I just spent a couple hours writing this, I'm just posting in case anyone finds it helpful in any way...

It all seemed to begin like one of those freak rain showers, on a seemingly sunny day with clear skies. I was going about my ‘normal’ life, spending time with my new partner, going out with friends frequenting bars and pubs, shopping trips, eating out at restaurants, playing on my new PC, reading books. All in between working a few part time shifts a week serving drinks. It was the start of the summer that stretched between my second and third year at university. I was a little late starting compared to most people, I took time out to work after college for a few years and find myself going back to study at 24, but that’s ok. I’ll be qualified when I’m 27.
I need to write this experience down because I’m not sure I’ll ever truly remember how horrific it felt at the time, a gentle reminder to take care of myself and never allow myself to become that low again. Depersonalisation for me, lasted a whole month and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
As above, I was getting on with things after a pretty terrible bout of anxiety and depression which with me, comes and goes over a period of months. It was April and I had been getting dizzy spells since February, which were increasing my anxiety. For some reason I thought it could be related to food and developed a phobia of food allergies, not being able to eat out at restaurants or at other people’s houses, and not trying anything I hadn’t had before for fear of having a reaction and going into anaphylactic shock. I was convinced I needed an epi-pen but you cannot get these in the UK unless you have a known allergy. It wasn’t pleasant but nor was it debilitating. I have had health anxiety with food before, a few years ago I stopped eating anything solid because I was convinced I was going to choke and die. (Anxiety’s great isn’t it?) So I knew what I was getting myself in for and slowly managed to ‘cure’ myself over the course of a few weeks. I tried introducing new foods and sitting outside A&E in a parked car eating a sandwich ‘just in case’ I had an episode. This was all over by the end of April and I began feeling more myself.
A few weeks later, I found myself sat at my PC one day playing a game, when all of a sudden I had a panic attack. This was a shock to me as although I have suffered with chronic anxiety for over 10 years (I had my first panic attack at 14, just before my dad remarried,) I had it ‘managed’ and hadn’t had an actual panic attack for years. The hyperventilating, sweating, feeling that you’re about to faint or die, need to escape etc. All the classics. I found myself on my bathroom floor, a shivering, naked mess, shouting for my mum. At 26 years old, this was not something I felt particularly proud of. My mum managed to talk me round but something didn’t feel right. I felt like I was in a dream like state. I couldn’t go back to my PC game because my head felt foggy and unclear. I just wanted to lay down in bed and stay there, so I did. The next couple of weeks were all a blur so I cannot recall them clearly nor recreate them fully, however I will share some of the highlights.
I want to try to explain what it felt like, because depersonalisation is a term I had heard thrown around when researching my anxiety in the past but never really connected with. Imagine waking up with that groggy morning feeling, where everything’s not quite in place yet because your brain hasn’t woken up. You might be a little dizzy or disoriented, squinting at light or colours might not look right. You might get up to go to the toilet but you’re still half asleep. Being in a ‘zombie like’ state is the closest thing I can describe. Everything around you just looks wrong and on top of that you feel wrong too. You begin to see the smallest details in everything like the grain of the wood on a wardrobe door, or the specks of sugar at the bottom of your juice. You become obsessed with the fact that it doesn’t look right and can’t remember a time when the world looked ‘normal.’ At times I explained to my partner and my mum that it was like being on autopilot or there was a little man in my head making me doing things and say things and that I wasn’t in control. I wasn’t hearing voices or hallucinating, so what could it be? What was wrong with me? Was I losing my mind?
During this few weeks I spent time at hospital trying to find answers. I wanted them to admit me because I was certain that I had a brain tumour, or MS, or schizophrenia, or something else. They wouldn’t admit me and were adamant that this was all due to anxiety and from the withdrawal of my SSRI medication. I had been slowly coming off citalopram to transition to a new drug as the citalopram had seemingly stopped working, but I never connected citalopram withdrawal to the depersonalisation. I started my new drug to see if this was to help my situation, it was a different type of medication called a mirtazapine and I took this for 11 days. To begin with, the drug seemed to work fine on everything but the depersonalisation. It made me sleep lots which was great, because it was the only respite I got. It made me eat loads too, which was good because I had lost a fair bit of weight because of the food phobia previously. Unfortunately this didn’t last and I became worse, panic attacks were now a daily thing, waking up in mornings and after naps was horrific, I thought I was dying and couldn’t make my brain work. I was giving myself maths sums in my head to do like 10+2 and wasn’t able to make out the answer. It was terrifying. I didn’t know who I was anymore. I was an absolute wreck, a shell of a person I once knew. Looking at photographs of myself broke my heart because I didn’t feel any connection to that person or who she was. I had no emotions other than sadness and anxiousness, I hadn’t smiled in weeks and didn’t think I ever would.
