Joanna’s Story: Why Trying To Control Everything Made My DPDR Worse

My mouth and hands would sometimes feel like they were full of cotton wool.

Trying to get to sleep growing up was a nightmare. I would often end up crying, confused by what was happening inside my own mind and body, and trying to get rid of it somehow, but failing. Hoping that it wouldn’t be there when I wake up.

Other times it felt like the world around me was moving faster than I was.

If no one was around, I would get up and walk around in circles, really fast, trying to snap myself out of it.

I still remember the thoughts: “Oh no, not this again. I need to snap myself out of this" "I can't be like this for my exam in an hour’s time"

The faster I walked, the more frustrated I became. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it.

Looking back now, both of those experiences had the same theme underneath them: trying to control. Trying to get away from uncomfortable feelings. Trying to force myself to feel normal again. Trying to control something that felt too intense and overwhelming. 

At the time, I thought I was the only person who experienced things like this, so I never spoke about it. I thought people would think I was being dramatic or making it up.

As I got older, the experiences changed shape. Sometimes it felt like the words coming out of my mouth weren’t mine. I could hear myself speaking and logically know it was me, but emotionally it felt distant and automatic, like I was watching myself from the outside. Or times my arms and hands didn't feel part of myself or my face looked different in the mirror.

I became hyper-aware of how I came across to other people and worried someone would notice something was “off.” So I learnt to mask it and act fine, which only made me monitor myself even more.

For years, I became obsessed with trying to understand what was happening inside my own mind. I constantly analysed my thoughts, my feelings, my reactions, and my sense of reality. I was terrified of losing control mentally, and the harder I pushed for certainty, the worse everything became.

Looking back, I think this is partly why I became so interested in psychology and mental health in the first place.

What I understand now is that I had become deeply disconnected from my emotions long before I understood what depersonalisation and derealisation were. I lived in my head constantly. Humour became a way of deflecting. Overthinking became second nature. Analysing myself became a full-time job. Holding everything in created even more tension, fear, and hypervigilance in my body and mind. It’s like trying to run ten apps on a phone with 1% battery. Eventually everything starts freezing and crashing.

DPDR became both terrifying and strangely protective at the same time. On one hand, I felt disconnected from myself and the world around me. On the other hand, it kept people at a distance from parts of myself that didn’t feel safe to face.

For a long time, I believed the answer was to think my way out of all of this. If I could just analyse enough, understand enough, or monitor myself enough, maybe I could finally feel normal again. I still battle with this daily, but I’m slowly learning that recovery doesn’t come from gaining more control.

The more I checked whether I felt disconnected, the more disconnected I became. The more pressure I put on myself to “fix” how I felt, the more trapped I felt inside it.

Pressure placed on an already overloaded system only creates more stress.

Recently, I shared in the Unreal online support group that my therapist sometimes asks me to describe how I’m feeling using a scale from 1–10. A lot of the time I genuinely don’t know what I’m feeling, only that something feels overwhelming or ‘off’. This helps take the pressure off needing to fully understand or explain what’s going on inside me.

I’m starting to realise that safety doesn’t come from controlling every thought, feeling, or symptom. It comes from slowly letting your body and mind realise they don’t have to fight so hard all the time.