Hi all,
I'm a community mental health nurse working in the North West of England. I've been qualified for 10 years. Whilst undertaking my nurse training, I experienced two years of chronic derealisation. Not a day went by without the world feeling abstract and unreal. It was an incredibly distressing experience.
In 2009 I recovered and have sustained this recovery for 12 years.
When I first became 'unwell', I sought help from various professionals: GP, counsellor, psychiatrist, none of whom appeared to have any understanding of what I was experiencing. I recall how absolutely demoralising this was. Perhaps things are different now however I did read a paper the other day in which DP sufferers were interviews. They highlighted how there was a craving for disorder specific treatment however this kind of intervention was thin on the ground.
When I look at how my disorder developed, although I didn't know it at the time, it followed exactly the CBT model devised by Elaine Hunter at the Depersonalization Disorder Unit, London.
I would like to develop a disorder specific treatment intervention using this model but wasn't sure how I'd go about this. With the pandemic and everything moving online, I wondered if this could be delivered 1:1 over Zoom.
I wanted to gain the opinion of the community to see if this was something you think would be worthwhile pursuing. If so, I wondered if anyone would be interested in speaking with me informally over Zoom to discuss your experiences of DP and what you might want from treatment.
Thank you in advance.
