Altered States - Part 5: Actual Help

This is the fifth instalment of a 9-part blog series written by Rob.
Trigger Warning: contains references to: psychological distress, sensory issues, out of body experiences and health anxiety.

All the time I was experiencing this and trying to see specialists who may be able to diagnose and ‘fix’ the issue, my close family and I were doing research, trying to find any clues out there as to what I may be experiencing and what may be the cause.

The small glimmer of light came about 5 months after the change in perception first kicked in. My mum had been diligently doing her own research and came across a podcast where depersonalisation and derealisation were mentioned and provided a few key clues that this may be linked to what I was experiencing - looking in mirrors felt weird; they never felt quite connected to reality; the world around them felt different; their bodies felt disconnected from their minds; they felt spaced out or drunk.

I quickly tried to absorb what I could about what seemed to be known as ‘depersonalisation’ or ‘derealisation’. There definitely seemed to be a lot of common symptoms and similarities and I felt like I’d exhausted all the other possibilities.

After finding details of South London and Maudsley NHS Trust who are specialists mental health experts, I was able to privately contact a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, who was associated with their specialist DPDR clinic.

After one intense and emotional session with my newly found Doctor, they were pretty certain what I was experiencing was ‘derealisation’. Having discussed everything that had led me to her, she also thought I was likely to be suffering from PTSD, along with health anxiety, stress, depression and dealing with grief. I really had hit the psychological jackpot. Lucky me.

I soon discovered that there’s a number of things that can lead to some people developing DPDR – drug use; childbirth; trauma in childhood or adulthood; abuse; depression and anxiety; traumatic medical events; prolonged stress. I can certainly tick a few off the list thanks to my recent tribulations.

The diagnosis was important. I was able to start to piece together parts of the puzzle that potentially led me to where I was. From putting together various clues, I thought DPDR sounded likely, but it wasn’t until I was diagnosed that I actually started to understand it.

I eventually accepted that it didn’t mean there was a cure or a quick fix, but I understood I wasn’t going insane, and I wasn’t living in the matrix or about to be disconnected from it. I’ve learnt that many people experience dissociative symptoms at some point in their life, but for some reason with me and the other approximately 1% of the population who experience DPDR persistently, our brains get caught in some kind of loop and we’re unable to switch it off.

I can’t help admiring the evolutionary genius of the condition. To have an inbuilt neurological system which essentially puts up a protective barrier and inadvertently and unwittingly disconnected me from the stress and trauma of the real world, to allow me to get on with life, is damn clever.