Shauna’s Story: You, Me and my Derealisation
Most relationships have milestones: the “honeymoon” phase, the “really-getting-to-know-each-other” phase, the “make-or-break” phase. But the relationship with yourself, and DPDR, is unpredictable and time consuming. As a disorder strongly tied to anxiety, it’s not destined to be built on love, instead on fear and frustration. I am someone who doesn’t deal well with not having answers. So, to combat the dubiousness of having DPDR from such a young age, I navigated my teenage years seeking places to project my discomfort. Unfortunately, this resulted in years of surrounding myself with toxic people. People who contributed to my anxiety but distracted from my DPDR.
Projection is the natural reaction to internal discomfort, and having a constant stressor sort of eliminated the frustration I felt with my DPDR, gave me an explanation. From family, to friendships, to partners, my whole teenage life was built on using unstable people to stabilise my own perception of my mental health. And then, after 7 years of DPDR, I had a mirror held up to me in the form of my first stable, healthy relationship. I couldn’t use her actions to justify my anxiety because she doesn’t make me anxious. Projecting my own problems just made me feel guilty because she hadn’t done anything wrong.
And so began the start of a very long battle of liaising with my own anxiety; here is what I have learned so far:
1) To take ownership of my own emotions
Quite literally, “it’s not you, it’s me”. I have found that to avoid projecting, unfortunately, means reflecting. Identifying what I feel, and why I feel it. It also means sitting with the discomfort that comes with anxiety and relying on my own (evidence based) capabilities to get through it.
2) To open up
However, reflecting doesn’t mean internalising. If anything, it means finding the words to express what you’re feeling. This is arguably the hardest part. After spending so long finding “you” excuses, expressing the “I feel” truths is unbelievably daunting, but necessary.
3) To hold hands with my DPDR
I always looked at DPDR as something that was taking from me; robbing me of a normal teenagehood, normal relationships. But by reframing it as something that is really just trying to protect me helps to limit some of my anger. My derealisation isn’t something that’s taking from me, it’s something I take with me – my ‘in case of emergencies’.