Joined
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7 Posts
[An important note: if you are 'new' to all of this, do yourself a favor: turn off your computer and try to forget about depersonalization or derealization.]
You can find my introductory post from 2012 here: https://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/30903-slowly-but-surely/?hl=eppy105#entry250687
Rereading it now, I barely recognize that person. I wish so badly that I could go back in time and comfort him, and give him the reassurance that no one else could, and tell him about all of the incredible things he would get to experience down the line. Sometimes I think about him and I want to cry, because I know how much pain he was in. It is a pain that has haunted me for seven years, and though the idea of quantifying my recovery still leaves me uneasy, I owe it to that scared kid to come back here now.
For about 4 years after that post, I feared suicide every day. I felt certain that I was done for, that I'd get worse, that I'd reach a breaking point and snap. I read this forum obsessively. I was rushed to an emergency psychiatrist multiple times after admitting to thoughts of self-harm. I was put on sertraline (Zoloft), which was essentially a sugar pill for me, but I was too terrified to try anything else. Strangely enough, I never wanted to hurt myself, and really never considered myself 'depressed'--I just wanted a way out, any way out. There's no shame in feeling that way.
I still can't quite comprehend it, but somehow it never happened. I am stronger than I ever knew possible, and you are too.
Another mystery to me: I managed to drag myself out of bed and not only survived, but outwardly thrived. I came out of the closet, graduated high school with honors, got into my dream university, traveled, made new friends, fell in love (many times), had my heart broken (many times), made art, won awards, discovered new passions, and read voraciously, all the while seeing the world around me as a nightmare from which I could not awake. I sometimes joked with my therapist that I was the most high-functioning fuckup of all time. I have no advice in this department, but please know that despite everything, every moment was hell; the only way I did it was by convincing myself that, if I allowed myself to admit defeat, I would not get back up.
I feel a great sadness for how little of those years I actually experienced.
The turning point came when it did get worse, and I became non-functional. The worst night of my life was spent clutching my dorm room extra-long twin mattress, unaffected by the emergency klonopin I had popped an hour earlier, certain that if I let go, I'd run into the kitchen and stab myself. Having read all of the DPD research, I contacted Daphne Simeon and made an appointment. I remember taking the subway to her office, afraid that I'd jump onto the tracks, so dissociated that I did not know which train I was on. I broke down in her office and was prescribed clomipramine (Anafranil). Very slowly over a month, the derealization faded into the background. Clomipramine saved my life. It's done the same for others on here, but--and this isn't bullshit!--everyone's different.
After a few months, Dr. Simeon recommended that I begin psychotherapy with Orna Guralnik (another name that pops up in the DPD research) in order to deal with my own personal traumas. I had been self-loathing in regards to my sexuality from the time I was 7 years old, and I knew that it had royally fucked me up. My experience with Dr. Guralnik has been the most formative of my life, and though I don't necessarily feel that it impacted my derealization directly, it did allow me to really figure out my own narrative. People scoff at psychoanalysis, and in many cases I believe it to be useless, but as a guiding tool with which to deconstruct oneself, it is unmatched. It certainly did a lot more for me than the bullshit CBT therapist to whom NYU referred me.
Dr. Guralnik also diagnosed me with Bipolar II, which I had sort of known my entire life. I was prescribed lamotrigine (Lamictal), which, though subtle, has effectively put an end to my depressive cycles without numbing my positive hypomanic or obsessive tendencies.
So where am I now? I somehow snagged an absurdly high-paying job with a liberal arts degree (HA). I'm planning to work a few years before going to med school to specialize in--you guessed it--psychiatry and neurology. The brain (and its discontents) has always been at the pinnacle of my interests, and my experience with the mind's darkest corners has only strengthened my resolve to scratch at its secrets and ameliorate the pain of its sufferers. The reason I've come back here is because I tried to come off of clomipramine two months ago and had a relapse of symptoms. Now, a month of being back on it, I feel fine again. If taking a pill once a day is the price I pay for sanity, there's really no question.
