I was diagnosed with Depersonalistion but dont recognise my symptoms

[TonyBDavies]

A Psychiatrist diagnosed me with depersonality disorder as a result of decade long sex abuse but I don't know how I exhibit or experience it. Maybe I think the way I now experience life is normal and don't know any different.

My sex abuser worked for a government department, social services, and organised to have me admitted to a psychiatric ward at age 14. He told me the doctors said I had schizophrenia. Initially I saw this social services officer as a result of dropping performance at school, I was an A student but because my parents were having marriage difficulties, I was not focusing on my school work.

I confided in him that my parents were having marriage troubles at home and that I needed them to begin to communicate to us siblings, and that we needed to discuss our worries as a family. His action was to suggest to my parents I needed a break from home and I stay at his house. My parents have told me he didn't mediate the issues I had confided in him with them at all.

Anyway, he abused me on the first night I stayed there, and my life took a worse turn, from there I entered into a depression that I could't shake. I stopped confiding in everyone (after all my confidence was betrayed) and in time my withdrawn behavior was tentatively diagnosed as schizophrenia. I spent a decade in and out of the psyche ward as well as being sexually abused when I came home. My abuser visited and abused me while my parents were at work.

I lost trust in everyone. I was outcast from my social peers. I was outliered by my close and intermediate family. I had become a social loner. The only 'friend' I had was my abuser. This took place from my early to late teens early twenties.

So my question is, how do I experience depersonilasion in relation to my experiences?

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi Tony and welcome to NMP :welcome:

That is clearly a very distressing experience and I can't imagine it or how you feel. I hope you get the help & support you need to get the life you deserve to have.

There are plenty of people who have been through DP/DR as symptoms of their anxiety so I'm sure they will be along to help you when they come on NMP.

Depersonality-derealization syndrome is an uncommon one since it can often feature as a symptom of many other disorders as opposed to be a standalone condition. But having said that, people who have experienced the symptoms will understand the feelings & thoughts that come with it so will be able to help you figure it out.

The question I have is did your psychiatrist make the diagnosis based on your past alone or was it more based on the symptoms you were presenting with at the time?

In the diagnostic manual we use in the UK, the WHO ICD-10, which may differ to the one used in your country, it mentions the following:

A disorder in which the sufferer complains that his or her mental activity, body, and/or
surroundings are changed in their quality, so as to be unreal, remote, or automatized. Individuals may feel that they are no longer doing their own thinking, imaging, or remembering; that their movements and behaviour are somehow not their own; that their body seems lifeless, detached, or otherwise anomalous; and that their surroundings seem to lack colour and life and appear as artificial, or as a stage on which people are acting contrived roles. In some cases, they may feel as if they were viewing themselves from a distance or as if they were dead. The complaint of loss of emotions is the most frequent among these varied phenomena.

So, firstly can you see yourself in that? Can you recognise how you think about your surroundings or body as being alien to you or do you see yourself as not in control for some reason, etc?

Something that springs to mind for me is that such a traumatic experience could cause someone to create a way of being to avoid the old one or maybe having to face it. But I thought this was more a dissociative disorder strategy to cope with the trauma.

Did your psychiatrist explain why he/she made that diagnosis?

[TonyBDavies]

Going back to diagnosis of schizophrenia, I lived with the stigma of that label for 30 years before I did something about challenging it. The process began with my seeking counselling for the sex abuse, 36 years after it began. The process culminated in an application for accident compensation and a Psychiatric assessment and historical audit of medical history. The outcome was the diagnosis of dissociative disorder caused by sex abuse and a dismissal of the schizophrenia diagnosis. The psychiatrist concluded that I had not exhibited any symptoms of schizophrenia and she was puzzled as to why it had been given in the first place. She raises the question in her report that my abuser may have influenced doctors findings.

How have I experienced life since my early teens? As though I were living in a nightmare/twilight zone. As though my real life had split off at a juncture and this life were a parallel time line which I had become stuck in. Like Donny Darko's time shift where his real life had ended and this life were an alternate one. The barriers and borders between life and death, physical and non-physical have been removed. Like a true nightmare, I've had no control over many consecutive series of horrible events. Maybe once a cycle begins, it continues through sheer momentum.

