- One of the most common worries
that depersonalization-derealization sufferers have
is that they might not be able to recover.
So today, I'm gonna go through
the five most common reasons
that people think they can't recover from DPDR,
why none of them are actually true,
and why you're really having these thoughts
in the first place.
Hey, everyone, I'm Shaun O Connor,
author of "The Depersonalization Manual."
I suffered with chronic depersonalization disorder
for two years before I recovered completely.
And in the more than 15 years since then,
my book, "The Depersonalization Manual"
has helped tens of thousands of people
around the world to recover from DPDR.
And today, I'm gonna go through
the top five reasons that people think
they can't recover from depersonalization-derealization.
Let's get started.
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Number five, my symptoms are different.
I hear this from people all the time.
The typical experience goes something like this.
Somebody develops DPDR,
then after some time,
they find out what the condition is,
usually on Google.
They then go through the list of symptoms
but find out that maybe they don't have
all of the symptoms that are listed.
For example, they might be experiencing
the feelings of disconnection and the visual symptoms
but not so much the existential thoughts,
or maybe they are experiencing the existential thoughts
but not so much the memory issues.
Basically, they're not ticking every single one
of the boxes and so they jump to the conclusion
that what they must have
is a different type of DPDR,
maybe an incurable one,
or some other mystery condition altogether.
It can seem frightening,
but the explanation is a very simple.
As with all anxiety-based conditions,
DPDR has a range of symptoms.
It's not a specific set of exact symptoms
that all switch on and off at the same time.
It's a spectrum.
Some of these symptoms will feel stronger than others,
some will simply come and go over time.
And remember that how much a symptom will bother you
is based heavily on how much you focus on it.
So for example, the idea of experiencing,
say, memory-related issues might for you
be a particularly terrifying prospect.
And so you might focus heavily on that
and then not so much on the visual symptoms.
But for someone else,
it could be the other way around.
And in all cases, the symptoms
that an individual focuses on
tend to change over time anyways.
But it's extremely unlikely
that at any given point,
you're going to have all the possible symptoms
of depersonalization and derealization,
and certainly not all at the same intensity
and all at the same time.
But don't worry, that doesn't mean
that you've got some bizarre incurable version
of DPDR or some other mystery condition.
It's normal to experience some variance in the symptoms,
but it's still the same condition
and you can and will recover.
Number four, your personality type.
A major concern with DPDR sufferers
is that they won't be able to recover
because of their personality type.
They say to themselves,
well, I'm overanalytical.
I overthink things.
I can't let go of problems.
I'm a perfectionist.
And the worry is that, okay,
maybe all these other people have recovered from DPDR,
but they don't have the same analytical brain that I do.
I won't be able to stop analyzing this.
I won't be able to turn this off.
Personally, this was a major concern for me.
I have a serious tendency to overthink things,
and if there's a problem I need to solve,
I tend to lose a lot of sleep until it is solved,
so believe me, I know the feeling.
Now, the idea that your personality type
can prevent you from recovering
can seem like a scary prospect,
but in reality, it's not true
and it doesn't even make any sense,
and here's why.
So firstly, let's remember again
that depersonalization-derealization
is an anxiety-based condition, that's all.
And anxiety-based conditions are extremely common.
In fact, it's estimated that up to 30% of people
will experience at least one anxiety-based condition
at some point in their lives.
They're that common.
Now, if like me, you have a tendency
to overanalyze or overthink things,
you may be more inclined to initially develop
an anxiety-based condition,
but that has nothing to do
with your recovery process,
which is essentially the same every time,
regardless of your personality type.
Again, DP and DR are symptoms of anxiety.
Worrying that your personality type
will somehow prevent you from getting rid of them
is like saying my heart palpitations will never go away
because I tend to overthink things,
or my shoulder tension will never go away
because I'm a perfectionist.
It simply doesn't make sense.
This is important.
There is no imaginary line that you can cross
after which you can't recover
from an anxiety-based condition,
and there is certainly no personality type
that can't recover from DPDR.