Now, here are my two hard-won opinions:
1. I do not believe that everyone on this forum suffers from the same mental health problem. The disparity in etiology, symptoms, and effective treatments from person to person is too great to wrap it all snugly under the umbrella term of "Depersonalization Disorder." That is not to say that DPD doesn't exist, as it clearly does and clearly wreaks havoc on people's lives, but I think that the co-morbid disorders that come with it are the perpetuating culprits. For some of us, it's an anxiety disorder, or acute depression, or bipolar disorder, or PTSD, or HPPD, or schizophrenia*. Personally, I feel that my issue was a mix between PTSD and and HPPD, but regardless, the phrase "treatment resistant" does NOT mean untreatable. Keep trying new things.
*Relax.
1. People who shame others for taking medication should be put before a firing squad. Yes, the over-saturation of psycho-pharmaceuticals in the modern world is worrying, but even more worrying is the amount of suffering that can be avoided if people weren't terrified of trying them. Depersonalization seems to be behavioral for some people and chemical for others--medication can exponentially help in both cases. If you are suffering tremendously and are willing to give medication a shot, here's a short list of meds that have clinically or anecdotally helped people with DPD, but, of course, do not take my layman's knowledge as fact, and know that what works for some may not work for others:
--Lamictal + SSRI ("The London Combo")
--Clomipramine
--Lexapro
--Abilify
--Remeron
--Keppra/Sinemet (for HPPD)
--Klonopin/Xanax (Proceed with extreme caution. I'm wary of benzos, but some people experience complete relief on them. If they work for you, your doctor can hopefully fine-tune a regimen that mimics its effects without inducing dependency)
Be sure to do your research on a drug and discuss any concerns with a doctor, and don't be discouraged by failures. Unfortunately, medication is still a game of trial-and-error, but that will [hopefully] be changing in the next two decades.
So. I am doing well. I'm so glad I held out and survived, though I still feel horrified about what I went through. It's something that no human being should ever know. I got the help I needed, but I also had the support [familial, fraternal, monetary] to get that help. The number of people in the world without those luxuries is a farce unto the universe, and my heart aches for all of you. If you have no support system, look up organizations or programs that may be able to assist you. Be strong. Keep going. You're gonna make it. Really.
I want to leave you with something that always made me feel better in my darkest moments. This is the introduction to Bertrand Russell's autobiography:
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."
And just to lighten the mood a bit:
"Let the credulous and vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts." - Nabokov
Love always,
Jonathan
You can find my introductory post from 2012 here: https://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/30903-slowly-but-surely/?hl=eppy105#entry250687
Rereading it now, I barely recognize that person. I wish so badly that I could go back in time and comfort him, and give him the reassurance that no one else could, and tell him about all of the incredible things he would get to experience down the line. Sometimes I think about him and I want to cry, because I know how much pain he was in. It is a pain that has haunted me for seven years, and though the idea of quantifying my recovery still leaves me uneasy, I owe it to that scared kid to come back here now.
For about 4 years after that post, I feared suicide every day. I felt certain that I was done for, that I'd get worse, that I'd reach a breaking point and snap. I read this forum obsessively. I was rushed to an emergency psychiatrist multiple times after admitting to thoughts of self-harm. I was put on sertraline (Zoloft), which was essentially a sugar pill for me, but I was too terrified to try anything else. Strangely enough, I never wanted to hurt myself, and really never considered myself 'depressed'--I just wanted a way out, any way out. There's no shame in feeling that way.
I still can't quite comprehend it, but somehow it never happened. I am stronger than I ever knew possible, and you are too.
Another mystery to me: I managed to drag myself out of bed and not only survived, but outwardly thrived. I came out of the closet, graduated high school with honors, got into my dream university, traveled, made new friends, fell in love (many times), had my heart broken (many times), made art, won awards, discovered new passions, and read voraciously, all the while seeing the world around me as a nightmare from which I could not awake. I sometimes joked with my therapist that I was the most high-functioning fuckup of all time. I have no advice in this department, but please know that despite everything, every moment was hell; the only way I did it was by convincing myself that, if I allowed myself to admit defeat, I would not get back up.
I feel a great sadness for how little of those years I actually experienced.
The turning point came when it did get worse, and I became non-functional. The worst night of my life was spent clutching my dorm room extra-long twin mattress, unaffected by the emergency klonopin I had popped an hour earlier, certain that if I let go, I'd run into the kitchen and stab myself. Having read all of the DPD research, I contacted Daphne Simeon and made an appointment. I remember taking the subway to her office, afraid that I'd jump onto the tracks, so dissociated that I did not know which train I was on. I broke down in her office and was prescribed clomipramine (Anafranil). Very slowly over a month, the derealization faded into the background. Clomipramine saved my life. It's done the same for others on here, but--and this isn't bullshit!--everyone's different.