Because of the diagnosis of shhizophrenia, I became fearful of thinking, so effectively I no longer trusted my own minds thoughts and shut down use of my mind.

---------- Post added at 19:47 ---------- Previous post was at 19:33 ----------

The psychiatrist said I seemed dissociated from my feelings, particularly what ought to be traumatic ones. The way I spoke about them were as if I were reporting about them, rather than feeling them.

[Davit]

I can see disassociation, but not depersonallity. I can see you talking as if you are someone else, but do you see yourself from out of your body looking in. Do you lose sensation of your body and feel like you are floating.

[TonyBDavies]

I'm not sure. I don't know. I didn't even know I panicked until I thought about it but now I recognise panic happening throughout my whole life.

---------- Post added at 20:18 ---------- Previous post was at 20:17 ----------

I didn't know I was depressed either. But I can see it's so obviously now.

---------- Post added at 20:18 ---------- Previous post was at 20:18 ----------

Total lack of self-awareness.

---------- Post added at 20:27 ---------- Previous post was at 20:18 ----------

I have simply existed for the last few decades. Have I been aware of myself as a person? I'm not sure. I'm not sure how I've experienced my life, my self. I have felt quite passive about life, as though I'm a feather blown around in the wind. I'm self aware of who I used to be ages 2 - 13 but after that I'm not too sure whether I've had a self. What does 'I' mean to me? Some sort of self-awareness sure, a belief in God that's been a centre and focus for me, but as for myself, no there's nothing of substance to speak of regarding a strong tangible self.

---------- Post added at 20:29 ---------- Previous post was at 20:27 ----------

Ethereal. That's a word I've often used in my own mind to describe my 'self'.

---------- Post added at 20:30 ---------- Previous post was at 20:29 ----------

as in my personhood is delicately formed, like wisps of broken spider web in the wind.

---------- Post added at 20:34 ---------- Previous post was at 20:30 ----------

I'm on 40 mg of Citalopram plus 150 x Zyban now. I was on 60 mg Citalopram only daily but Doc reduced me to 40 mg in order to add 1 x 150 mg slow release Zyban daily. I've seen the info for Citalopram including the helpful Citalopram surival guide. I can't se any info on Zyban Bupropion. Any info on Zyban? And how the two might interact together?

[MyNameIsTerry]

I've seen people mention Bupropion in posts so there will be people on here taking it. If you do a search for it on the meds board you might turn up some threads.

NoPoet has just returned to the forum in the last 24 hours after taking a break from here. Maybe he could point you in the direction of anything he knows of in regard to a combination? It might not be something he has looked into but he does have another thread on the GAD board about different forms of emerging meds and given Bupropion is one that is not fully understood in terms of its method od action (its classified as a NDRI but it also influence release of norepinenephrine & dopamine so its not a correct classification) but maybe NoPoet's other thread will have it or similiar meds discussed? Worth a try at least, I'm sure he won't mind, he's a very helpful guy.

You would have been brought down off 60-40mg of Citalopram anyway eventually as it has been deemed the maximum safe dose now. Its nothing to worry about, they just found that beyond 40mg increased a risk in people with a certain physical condition and the gains for the higher dose were barely more anyway.

[TonyBDavies]

I experienced gains transitioning from 40 to 60 mg. But progress from then on came to an end and I was ablout 90% ok, then 10% of the time not ok, and I needed to report to Doc I'd had a setback. That's when she put me on Zyban. I started on Citalopram in Nov 2014.

I probably have been depersonalised all these years, but I've just had to keep living regardless. God has been my centre, my anchor, the focus of my 'self' without having a self.

---------- Post added at 21:03 ---------- Previous post was at 20:58 ----------

And that's the problem. What does one do when they find they lack a self, an I AM.
WHO AM I? If there's no tangible answer, then I'd definitely say it would be terrifying to those used to having a strong awareness of self until they lost it.
I read a few other posts and I can see the path some others have taken, overthinking their existence to the point they dig themselves into a tangible mental inner framework of confusion and endless unanswered questions.

