Do you feel distanced from your own life? Do emotions no longer resonate with you like they should? Does your waking life seem oddly dream-like? Do your thoughts and surroundings seem unrecognizable?
Well, I’m sorry to say but you might be suffering from one of the most elusive and misunderstood disorders of our time: Depersonalization/Derealization.
You could go to the doctor and tell them what’s happening, but don’t expect much help. You might get antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication, but you might not be depressed, and your anxiety might stem directly from your depersonalization-derealization (DPDR) so they probably won’t help much. You might get a therapist or psychiatrist, and if you’re in the UK then they’ll focus on practicing CBT, but what’s the point of gaining a mastery over your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours when they don’t seem like your feelings, thoughts, and behaviours? Maybe you’ll get to partake in talking therapy; this might actually help because now you can go into detail about what you’re experiencing… I just hope articulation is your strong suit because you’ll be describing something that is both weirdly ethereal and rarely researched. You’ll find out pretty quickly that discussing DPDR is a little harder than discussing depression and anxiety because its lack of understanding and relative obscurity…
