[justbreath]

Hi everyone, I'm a male, 35 years old and was suffering from DPDR for a little over a month and it was hell. I was completely detached from reality, couldn't feel happiness or sadness, questioned my existence, had suicidal thoughts, was afraid to go to sleep and all these bad feelings I'm sure most of you are familiar with.

I was frantically trying to get rid of this so I was taking supplements, trying to do exercises but it was still there. You can't even exercise when you're in that state of mind.

One day I was driving home from work and noticed that I was involuntarily holding my breath. Or when I did inhale or exhale, it was very minimum. I developed this bad habit from wearing a mask. When I'm working with my mask on, breathing creates moisture, so I had developed this habit of holding my breath or keeping breathing to very minimum. And I was doing this all the time unconsciously throughout my day.

So I started be conscious of my breathing. This is not a breathing exercise where you do it for 10 minutes then go back to your "normal" breathing. You need to do this all the time until you're not thinking about this. As you're reading this start breathing, do it whenever and wherever. If you have difficulty breathing through your nose, you can use those breath right nose strips.

I started to get better within hours of breathing and haven't felt any symptoms of dpdr. You can search on youtube how to breath using your diaphragm and make that a habit.

By the way, when I made this connection between dpdr and pandemic/mask wearing, I was curious to see search volume for dpdr over a period of time, and here's a screenshot from google trends. Look at that spike.

Once you recover from this, please share this with your friends and family who may be going through this and help each other out.
Be aware of your breathing. Best of luck to you all.

 

[Trith]

Thanks very much for your tip, I will definitely try it.
I don't think the increase in google searches correlates with the pandemic though. I can see an exponential increase, that could be due to DPDR becoming better known by the general public, plus some noise.

 

[35467]

Who says that people uses the term"dpdr" when they do a search? Try "depersonalization" and it will be totally diffrent. Intermitted depersonalization is very normal to stress, depression and anxiety. To have depersonalization for less than 6.months do not qualify for the diagnosis of depersonalization disorder. There is a cognitive model made for depersonalization disorder based on distraction, anxiety and obsession. It works in some but fails in many who have the disorder for a long time.
There is some similarities in a sprained leg and a broken one,- the treatment and the prognosis is not the same. The first might go away untreated while the other will not. One with a sprained leg might give advice that is useless for those with a broken leg.

 

[Kasper01]

Intersting

 

[justbreath]

Who says that people uses the term"dpdr" when they do a search? Try "depersonalization" and it will be totally diffrent. Intermitted depersonalization is very normal to stress, depression and anxiety. To have depersonalization for less than 6.months do not qualify for the diagnosis of depersonalization disorder. There is a cognitive model made for depersonalization disorder based on distraction, anxiety and obsession. It works in some but fails in many who have the disorder for a long time.
There is some similarities in a sprained leg and a broken one,- the treatment and the prognosis is not the same. The first might go away untreated while the other will not. One with a sprained leg might give advice that is useless for those with a broken leg.

You're focusing on the wrong thing. It's not a scientific study, it's my observations. It will be stupid to deny that mask wearing hasn't affected the way we breath. Even before mask wearing, most humans in general are not breathing properly. Your brain needs oxygen to function properly.

For the next 2-3 days, do this experiment. The moment you wake up, start thinking about breathing, nothing else. Go about your day like normal but be conscious of breathing. Breath in, breath out. Pump some oxygen into your brain, your body will take care of the rest. I'm not only free of dpdr but I'm more energized and focused. Even when I intentionally try to think about existence and all that stuff that would put me into a depressive state of mind and give me panic attacks, it doesn't happen.

 

[35467]

"For the next 2-3 days, do this experiment. The moment you wake up, start thinking about breathing, nothing else. Go about your day like normal but be conscious of breathing. Breath in, breath out. "

I have tried this for a long time daily and quit scientifically with a device for "heart rate variability biofeedback" that excises the ventral part of the vagus nerve that is also the parasympathetic safe response system. So, you are giving the body a fysiological "safe response". It might work in some states but very unlikely in depersonalization disorder in its primary form or the dissociative subtype of PTSD. There have been examinations of people with depersonalization if there was a disruption related to the parasympathetic system/vagus nerve. There is but it is not the system that makes it but it comes from outside likely a network and emotional regulation done in the ventromedial part of the prefrontal cortex. So, it is not "bottom-up" from the nervous system to the brain but "top down" from the brain to the nervous system in both depersonalization disorder and the dissociative subtype of PTSD. It worked for your intermitted depersonalization symptoms.

Heart rate variability biofeedback: how and why does it work?

In recent years there has been substantial support for heart rate variability biofeedback (HRVB) as a treatment for a variety of disorders and for performance enhancement (Gevirtz, 2013). Since conditions as widely varied as asthma and depression seem to respond to this form of cardiorespiratory...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[Trith]

No, the mask hasn't affected the way I breath at all (so you are kind of calling me stupid in your comment). Just take the time to actually look for "depersonalization" in google trends, like Mayer-Gross suggested. Please actually do it. There are many more occurrences for "depersonalization" and there is nothing like what you talk about. Google "derealization" and you will see a huge peak around may 2021 and then if falls down immediately, whereas we were still wearing masks before and after that. Then google "derealisation" with the british spelling and you won't see any peak again. All of this means nothing. For all we know maybe someone talked about derealization in an american TV program and some people started googling it thinking they had it.
And even if there was an increase in the number of people having DPDR it would more likely be due to the isolation during the lockdown or because of anxiety caused by the pandemic. There was an increase in the number of psychotic breakdowns right after the lockdown, when people were going out again. Look also at the chart below ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d415). So I am sorry but you are probably not finding some cure that none of the researchers who have been working on this disease for over 30 years have never thought of. Anyway, it is well known that DPDR often goes away on its own for a lot of people after just a few months. So no need to be carried away.

 

[blankxi]

Who says that people uses the term"dpdr" when they do a search? Try "depersonalization" and it will be totally diffrent. Intermitted depersonalization is very normal to stress, depression and anxiety. To have depersonalization for less than 6.months do not qualify for the diagnosis of depersonalization disorder. There is a cognitive model made for depersonalization disorder based on distraction, anxiety and obsession. It works in some but fails in many who have the disorder for a long time.
There is some similarities in a sprained leg and a broken one,- the treatment and the prognosis is not the same. The first might go away untreated while the other will not. One with a sprained leg might give advice that is useless for those with a broken leg.

Dude, why are you under every single post trying to argue with people…