Robin Schindelka It’s incredibly scary. You suddenly have an experience where you look at the person in the mirror, or you look at a person close to you, and you suddenly don’t recognize them anymore. You know cognitively who they are, but you don’t feel any sense of connection. It may even feel as if you’re looking at a robot or an alien.
What you’re likely experiencing if this is the case for you, is something called ‘Depersonalization’. Depersonalization, just like Derealization (a feeling of loss of connection to life outside of you, things feeling unreal), is an anxiety-caused condition.
When the brain feels unsafe, there’s 3 ways for it to protect us.
1. Fight response: You have the urge to fight something for self-protection
2. Flight response: You have the urge to run away for self-protection
3. Freeze response: You freeze as a lack of ability to deal with the situation
Depersonalization and Derealization are Dissociation responses that fall under the last category. In other words: Your brain is trying to protect you from a perceived sense of threat, by disconnecting you from the moment.
The first thing to understand therefore, is that as scary as this feels, what’s happening is that your brain is trying to protect you. The perceived sense of lack of connection is not you going crazy, it’s your brain trying to keep you safe.
Understanding this, it’s important to look at the root cause of DP / DR in order to know how to recover: Fear. Very often Depersonalization is triggered during periods of heavy anxiety and stress, and that’s where the recovery process starts.
To recover from Depersonalization/Derealization, is to create a deep feeling of inner peace and safety again that allows the nervous system to go back into it’s regulated state and out of fight/flight/freeze. Therefore, here are a few tips on how you can do this:
- Get to the core of your own sense of unsafety
The most important thing, is to understand ‘why’ this is happening to you. What are your own psyhological patterns of unsafety, need for control, lack of peace. This can be a journey you decide to embark upon with a therapist or a life coach, to try to understand the root cause of why your nervous system is shooting into freeze. I’ve personally been working with clients that struggle with DP/DR for over 5 years now, and understanding your own brain and why it does what it does is one of the most relieving things to work towards. If you scroll down bellow, I have an online Depersonalization/Derealization recovery program I created due to my waitinglist getting too long and wanting to still be able to provide as much help as possible. In this program you can learn to practice this understanding and getting to the root of your symptoms on your own.
In case you already have experience in therapy, journalling and doing self-inquiry can also be a good way to start. Identify your triggers, beliefs and the narratives you tell yourself about life/yourself that trigger your sense of anxiety & unsafety. - Learn to regulate your nervous system
Learning to regulate your nervous system with breathing and muscle relaxation is one of the easiest ways to settle your nervous system back into rest and digest (opposite of fight/flight). - Practice mindfulness & meditation
In my own journey and experience with DPDR, meditation and mindfulness helped me recover the most. Learning not to fight or judge my symptoms as bad/scary, and instead sitting with them in meditation with love and compassion, calming my nervous system back down with love and presence, worked like the magical recipe for me. In the course bellow you can find DPDR-specific guided meditations and breathing exercises that will help you feel more present, connected and relaxed again. You can also try going on YouTube for free meditations and mindfulness practices. - Connect with life & things that ground you again
Talk to friends and family, go into nature, focus on the task at hand. Bring your brain back into connection with the world around you. - DON’T be scared of your own symptoms
Most importantly: Do not be scared of your symptoms. Most of my clients stay stuck in the self-perpetuating cycle of depersonalization because they keep trying to get rid of it and fighting it. This keeps you in the fight/flight/freeze loop, which keeps triggering your symptoms. Try to embrace the weirdness of the experience, knowing that it will pass when you do.
If you’d like some more guidance, feel free to message me to be added to the waitinglist for 1 on 1 coaching, or take a look at my recovery course bellow.
With love,
Robin.
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