Depersonalization: Who Am I?
If you struggle with depersonalization, I’m sharing a technique to help you feel integrated and whole again.
By the end of this post, you’ll understand the following:
- Why depersonalization happens
- What depersonalization feels like
- What to do when you’re in it
- How to prevent future episodes
What’s Depersonalization, and What Does It Feels Like?
Depersonalization is when you feel like you’re observing yourself from the outside like you left your body. Low energy is common–like it’s hard to move because you feel heavy. Symptoms also include mental fogginess and limited motivation.
One of my clients, when describing her experience of depersonalization, said:
“I’m laying on the couch, but I’m not really there. It’s as though I’m floating above my body, looking down. It’s quiet. I know my kids are there, but I can’t feel them touching my body that lays on the couch. I have no energy, and I can’t hardly move.”
Another person who sought treatment for anorexia also depersonalized. She said:
“I need my body to be small and light because it feels like I want to float away, to leave my body.”
Why Depersonalization Happens
Although experiences with depersonalization vary, it usually happens when the intensity of stress, trauma, or past trauma are unbearable. We experience discomfort through our nervous system. Anxiety, sadness, shame, anger, happiness, and joy all have neurological signatures.
The matrix of our nerves meanders all through the body. In other words, emotions are experienced through nerve signals within the physical body. When those feelings get too intense, it makes sense that your instinct is to leave the site of the unbearable discomfort. It makes sense that you would dissociate or depersonalize.
Leaving the body is not necessarily a conscious decision. Trauma survivors have nervous system adaptations that develop to help them cope. Even if the trauma was a long time ago, the body maintains these nervous system adaptations. They may lie dormant for weeks, months, or years but when triggered by stress or a subtle reminder of the traumatic event(s), the body responds by coping the best way it knows how. By leaving.
You may be wondering, Am I doomed? Will it always be this way?
Don’t lose hope. The fact that your nervous system changed to help you cope with the original overwhelming stress proves that it can change again. Remember, depersonalization was a means of coping when the body had no other way. With new coping strategies, the nervous system can adapt and heal, so you don’t have to personalize, so you can stay.
Everyone Experiences Stress? Why Does Depersonalization Happen To Only Some People?
Our natural response to distress is to seek comfort from those around us. If those people cannot comfort us, our nervous system moves to the next level of coping, which is escape. The body is flooded with neurochemicals that prime it to run fast or fight, like adrenaline. You may have heard this referred to as fight or flight.
But what if you’re not able to escape? The body moves to the next means of coping. It shuts down–or dissociates–because seeking comfort and escaping were not options. You may have heard this referred to as the freeze response.
Fast forward to adulthood. If you needed the freeze response when you were a child, and your body created the nervous system pathway, that circuit will always exist. It can always be activated if the body deems it necessary. Sometimes the body perceives the big stress of everyday life or a subtle environmental trigger as a reason to activate the shutdown response.
Yet you can teach the body to have another response. You can build other neurological pathways. Think of it like a trail through nature. When you create a brand new trail, it’s still covered with plants. The more you walk the trail, the more reinforced it gets.
It’s tempting to see dissociation as bad or dysfunctional. Yet, it’s important to acknowledge that this is the body’s way of caring for itself when there are no other means. This is the body doing the very best it can with the resources it has. It can be helpful to cultivate some compassion and gratitude for the body’s ability to respond in a way that prevents complete overwhelm.
Is Depersonalization Always Bad?
While many of my clients dislike how dissociation makes them feel fragmented and disconnected from their lives and loved ones, they also admit that something about it can be quite comforting. It makes sense, right? There may be some ambiguity about developing new coping methods because, despite its negative side effects, depersonalization has worked. If you’re unsure whether you want to adopt new coping mechanisms, that’s perfectly normal.
There are times when shutting down and disconnecting is normal and healthy. For example, when exhausted after several long days at work, it’s perfectly fine to tune out and get absorbed in your favorite TV show. It’s a way to let your brain rest, to decompress.
Ready to Start Healing?
Here I’ll offer some techniques you can try when you notice yourself in a depersonalization episode. Then I’ll offer some tools you can use to prevent future depolarization episodes.
While you’re healing your nervous system, there will likely be times when, in a bout of stress, the nervous system does what it knows how to do, and that’s to shut down. Don’t lose hope. It takes practice and patience to get good at using the new neurological pathways that allow you to stay.
Amid a Depolarization Episode
When you find yourself in a fog, it may be hard to find the wherewithal to try these new techniques. That’s why they are so very simple.
Here is a list of things to try:
- Awareness of not feeling
- Standing or balancing
- Shake it out gently, from wrists to ankles
- Orient to sound (birds, wind, mid tone music)
- Rocking or swinging in a hammock
- Physioball
- Stress ball
- Isometric leg or arm push
- Preferred Scents
- Rainstick
- Inhale
- Lift soup cans
- Push something
- Feel a pet
- Get a massage (or other touch work)
- Hum or gargle
How These Activities Work
These exercises change the physiological state, so it’s incompatible with being shut down. For example, when dissociated, the heart rate slows, breathing slows, and movement becomes sluggish. These activities create the opposite response. For example, inhaling increases your heart rate. So if you extend your inhale while in a shutdown state, the heart rate quickens, changing the physiological state of the shutdown.
Moving back into your body may be uncomfortable because you may have disassociated from the pain it holds. There are ways to heal that, also. You can rewire your nervous system, so it’s tolerable and even pleasant to be in the body.
Depolarization Prevention
Prevention starts when you’re not in a shutdown state. You may not have noticed, but there are usually things that precede a shutdown, and we can teach ourselves to see those things. Then we can learn to cope with those things before the shutdown occurs.
For several weeks, you might consider setting a timer that will offer a reminder three times a day. When the timer goes off, notice your emotional state. You might ask yourself, do I feel unpleasant, pleasant, or neutral? Although it seems quite simple, noticing teaches the brain to perceive the changing states of mind better.
If you feel unpleasant, you might inquire whether you feel more anxious or are moving into a shutdown. If you feel anxious, you might try calming coping strategies like breathing or extending the exhale. If you cope with the anxiety, it’s quite possible that you will move back to a regulated nervous system rather than shut down.
Take note of your stress signals. Is it certain people dynamics? Lack of sleep? You can then come up with techniques for navigating each of those dynamics.
Final Thoughts
In some ways, this blog has simplified the process. Healing can be simple, but that doesn’t always mean it’s easy. I highly recommend working with a trained therapist. Giving up old coping mechanisms can be scary and confusing. There may be good reasons your body still needs those coping mechanisms, and a therapist can help you identify those reasons.
While you may be able to recognize the circumstances that lead to a shutdown, it may be difficult to know how to navigate those circumstances differently. Having a trained professional to guide you through healing can expedite the process, so you can get on with living the life that gives you meaning and purpose.