After a few months, Dr. Simeon recommended that I begin psychotherapy with Orna Guralnik (another name that pops up in the DPD research) in order to deal with my own personal traumas. I had been self-loathing in regards to my sexuality from the time I was 7 years old, and I knew that it had royally fucked me up. My experience with Dr. Guralnik has been the most formative of my life, and though I don't necessarily feel that it impacted my derealization directly, it did allow me to really figure out my own narrative. People scoff at psychoanalysis, and in many cases I believe it to be useless, but as a guiding tool with which to deconstruct oneself, it is unmatched. It certainly did a lot more for me than the bullshit CBT therapist to whom NYU referred me.
Dr. Guralnik also diagnosed me with Bipolar II, which I had sort of known my entire life. I was prescribed lamotrigine (Lamictal), which, though subtle, has effectively put an end to my depressive cycles without numbing my positive hypomanic or obsessive tendencies.
So where am I now? I somehow snagged an absurdly high-paying job with a liberal arts degree (HA). I'm planning to work a few years before going to med school to specialize in--you guessed it--psychiatry and neurology. The brain (and its discontents) has always been at the pinnacle of my interests, and my experience with the mind's darkest corners has only strengthened my resolve to scratch at its secrets and ameliorate the pain of its sufferers. The reason I've come back here is because I tried to come off of clomipramine two months ago and had a relapse of symptoms. Now, a month of being back on it, I feel fine again. If taking a pill once a day is the price I pay for sanity, there's really no question.
Now, here are my two hard-won opinions:
1. I do not believe that everyone on this forum suffers from the same mental health problem. The disparity in etiology, symptoms, and effective treatments from person to person is too great to wrap it all snugly under the umbrella term of "Depersonalization Disorder." That is not to say that DPD doesn't exist, as it clearly does and clearly wreaks havoc on people's lives, but I think that the co-morbid disorders that come with it are the perpetuating culprits. For some of us, it's an anxiety disorder, or acute depression, or bipolar disorder, or PTSD, or HPPD, or schizophrenia*. Personally, I feel that my issue was a mix between PTSD and and HPPD, but regardless, the phrase "treatment resistant" does NOT mean untreatable. Keep trying new things.
*Relax.
1. People who shame others for taking medication should be put before a firing squad. Yes, the over-saturation of psycho-pharmaceuticals in the modern world is worrying, but even more worrying is the amount of suffering that can be avoided if people weren't terrified of trying them. Depersonalization seems to be behavioral for some people and chemical for others--medication can exponentially help in both cases. If you are suffering tremendously and are willing to give medication a shot, here's a short list of meds that have clinically or anecdotally helped people with DPD, but, of course, do not take my layman's knowledge as fact, and know that what works for some may not work for others:
--Lamictal + SSRI ("The London Combo")
--Clomipramine
--Lexapro
--Abilify
--Remeron
--Keppra/Sinemet (for HPPD)
--Klonopin/Xanax (Proceed with extreme caution. I'm wary of benzos, but some people experience complete relief on them. If they work for you, your doctor can hopefully fine-tune a regimen that mimics its effects without inducing dependency)
Be sure to do your research on a drug and discuss any concerns with a doctor, and don't be discouraged by failures. Unfortunately, medication is still a game of trial-and-error, but that will [hopefully] be changing in the next two decades.
So. I am doing well. I'm so glad I held out and survived, though I still feel horrified about what I went through. It's something that no human being should ever know. I got the help I needed, but I also had the support [familial, fraternal, monetary] to get that help. The number of people in the world without those luxuries is a farce unto the universe, and my heart aches for all of you. If you have no support system, look up organizations or programs that may be able to assist you. Be strong. Keep going. You're gonna make it. Really.
I want to leave you with something that always made me feel better in my darkest moments. This is the introduction to Bertrand Russell's autobiography:
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me."
And just to lighten the mood a bit:
"Let the credulous and vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts." - Nabokov
Love always,
Jonathan
