People who suffer from derealization question whether or not the world around them is real, and because of this, often have a very hard time functioning in the world around them.

Depersonalization is equally harmful: it robs the person of their feelings of humanity and makes them feel disassociated from the world around them.

Understandably, people who suffer from depersonalization and derealization may have a difficult time with social interaction, and may feel isolated and alone.

The best way to combat depersonalization and derealization is to get professional help from a mental health specialist, since depersonalization and derealization are often symptoms of larger mental illnesses, like anxiety or depression.

Along with professional help, these are some methods that can help reduce the panic, stress, and depression that come from depersonalization and derealization.

6. Assess your current medications.

If you’re currently taking medications for anxiety, depression, or any other illness, talk to your doctor about feeling dissociative: it could possibly be a side effect of your medication.

Common medications that can induce depersonalization or derealization include antihistamines, anti-anxiety medications, carbamazepine, fluoxetine, fluphenazine, indomethacin, nitrazepam, and sodium pentothal.

5. Monitor your recreational drug use and diet.

According to the US National Library of Medicine, long-term use of hallucinogens like LSD and marijuana can either cause, increase, or lessen feelings of dissociation in people with depersonalization and derealization disorders depending on their neural chemistry.

If you’re in a state that allows medical marijuana, consider talking to your doctor about possible depersonalization treatment; but in any other case, stay as far away as possible from unregulated marijuana or LSD from street vendors. While LSD and other hallucinogens may have promise in helping treat depersonalization, their lack of regulation can mean it may worsen your symptoms.

Regulating less intense chemicals like caffeine and alcohol are important as well. Because caffeine and alcohol both interfere with natural brain processes, eliminating or reducing their presence in your diet can help mental health and reduce the number of reactions with your medication.

4. Get some sleep (no, seriously).

We all know the woozy feeling from not having enough sleep. And while one or two all-nighters are fine, consistently having a bad sleep schedule can contribute to feelings of depersonalization or disassociation, not to mention a host of other negative effects on a person’s health.

The number of hours needed per night is different for everyone: according to the UCLA Psychiatry and Behavioral Services Center for Sleep Research, the best way to figure out how much sleep you need is to go cold turkey on everything.

Quit caffeine, quit sleeping pills, quit anything that wakes you up or puts you to sleep, and let your body naturally fall into a sleep pattern rhythm. It may take a couple weeks, but you’ll find your body may need much more or way less sleep than you’ve been providing it.

It’s important to fix that in order to effectively manage any mental illness, especially depersonalization and disassociation disorders.

3. Instead of obsessively concentrating on trivial things, practice purposeful, mindful meditation.

One of the hardest and most challenging aspects of depersonalization and derealization is the feeling of obsession, or not being able to “let things go”.

This obsessive quality can not only be personally distressing, but is also often one of the most significant symptoms that make forming social relationships with other people extremely difficult for people who struggle with it.

Obsession can be overwhelming, and can be tough to treat “on the spot”. However, practicing daily mindful meditation can help prevent obsessive episodes from occurring.

Mindful meditation can take many forms, and it’s important to find which type works best for you.

Essentially, a mindful meditative session will include focusing your entire being, mind and body, on the present moment: the pillow you’re sitting on, the smell you’re smelling, the thoughts you’re thinking.

You don’t pass judgment on the thoughts or feelings, you simply let them exist.

You accept the world as it is, for just 10 or 20 minutes, and feel calm and rooted in reality.

Guides for mindful meditations can be found virtually everywhere, and remember: the best ones are free. Mindful meditation has been successfully practiced for centuries, so don’t let some scam artist in L.A. convince you he has a “secret formula”.

Do, however, research different guides for mindful meditations, as everyone’s needs are different.

2. Find and foster communities, both likeminded and otherwise.

One of the toughest parts about living with depersonalization and derealization is the feeling of social isolation.