---------- Post added at 21:12 ---------- Previous post was at 21:03 ----------

Recently I fainted as a result of an overwhelming panic attack at work. I was unconscious standing up and hit a steel bench on my way down to the floor landing on the side of my body, head hitting the concrete floor.

Another recent time I panicked at work, I see and feel as though I'm in the centre of a hurricane of emotions and anxiety. I managed to fight my will through it without running away like a crazy man in full panic to the shame of myself in front of workmates witnessing my behaviour.

---------- Post added at 21:14 ---------- Previous post was at 21:12 ----------

The funny thing is I would never have thought of these experiences as panic. I don't know what I thought was wrong with me. I don't label these symptoms. I just live with them.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Tony,

Do you know it is possible for people with tramautic events in their lives to have something called a Non Epileptic Seizure (NES)? I know someone who had one of these once. He was under a lot of stress, much of which was his own making, and he just collapsed in a supermarket and banged his head. He was unconscious for a while. He was taken to hospital and at some point they do the necessary scans to check for epilepsy but found nothing. The neurologist diagnosed NES instead.

So, when you had that panic attack, I wonder if this was what happened? Or did you pass out standing up due to hyperventilation? I don't have PA's so I can't understand how they feel and how they differ other than what I read but this is just something I've come across.

As I said, and I noticed Davit too, there seems like there is some dissassociation from your memories. Dissassociation is to distance ourselves from painful events or serious stresses we cannot resolve at that time. There are several forms of disorder and whilst some of the things you say seem to fit, other don't. I wonder whether your psychiatrist was faced with a diagnosis and she decided to go with what she saw as the predominant issue? They can diagnose as comorbid, which is common (I have GAD & OCD, for instance) but they may also say things like "with X tendencies" or "with secondary of", etc.

Maybe there is a bit of something else going on in here like dissassociation as she mentioned but not sufficient to make it a diagnosis. Besides, you would normally be distancing yourself from something as opposed to how you perceive or relate to it.

[TonyBDavies]

I was panicking at the time I fainted.

---------- Post added at 22:11 ---------- Previous post was at 22:08 ----------

I've had nightmares with the regular theme of panic running through them. Not being able to move while being chased and someone shooting me point blank in the head. The feeling of being killed has always been ultra real.

---------- Post added at 22:14 ---------- Previous post was at 22:11 ----------

When I was panicking before I fainted, the usual feeling of being in the centre of a hurricane of anxiety and emotions was happening, only this time it overwhelmed me into fainting.

---------- Post added at 22:18 ---------- Previous post was at 22:14 ----------

Earlier panic attacks in my life caused my body go into a catatonic state, a feeling of immobility, being frozen into inaction. The feeling of impending terror filling my body, like being in a horror movie with some unknown fear stalking me about to strike. I trace it all back to the sex abuse and mental emotional abuse of being made to take the fall for the sins of a selfish man. He is the unknown terror chasing me filling me with panic.

---------- Post added at 22:20 ---------- Previous post was at 22:18 ----------

In actuality how my body reacted as he was abusing me was to go into a frozen catatonic state, exactly the same as the panic states I experienced at that time in my life. In the later stages of my life, its an emotional mental panic where my body is free to move but my mind and emotions have gone catatonic whilst the unknown fear grips me,.

---------- Post added at 22:25 ---------- Previous post was at 22:20 ----------

Its amazing how much the mind denies reality. I often read about the sex abuse of others, but I never once associated sex abuse with myself. I didn't even think I'd been sexually abused. As I told my history to the counsellor, its they who put these experiences into known categories.

---------- Post added at 22:32 ---------- Previous post was at 22:25 ----------

My experience of anxiety is a struggle to stay within the situation I'm dealing with or if I associate a place or a person with that anxiety then I struggle to stay in that situation. For example a work situation, or a personal relationship. My anxiety's solution is to walk/run away in panic, and obviously in a work situation unless I don't care about earning a living that's the decision my anxiety most hopes I make.

[MyNameIsTerry]

There is a form of dissassociation for stupor.

