Depersonalization Disorder De-realization: Why It Occurs

Disorder: In Depersonalization Disorder De-realization, the person feels not knowing who and may not even recognize their reality. You feel like you have lost your identity. What could be behind this disorder?

The disorder depersonalization derealization (TDD or SDD) is a peculiar psychological mechanism. The moment it occurs, the person feels that he has lost his identity, that he does not recognize himself as her, and that he can feel the same towards the reality surrounding him.

The feeling of strangeness, seeming that a part of herself has detached and disappeared, fills her with anguish, misunderstanding, and discouragement.

What is happening to me? Am I going crazy? Will the whole world fade away? Has that feeling come to stay?

This feeling of anguish occurs because, in general, we are very little used to knowing how our psychological mechanisms work, which does not happen when we refer to our bodies.

Popular wisdom warns us about the role that fever has in the flu or how a healing process develops or a hematoma. However, when faced with mental machinery, we feel utterly helpless.

It scares us terribly, and any manifestation that is incomprehensible to us generates anguish.

When TDD appears, and suddenly we do not recognize ourselves (something that normally happens because of something that has occurred and has caused anxiety), it increases the anguish we feel, thus entering a vicious circle.

Understanding what is behind this disorder can help us get out of this circle.

1. The Origin of TDD or SDD

This type of disorder is closely associated with phobias, although it can be due to other conflicts or situations that have taken us to a limit.

It happens that, faced with phenomena that we may all have experienced at a certain moment in our lives (situations that exceed us because they are sudden and unimaginable, accumulation of various frustrations in our lives, emotional remains that have been creating a residue ).

In a certain moment, without anything apparent promoting it, it explodes in the form of supreme anguish that collapses the mind.

A situation of mental collapse can destroy part of our ego and even our reality.

The process can be reversed: we go blank, feeling everything strange, and, later, anxiety comes. This state can also occur before changes or important projects in our lives.

We believe that everything follows its normal course, but there is something in the background that we do not quite see clearly, or that does not quite fit.

The degree and duration of this mental state will depend on what is behind that blocking reaction.

A strong emotional betrayal, continuous workplace or family harassment, fixed and obsessive ideas about the meaning of our existence or concern about an uncertain future can trigger that mental collapse that, at times, even erases our image in the mirror.

2. We back know who we are or where we are going

All these manifestations result from operations carried out by our mind, in general, to defend ourselves against something that we cannot fully assimilate.

Either because the situation is very strong and traumatic, overflowing the psychic tools we have at a given moment; Either because we lack experiential, emotional, or conceptual resources to understand the basic conflict.

The point is that we dissociate ourselves. One part of ourselves is witness to what is happening; the other part has gone blank.

3. How Can We Tackle It?

Now our fight is to restore that lost part. The mental device has managed to neutralize everything that we could not digest, but along the way, it has erased part of our being.

It would be like chemo against a tumour, which manages to load the bad cells and destroys the good ones.

It is not only about restoring that part lost in the lack of realization, but about obtaining the resources to face the base situations, knowing more and preventing what has led us there.

• We must not get caught up in a label of a new pathological identity. We are not a specific syndrome, but we suffer from a state of reaction to remedying something.
• In the same way that we are not a physical disease, but we experience it, and we take care of it to find a solution.

We have to consider that human beings talk to themselves constantly. We do it as if we were doing it to another. We criticize ourselves; we excuse ourselves; we encourage ourselves, etc.

When a mental breakdown occurs, that dialogue stops, and we take refuge in the negative part; we believe that only that part exists.

But no, there are both. The proof is that we start looking for information or help, and we keep chatting in the process, only negatively and in anguish.

We must restore our internal dialogue to its normal continuity.

Understand that a frame was broken that gave meaning to our lives up to a certain point to a greater or lesser extent. It is heavy for us to accept it and find other senses that do not deny what happened, but that does not anchor us in that place, promoting rebuilding our capacities.

4. Going Back to the Past Can Help

There we will find a very valuable thread. Let’s take back everything we have done in life. Let’s rescue its benefits and everything we bet on.

Let us ask ourselves why they have been valid, those that must be reformulated, and those that must be discarded. Let’s remake ourselves.

Let’s get help. Writing and talking with friends or with a psychotherapist who does not label us may be necessary.

Good therapeutic work can provide, in addition to a door to that pause, a greater knowledge of our resources and our mental defence systems. The further we know about them, the more prepared and safer we will be in our life.