One of the scariest parts of having depersonalisation coupled with anxiety is the feeling that nothing will ever be normal again. I honestly felt like I was stuck in this dream world forever and would never make sense of anything ever again. I can’t express how much I feared the rest of my life in that state. I thought I understood depression and hopelessness, but I realised I had not experienced the true nature of it until this point. I wanted to end my own life so badly. It was torture.
I reached out online to try and find similar experiences, to give me some hope. I found a website I’d used sparingly in past, nomorepanic.com which I’ve found helpful before. I used the forum there and read about people’s experience with this depersonalisation. I had to come to the conclusion that this is what I was experiencing, not a brain tumour or prion disease, but a mechanism built to protect my brain from itself in times of high stress and anxiety. Depersonalisation is a period in which your brain basically puts barriers up, such as after a car accident or major trauma. It’s there to protect you so that the most primal instincts (fight or flight) can be viewed more clearly. Some stories were scary, don’t get me wrong, many people had suffered for years and after only having it for a few weeks at this point I was scared that I too would go on for decades feeling the same. I sort of resigned myself to the fact that this is how I saw life now, and the best advice was that it’s not harmful, it’s just scary and new and to try your best to ignore it. So that’s what I did.
During this time I was taken off mirtazapine as my doctor decided that I was having many side effects and the cons outweighed the pros on this particular drug. I was started on another family of drugs similar to my original one called duloxetine. I was also prescribed beta blockers to help with my anxiety, a slow release propranolol once a day and a small dose of diazepam to help me calm and sleep at night, as unfortunately a side effect of duloxetine is insomnia. So I began all of my new medication and still take the antidepressant and the beta blocker today some weeks later. I no longer take diazepam as they are addictive and intended for short term use.
I began talking walks out of the house with my partner, who might I add has been amazing and remarkably hasn’t done a runner after all of this. I began watching television again, something I couldn’t bring myself to do before because nothing mattered. I read magazines and did crossword puzzles to help bring back my concentration and logic skills. I listened to music that made me happy before, I took bubble baths again, I got in my car for the first time in weeks, I cooked food for myself, I smiled again and I laughed again and eventually I started living again. All of this happened in the space of a month. I can’t actually believe that looking back now I have without a doubt, the worst period in my life only a few weeks behind me. And it is certainly behind me. I cannot say that I am ‘cured’ and many people who have experienced depersonalisation say the same. It comes back now and again at random moments during my days, but I learned to ignore it and get on with my life. I’m sure that with time, it will become less frequent. I now believe that I’m on the right medication and at a point where I can get back to being who I was before.
I feel that the key points that helped me feel more ‘normal’ were socialising. As much as I wanted to lay in bed and feel nothing all day every day, I needed to speak to my friends and be reminded that although I was feelings this way, the world was still spinning and life was going on. Just to know that my friends understood what I was going through was a good start.
Taking care of myself was another. I didn’t bathe or shower for around a week when it was at it’s worst, as I didn’t see the point, couldn’t be bothered to do it and generally just didn’t care. I wasn’t going anywhere so what did it matter? But personal care can do a lot. I started bathing daily, doing my nails, my eyebrows, even putting make up on just to walk round the house did a lot for my self-confidence. I started cooking for myself once my appetite was back. One day me and my partner made pancakes and sat in the garden and I remember thinking, I can be normal again. This is the kind of thing I want, to feel normal eating pancakes in the garden in summer. I will not allow this to dictate my life anymore.
So as I sat last night, writing all the plans for things I want to do over summer, I realised that I had not experienced a full blown depersonalisation ‘episode’ in several days now. It made me so incredibly happy to know that I can actually be free from this feeling that has had me locked in my own mind for what felt like so long. A month sounds pathetic when I read some experienced from people online, but for me that’s what it was and I never want to go back to that, but if I do I know what I’m dealing with and I know what I need to do to get out of it. **** you anxiety.