So, perhaps when these things become too extreme, your mind goes into that dissassociative state when as a NES (if thats what it was) or the catatonic states?

Obviously, that still doesn't explain the feeling of not knowing who or what you are or mean, its just something that happens, if it is that.

How have you managed to work with this? What I mean by this is the process that led up to it by getting a job as well as performing it? Did you feel in the present doing things like that so its something that either comes & goes or is only relevant to certain areas of your life?

I'm not surprised you have nightmares, you must have some very powerful negative memories form something like this. I can't imagine it at all, I wouldn't want anyone ever to and I really hope you get past it all however that can be achieved.

[TonyBDavies]

I was also diagnosed with Dysthemia, persistent low level depression. However it's persistence has lasted the last 30 years.

---------- Post added at 22:40 ---------- Previous post was at 22:34 ----------

I was an A student at school, as well as an excellent athlete. How have I gotten by? Only on whatever natural gifts I was born with. I had a certain belief that if I was able to excel at an early age then surely that must still be an ability I retain despite the (incorrect and dismissed) belief I had a mental illness.
Unhappily I had a decade of not working from age 22 - 34.
Funnily I had blocked out many memories, another tactic I guess my mind employed. I had deliberately not exercised my mind for over a decade and more.

---------- Post added at 22:44 ---------- Previous post was at 22:40 ----------

You may find this naive but because I had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and because of the association with voices, and my not knowing what a 'voice' was, the only connection my mind could make to as an example of a 'voice' was a thought. So I decided I had to stop thinking. I had to quell all internal verbal thinking because in my naivety I thought that these thoughts were 'voices' having never had an audible hallucination myself I had nothing else to relate the experience of what a 'voice' was.

---------- Post added at 22:46 ---------- Previous post was at 22:44 ----------

So basically I stopped reading books since when I read I obviously internally kept a verbal commentary of the books words and thoughts that go with associated connections. I know now it's naively stupid, but at age 14 how was I to know? Anyway this behavioural pattern became an establised norm for me that would persist over the next couple of decades.

---------- Post added at 22:48 ---------- Previous post was at 22:46 ----------

Actually I become terrified of my own mind and the thought processes that are normal for every human being, and so paralysed had I become by the diagnosis and experiences I had been going through. So the sex abuse was compounded by mental and emotional abuse.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I can relate to the sense of not knowing what an intrusive thought voice sounds like. Having OCD I've learnt to spot the difference between my conscious thoughts and the subconscious ones. It look some learning but it came and it helps me understand what it being driven and what I am driving so I can change it.

I think a lot, if not all, people who have intrusive thoughts are likely to know how it feels to question whether its like a voice because once you have these disorder, it feels much more in focus than when you didn't. Studies have even proved how all people have intrusive thoughts but they don't realise them and this is why in OCD the goal must can never been to stop having them at all because its an impossible goal for us to achieve.

[TonyBDavies]

I finally got to speak to a person who actually did suffer from strong external discossiated audible thoughts. She relayed this to me describing her very first experience with them.
She was asleep in bed and slowly waking up one morning when she slowly became aware of someone outside her bedroom windows saying to her "she's ugly, she's ugly" in a slowly repeating pattern. She thought it was hr brothers and she looked out the window but nobody was there. Again the same thing happened as she lay down, the voice said "she's ugly , she's ugly". Again she looked out the window and nobody was there.
After her telling me that, I absolutely realised I had never once heard a 'voice' in my life, and I felt very relieved.

---------- Post added at 22:57 ---------- Previous post was at 22:54 ----------

I think the way I reacted to the incorrect diagnosis of schizophrenia made the way I experienced thoughts worse than if I hadn't been told I was mentally ill. The outcome of being incorrrectly diagnosed and my tactical response actually caused my problems of paying too much attention to my thoughts, trying to actively shut them down and by focusing on shutting my thoughts down, the thoughts themselves because a source of mental pain for me.

---------- Post added at 22:58 ---------- Previous post was at 22:57 ----------

My counsellor has used ACT therapy with me. I've been practicing ACT for the last 3 years now.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I learnt Mindfulness and I can't remember for sure whether I had this awareness before. It could be what I learnt from Mindfulness itself though as it guides you through observing thoughts.