And in fact, if you do have
a particularly analytical mindset,
that can actually be a great asset for your recovery.
Why?
Because you can focus that exact same mindset
onto subjects and tasks
that are actually interesting and constructive.
This will help to give your brain the space
to focus away from the thoughts and feelings of DPDR
and allow them to fade away and stop.
Look, maybe you are overanalytical.
Maybe you do overthink things.
Maybe, just like me, you're a perfectionist
and can't let go of unsolved problems.
But guess what?
It doesn't matter.
You still can and will recover.
Number three, I'm in a stressful work/life situation.
This is an incredibly common misperception
about recovery.
If, for example, somebody is working in a job
that's demanding or they're super busy
taking care of their young children,
they can worry that the stress of that situation
will prevent them from recovering from DPDR.
But fortunately, that's not how recovery works.
Remember that there are essentially two forms
of anxiety, normal day-to-day anxiety
and unnecessary anxiety.
Normal anxiety is a stress of working a job,
having kids, losing her car keys,
being late for a meeting at work.
These are normal day-to-day stresses
and they're part and parcel of being a human.
It's perfectly normal and natural to experience these.
Unnecessary anxiety, on the other hand,
consists, for example,
of the intense feelings of disconnection of DPDR,
intrusive existential thoughts,
the fear that you're still high and you can't come down,
or that you're living in a dream.
Those fears are based on fight or flight anxiety
and are not supposed to happen
outside of a life or death situation.
The mistake that we make
is that we think that in order to recover
from unnecessary anxiety,
that we need to completely get rid
of all sources of anxiety from our lives,
including normal day-to-day anxiety.
I certainly did this.
When I first developed DPDR,
I stopped working, I moved home with my parents,
I canceled travel plans, college plans, you name it.
I cleared everything off the table
and made it my number one priority
to focus all of my attention on stopping the DPDR.
And even though I had the very best of intentions,
what I ended up doing was, inadvertently,
creating more and more space
for the unnecessary anxiety to occupy.
Remember, unnecessary anxiety and DPDR
will take up only as much space as you give them.
And so having a busy work and home life
is not necessarily a bad thing.
In fact, it can be a really good thing.
It can be a great way to focus your attention away
from the thoughts and feelings of depersonalization
and derealization and kickstart your recovery.
Number two, I've been traumatized by depersonalization.
This is another major concern
that I hear from people all the time.
They worry that their experience with DPDR
has been so profoundly terrifying
that they've been traumatized by it.
This, they believe, will greatly overcomplicate
the recovery process,
and maybe even make it impossible to recover at all.
So let's take a look at this.
Firstly, what is trauma?
Trauma is a word that we use
to describe an emotional response to a terrible event,
like, say, a natural disaster or a traffic accident,
or what we perceive to have been a terrible event
even though we weren't actually in any danger,
like, say, a panic attack or a bad drug experience.
Where people get confused
is that they think that feeling traumatized is,
again, an imaginary line that has been permanently crossed.
They think that there are two main groups here,
DPDR sufferers and DPDR sufferers
who've been traumatized by their experience,
and the latter may never be able to recover.
But again, it's drawing this imaginary line in the sand
between people who supposedly can and can't recover,
and worrying that you've somehow crossed that line
because in this instance,
you feel like you've been traumatized,
but it simply doesn't make sense
because again, what is trauma?
It's not a line in the sand,
it's a word we use to describe
an emotional and psychological response,
and it's perfectly natural to have
an emotional and psychological response
to something that's as intensely frightening
as the sudden onset of DPDR.
In my case, I thought that overnight,
I had damaged my brain with drugs.
I lost my income,
I had to move home with my parents,
I couldn't enjoy films, books, or music anymore.
At one point, months into my experience,
I remember lying on the floor and just crying,
grieving for the life that I used to have.
Was it a traumatic experience?
You better believe it was.
But did the fact that it was traumatic
mean that I couldn't recover?
Of course not.
Again, it's an emotional and psychological response.
