I got into the most acute and dangerous phase of DPD. I gave up my studies, vanished from friends and companies and seek therapeutical support.

I spent months in a vegetative-like state. Spending weeks in a room with closed curtains. smoking and eating occasionally out of survival instinct. I didn't want to see anyone, do anything. all I wanted was to be the man I was not, having done the thing I didn't do or didn't do the mistakes I did. complete dysphoria. I was internally conflicted. I hated that state, yet I felt chained to it. In my solitude I started questioning life and death, feeling like not existing at all or falling into solipsism.

That's when the phisical effects of dissociation were at their peek. The feeling of non-existence and dissociation from reality was so strong that it completely destroyed any normal routine or behaviour. I'd go no sleeping or eating for days straight and binge eating or force myself to sleep in order to be in the dream-world I created lucid dreaming. That parallel world was more important than my own. I felt like I was really going insane and like anything would bring me back. I couldnt talk about it because I was the first to not understand what was going on with me. Nothing made sense.

Eventually the detachment from the real world was so strong that I left my body and my own self go like a rotten body. And it was reacting badly. The growing Anxiety led me to skin rash, loss of hair, tricotillomania and bulimy. I'd evade my own reflection from a mirror because I didn't feel like it was me, I was scared about It.

At this point I felt like everything was lost, as I let myself lose it. friendships, aspirations, family. Everything seemed too late before it was, as I was letting myself be dragged to a never ending point. This was death. I was scared about it, at the same time it seemed like the only answer for what I was feeling. This thought became an obsession as well. everything I did seemed to bring me there. Since nothing in this world could bring me back to reality, maybe it was a sign that I should leave reality as well. Suicidal thoughts became suicidal plans, and the suicidal plans ended up with me, in a state of total confusion being rescued before dropping myself dead from a cliff.

Maybe it was the adrenaline rush, but that moment brought me back to reality like a slap. I saw where I was, still not knowing why I was there, but I knew I was.

I am still battling with DPD, but as I studied more about it I know I am not alone, and many of experiences that I had happened to other people, that the thoughts I had came from something deeper, and I know there is a way out. a slow reabilitation that involves going back to routine, exercise, socialisation, anything that can get me out of my own mental cage.