It might be hard to describe but I know when I feel an intrusive thought or subconscious thought of any kind, it feels deeper in original. A conscious thought feels more towards the front/top of my head and feels lighter in original and more quickly changeable. Its hard to get across but once you learn this skill, it sticks.

[TonyBDavies]

I've gone through the whole study of philosophy and existentialism. I've studied biology, cosmology, theology, physics in order to answer the question of WHY DO WE EXIST? What is the purpose of life?

---------- Post added at 23:05 ---------- Previous post was at 23:03 ----------

I like to think I can observe my inner insights and thought processs now as opposed to earlier in life when my only obsession was to quell all thought.

---------- Post added at 23:08 ---------- Previous post was at 23:05 ----------

The only reason and sole cause of what I now term obsessive thoughts are those thoughts that were the subject of my conscious efforts to shut them down and their reaction by resisting my efforts to quell them. ACT teaches that thoughts can't be quelled by consciously interacting with them. Only by observing them in an unattached manner will they evaporate eventually and become ethereal

[Soulcatcher71]

TonyBDavies - all I ever think about in life are questions long the lines of 'why are we here' and all the other old classics you mention in this and your other post.

i know we're all different, but pondering these questions is what keeps me going, i would hate to live a life where i just accepted everything at face value.

maybe you should embrace the fact that you have made a step towards discovering the reason why life is as it is, rather than treat it as a curse?

And have you come to any conclusions? Would be happy to discuss.

Sorry if this is in the wrong thread - i just read a couple of yours in a row, but you talk about the same things in each so should make sense ;-)

[TonyBDavies]

@soulcatsher71 'maybe you should embrace the fact that you have made a step towards discovering the reason why life is as it is, rather than treat it as a curse?
And have you come to any conclusions?'

Funny that, you've mentioned something I've often said, "my life is cursed".
There's two branches from that. Random probabilities, and determinism. I grew up in a small town where a sexual abuser lived who happened to work for social services. I was affected by my parents marriage difficulties and my school brought in this abuser to give me a chance to discuss whatever was affecting my school performance. None of that was determined. The person who abused me chose to direct his work efforts to sex abused young persons as that gave him the best opportunity to satisfy his sexual predisposition. In a sense it could be said it was his own determination/determinism that caused my life to unfold somewhat tragically.

---------- Post added at 12:50 ---------- Previous post was at 12:43 ----------

More on depersonalisation/dissociative and my trying to work out what symptoms and what the correct diagnosis would be for me.

From the event which shaped my dissociative/depersonalisation (not sure which yet) I felt deeply the stigmatisation of being labelled a schizophrenic more painfully than I was worried about the sex abuse. I was an A student, someone who loved the competition of performing, and to be told my mind/brain was faulty was a huge huge blow to my entire identity. Everything I identified as was tied up with my mind. Performing well, studying, reading, thinking, making cognitive associations quickly, understanding and grasping complex ideas relatively easily. That was WHO I was. And to lose everything that I identified with was to lose myself. MYSELF. I stopped BEING myself and became nobody.

[Davit]

Breaking my silence to say "tony I'm very impressed with your ability and saddened by what you went through" I was misdiagnosed as Bipolar.

[TonyBDavies]

Furthermore, I lost social connections to people. Beginning with my family. I was the eldest child in my extended family, the first born grandchild of my grandparents large extended family. Nan and Gran had 7 children, I was the first grandson, a male. For me to lose that social standing within my family, the shame I felt going from respected to a nobody was overwhelming. The same for my social peers, my network of friends. I lost the lot at an age when social peers starts to become more important than family connections. The outcome was I became a complete ( I mean complete) loner. I severed ties with family, friends since I could not bear the overwhelming stigma of going from hero to pariah, someone everyone looked up to to someone people felt pity for (and maybe even a little glee that someone who had achieved too easily was now on the bottom rung). None of this is a perception issue, this is objectively factual.