When first learning how to manage your symptoms, you may feel uncomfortable talking to people in public, and that’s okay: everyone recovers at different rates, and taking things slowly isn’t bad.

Luckily, lots of online communities exist for people suffering from depersonalization and derealization, from subreddit communities to 4chan forums and Facebook groups. Sometimes forming connections online can be easier than forming connections in real life, and it’s not a bad place to start.

Of course, it’s extremely important that your social interactions don’t begin and end online. Moving outside of your comfort zone, meeting people without your same mental illness, is very important.

Apps like Meetup are great places to start: if you’re interested in books, they have book clubs, or if you love football, there are lots of Meetup groups that meet for games. If you crave a more romantic or sexual connection, apps like Tinder or websites like Match.com can be good places to start to meet other people.

Because the worlds of online communities and the “outside world” are being more and more connected by apps like those mentioned, it’s becoming easier to transition to a social life outside of your laptop.

1. Be kind to yourself.

It’s very easy to let your inner monologue turn hateful: you’re not good enough, you’re bad with people, you have no friends, you’re a loser, etc.

If you follow nothing else in this list, follow this advice: do not let that internal script continue to play. Self-hatred will do nothing but make your condition worse. Instead, practice mindful thinking: when something like “I’m so stupid” crosses your mind, immediately say to yourself, “I may have some things to learn, but I am a smart, important person”.

Counter every negative thought you have with a good one and see how much self-love can help.

As always, take everything here with a grain of salt — that grain of salt, of course, being your mental health provider.

Only a trained professional can give you the complete resources you need to be mentally healthy, and there’s absolutely no shame in accessing one.

Have a great week, and remember to love yourself!

Please do share this article if you are feeling thankful :)

People affected by Depersonalization and Derealization will describe their symptoms as a detachment from reality and that they are living a dream (as if they’re outside their body, observing of themselves). That is what depersonalization feels like.

Derealization on the other hand, is a detachment from the environment: feeling that everything around them isn’t real. Another variation of this is the feeling that they don’t exist and when they are in a public area, nobody notices them.

You might of heard the phrase ‘reality testing’ being used when researching about DPD and how ‘reality testing’ remains in tact for individuals with DPD. What this means is, unlike other disorders such as psychosis, the person is aware that what they experience is only a feeling and that the world isn’t actually an illusion. People with DPD may think they are going insane, but this has been described as almost the opposite of insanity: being hyperaware of one’s surroundings. I’ll talk more about this later on, when we explore the cause of DPD, but now the big question:

Do you Have Depersonalization Disorder (DPD)?

Now, here’s where it starts getting a bit tricky. One can experience Depersonalization and Derealization symptoms, but not be diagnosed with Depersonalization Disorder (DPD). In these circumstances, they are just symptoms rather than the person having the disorder itself. The symptoms of Depersonalization and Derealization are actually quite common in panic attacks, phobias (including social anxiety), PTSD, and acute stress. Furthermore, alcohol and drugs are known to cause this problem as well. So simply having these symptoms doesn’t mean you are affected by DPD.

So, first of all, in order for a diagnosis of DPD to be possible, you must ensure that the feeling of Depersonalization doesn’t only occur due to the above reasons, for instance, if it only occurs during a panic attack, then it is a symptom of anxiety rather than DPD itself. Secondly, the symptoms must be persistent and must be severe enough to impair one’s daily life functioning in order to become a disorder. If you still think you have DPD, then don’t worry, because there are steps you can take immediately to eliminate your Depersonalization Disorder for good, and worrying is the opposite of what you must do. Before we get to how to cure Depersonalization Disorder, it’s important to know what causes it.

Depersonalization Disorder Causes and the Depersonalization Cure

Image Source

Most of the time, DPD is caused by chronic childhood trauma or abuse and a lack of social support in one’s life. The main thing to note here is the word ‘chronic’ since having one or two traumatic events occur isn’t likely to bring about DPD: it’s the recurring trauma that causes the altering of the brain. Most likely it’s due to family issues especially with one’s parents.

