How are Anxiety and Depersonalization Related?
If you’ve been looking around the web or visiting anxiety forums trying to find information about anxiety you are bound to have come across the words derealization and depersonalization or derealize and depersonalize.
They are a common and disturbing side effect of anxiety disorders which can be very alarming to anyone who experiences them. Anxiety and depersonalization often go together.
Not everyone who has an anxiety disorder will experience them but in order to suffer from either symptom you do need to have an anxiety disorder or have suffered a severe trauma such as losing a loved one.
So, in the context of anxiety disorders, in order to overcome either depersonalization or derealization you need to deal with the underlying anxiety condition. Even just reducing your anxiety levels will help with both of these symptoms.
So what are they and what do they mean?
They are two different but similar feelings that are often used interchangeably but do mean slightly different things.
The easiest way to describe the difference is that depersonalization is about you. Anyone who is suffering from depersonalization will describe themselves as feeling spaced out, almost like an out of body feeling with anxiety, watching yourself going through life, they know that they are fully awake but feel fuzzy headed and distanced from things, you may feel like an observer.
Depersonalization distorts how you feel about yourself and how your body feels, it distorts your self awareness. It can create an almost out of body feeling with anxiety.
Derealization on the other hand is more a perception of the outside world and distorts how the outside world is seen. Someone suffering from derealization may describe the world as like viewing things through a projector or looking at things through a gold fish bowl.
Both terms have become almost interchangeable and are often experienced and talked about side by side. The effect can be very disturbing and leave you feeling that there is something seriously wrong with you, that you have some kind of mental illness.
So firstly be assured that they are just another of the side effects of anxiety. Depersonalization comes about because when you are suffering from an anxiety disorder you can become very introspective. Many of us spend a great deal of our time looking inwards asking ourselves the question, “how do I feel?” Anxiety breeds anxiety so it is little wonder that we do this when we have an anxiety disorder. As you spend more and more time examining your feelings, worrying about the symptoms of anxiety, your mind becomes over tired which causes the feelings of detachment that people describe when they are suffering from depersonalization. You can end up almost in a dreamlike state.
How many times have you woken up in the morning and started the day by asking yourself how you feel, am I worrying today, do I feel anxious. This constant worrying and checking in with yourself has a dramatic effect on the mind, you become more and more focused on yourself and less and less focused on what is going on a round you, taking little or no notice of the outside world, which in turn distorts your outlook on things. Have you ever been told, when you are worrying about something or anxious, that you just don’t seem with it.
Anxiety and depersonalization or derealization often appear side by side as a direct result of an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety is a very self absorbed, self focused condition and the longer we suffer from it the more likely we are to start having feelings of depersonalization and derealization.
When I was at my worst with my anxiety it almost felt as if life was passing me by, that I was on auto pilot. I would go out with the family but be so wrapped up in my own thoughts, worries and anxieties that the day would almost pass me by. When I was having a bad day, it became so common that my wife could identify the spaced out look on my face and knew straight away that I was wrapped up in anxiety about something. I felt that one of the hardest things about anxiety and the feelings of depersonalization was how I felt that I was missing out on my own life, almost as if life was a spectator sport rather than something that I should be living.
Difficult as it may seem, the way to deal with depersonalization or derealization is almost to ignore it, don’t worry about it and certainly don’t spend your time thinking about it. It is merely another symptom of your anxiety disorder and just like the other anxiety symptoms it relies on you perpetuating it through your fear. It is not life threatening, you do not have a serious illness, you are not going mad.
Like with so many other anxiety symptoms, they will reduce and eventually go away once you start dealing with the underlying anxiety disorder. The good thing about both derealization and depersonalization is that they are one of the first symptoms to improve as you start to recover.
Read about depersonalisation cures or read about Anxiety and Food next