---------- Post added at 12:59 ---------- Previous post was at 12:56 ----------

As to my emotions, I shut the lot down. I knew no other way to deal with an overwhelming experience.

---------- Post added at 13:00 ---------- Previous post was at 12:59 ----------

In summary, I'd shut down social relationships, inner mental cognition, and inner emotional experiences.

---------- Post added at 13:01 ---------- Previous post was at 13:00 ----------

The thing is I felt and thought I had to react this way out of necessity as I've explained throughout this post in response to a variety of conditions.

---------- Post added at 13:06 ---------- Previous post was at 13:01 ----------

If I'd let myself think or dwell on having lost all my social relationships, I'd just go properly crazy. Or to dwell on my inner thought processes it would have torn whatever working inner mental structure I possessed. I would never have come to the correct conclusion in time, that my abuser had certainly and purposefully determined the set of circumstances that led to where I was. I now know that sexual predators ARE capable of ignoring others well being in order to satisfy their sickness, but at age 14 onwards, there was NO WAY I could have worked that out. Even if I'd considered the possibility, I'd have dismissed it as too outrageous a possibility.

---------- Post added at 13:09 ---------- Previous post was at 13:06 ----------

SO I think logically and necessarily I made the correct choice: that is to shut down all social connections, emotional inner life and inner mental life. It was a hard choice but under the circumstances I believe the correct one. That was my thinking even if I didn't form the thoughts very tangibly, more an intuitive decision than a well thought out logical decision.

[TonyBDavies]

There are definite discernible stages to my healing. The first was my confiding in a priest who suggested I seek therapy/counselling which I did. I stayed with the first therapist for a little over a year until I pushed for compensation and was assigned a therapist who specialised in sexual abuse therapy. We used the ACT model as the basis for the work we did, exploring all the paths of thought that we could discover together. I reached an impasse though, and realised that therapy could only take me so far, at which point I asked her advice as to whether I ought to see a doctor about medication. I was still experiencing monthly cycles of panic/depression/total withdrawal. The doctor put me on a first dosage of 20mg Citalopram, which I found relieved my depression from monthly to about six weekly. Reaching this plateau I asked for a further increase to 40mg and this took my 6 week cycle out to two monthly cycles. Not able to tolerate the down phases, they were experientially no better than the worst of my down phases. An increase to 60mg I thought had eliminated all cycle periods until I had a further setback. I really wanted to stop these horrible down phases and reported to my doctor who put me on 150 mg Zyban daily and reduced Citalopram to 40 mg daily. And so far after 1 month I have survived a down phase from which I was able to recover quicker and more completely than ever before, so I do believe I am now on an effective medication regime.

All in all therapy followed up by a working medication regime has really given me hope than maybe just maybe I can restore much of what I've lost as far as personal self belief goes.

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:12 ----------

Saw a post on personality tests.
I'm dominant introverted intuition, extroverted feeling auxiliary, introverted thinking tertiary and extroverted sensing inferior.
I'm an INFJ

[TonyBDavies]

Depersonalisation/derealisation or any dissociative disorder is a reaction or a tactic to deal with an event or series of events that go beyond the norm. When emotions threated to overwhelm then the response is to shed or shut down emotions. When one loses social relationships particularly abrubtly and completely then the reaction is to shed or shutdown and deny the need for relationships. The alternative is to be exposed to an awareness of overwhelming loss which is too much to take in. That's why shutting down and shedding needs is at the time the best alternative. Looking back on my life, if I'd had to face an awareness of the magnitude of my losses, I wouldn't have been able to cope, I'd feel life would be too insurmountable to continue with. But luckily, the mind closes down and doesn't allow consciousness to consider the magnitude of what's happening. In retrospect, I can see that my mind has dealt with the bare minimum to allow me to continue on day by day. Only after sufficient time has my mind dealt with greater consequences of the initial loss from the original events.

It's only after 30+ years that my mind has fully understood every consequence from that original event, and the series of events that are a consequence such as - education, employment, health, relationships such as marriage, social standing, personal esteem and mood.

[TonyBDavies]

How do others on this forum happen to fall into depersonalisation/ derealism? Trauma? What?