It would be weird if you and I
didn't have an emotional and psychological response
to something as frightening as that,
and especially at the start
when you've only just developed it
and no idea why you're experiencing
all these strange and terrifying symptoms.
But again, at no point does having that response
push you across some imaginary line
that you can't come back from.
And okay, let's assume for a minute
that you have been traumatized.
How do we deal with traumatic memories?
The way to resolve traumatic memories
is to process them.
With regard to DPDR, how do we do that?
We do that by understanding what the condition is,
understanding that we don't need to be afraid of it,
and why each one of its symptoms,
as frightening as they may have been,
are part of our body and brain's natural
and correct defense mechanism.
Again, no permanent line has been crossed
and you can and will recover.
And number one, I can't remember
what normal feels like.
This is an incredibly common worry.
The fear that the abnormal feelings
of depersonalization and derealization
have become so intense and persistent
that you have somehow forgotten
what normal ever felt like.
And if you can't remember it,
how can you ever get back there?
And would you even recognize it if you did?
Again, this idea seems like
it kind of makes sense at first glance,
but in actuality, it doesn't
and you don't need to worry about it.
Because here's the thing, remember again,
that DP and DR are just symptoms of anxiety.
And with anxiety, you don't need to remember
what not having anxiety felt like
in order to get rid of it.
You don't need to remember and pinpoint
what normal feels like in order to get back to normal.
That's not part of the recovery process
and it's not your job.
To illustrate just how silly this whole idea is,
let's take a look at some other symptoms of anxiety
in that same context.
If you're experiencing muscle tension,
do you need to remember what it was like
to not feel muscle tension
in order to get rid of it?
Of course not.
If somebody is having a panic attack,
do they need to remember specifically
what not having a panic attack felt like
in order to stop it?
Of course not.
When you say, I can't remember what normal felt like,
what you're actually saying is
at the moment, I can't remember what calm felt like.
This worry is a massive over complication
of what's essentially a very simple process.
It's your levels, and therefore symptoms,
of anxiety going up and down over time, that's all.
The idea that we have to somehow locate
and focus on a time in the past
when we didn't feel anxiety
in order to get rid of it now
is a massive over complication.
It's completely unnecessary, and honestly,
it's giving anxiety way too much credit.
And remember, we're also dealing
with what's known as state-specific memory.
Basically, this is a psychological phenomenon
that means that when you're feeling a certain way,
it can be temporarily difficult
to imagine what it feels like to be any other way.
So if you're feeling happy,
it can be hard to imagine what being sad ever felt like.
And if you're feeling anxious,
it can be hard, temporarily,
to imagine what not feeling anxious ever felt like.
This is why every panic attack
always feels like the worst one.
For those few minutes, it's very difficult
to imagine a time when you weren't panicking,
or even to remember the times when you've recovered
from panic attacks in the past.
That's state-specific memory.
So with DPDR, when we tried to imagine
what not feeling DPDR felt like,
which again, we don't need to do in order to recover,
and which is hard to do anyway
because of state-specific memory,
and we find in that moment
we can't do it, what happens?
We start to panic and spiral
just making the anxiety and DPDR worse.
It is a frustrating thought loop for sure,
but ultimately, that's all it is.
If right now you can't recall
what not feeling DPDR felt like,
don't worry, you don't have to.
That's not your job.
The fact that you can't do that at the moment
makes absolutely no difference to your recovery,
and yes, you can and will recover.
And the even better news
is that state-specific memory works the other way too,
so that when you do recover,
you look back on this whole experience
from a non-anxious perspective
and you will wonder what you are ever worried about.
Again, there's no line that you can cross
from which you cannot return
to being 100% back to normal
and completely free of DPDR.
Don't forget, you can instantly download
my complete guide to recovery,
"The Depersonalization Manual"
featuring hours of exclusive audio and video content
not available anywhere else at dpmanual.com.
Any comments or questions,
let me know in the comment section below
and I'll make sure to answer and help you out.
Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel,
and if you found this video helpful,
please do like and share.
Thanks for watching.
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