Due to the experience of some chronic trauma, people might start to become hypervigilant of social situations as a protective mechanism. Depersonalization is just a way of coping with the event, especially when there is a lack of social support. This is one of the most common Depersonalization Disorder causes: Evidence has shown that prolonged stress/anxiety/depression have been known to cause changes in the amygdala, the area responsible for causing  this hypervigilance.

Image Source

My advice for those with DPD is to firstly accept what has happened in the past and acknowledge that this is what caused your DPD. Next, start relaxing everyday: do meditation or any activities you find fun. It can be difficult for people with DPD to relax, so seeking help from a therapist might be the best option, especially since they’ll be able to help with other disorders preventing you from relaxing such as anxiety disorders/phobias.

Another cause of DPD is mistaking a symptom as a disorder, as mentioned previously. Sometimes, an experience of depersonalization can be quite normal and will go away on its own, however, when one starts to worry about it and think they are mentally ill, it can start to be a recurring thing, especially since they bring on unnecessary anxiety. In other words they experience a cycle where:

1. They experience a casual depersonalization symptom that will go away on its own.
2. They fear they are mentally crazy and this causes a great deal of anxiety
3. This anxiety causes the symptoms to reappear at a heightened degree of severity
4. The cycle repeats and it gets worse over time.

So the common theme is DPD is caused and made worse by stress or anxiety. In order to dissolve DPD for good, it is crucial to eliminate these stressors. Treatment of DPD involves alleviating anxiety disorders and depression to enable relaxation. It may seem that DPD has progressed so severely that it can’t be cured, but once you are able to relax, your feelings of depersonalization and derealization will gradually dissipate over time. Remember chronic depression, stress and anxiety will cause negative changes in the brain, so start relaxing more in your life and remove all the unnecessary/irrational causes of stress.

Read more from Sociable Introvert: How to cure depersonalization disorder

Featured image by Bdoguitar

Please do share this article if you are feeling thankful :)

Social Anxiety is a disorder characterized by a persistent fear of social situations, resulting in distress or interference with daily life functioning. The person affected with social anxiety would’ve realized that their fear is irrational, but cannot avoid it. Some common fears that people with social anxiety experience are: eating/drinking in the presence of strangers, public speaking, using public toilets and writing in public. Sometimes you might experience these things even if you don’t have social anxiety: what determines whether you have social anxiety is severity, duration, whether it causes interference/distress and how you respond to it.

Why does social anxiety occur and why is it so difficult to get rid off? People with social anxiety suffer from a repeated cycle where:

1. They have a fear that they seem anxious to other people.
2. This results in anxiety symptoms such as distress
3. They’ll start to believe that other people can see their anxiety and this results in anxiety symptoms (number 2) and greater fear that they seem anxious to other people (number 1).

How do you overcome social anxiety? Firstly, it’s important to note that social anxiety is sustained due to following behaviours:

• Increased attention on the self

When the person becomes alarmed that they aren’t making the impression they want on other people, they will shift their attention from their surroundings onto themselves, resulting in excessive monitoring and judgement of their own actions. This is a huge issue, because, just compare how you are when you are alone (like right now if you’re alone on your computer reading this) compared to in a public environment.Your attention is rarely on yourself if you are alone, because you don’t have to worry what other people think. This is how YOU are naturally and you want to emulate this in a public environment. Next time, try to minimize the attention to yourself in a public environment and start realizing when you are focusing too much on yourself. Your social anxiety won’t disappear overnight, and at first, this attention shifting will be a conscious action, but over time, it will become natural and you won’t be focusing on yourself too much.

• Cognitive Biases and False Information

When the person starts focusing on themselves, not only are they judging their actions, but they have a negative, distorted view of themselves. There are dozens of cognitive biases, so I will probably cover this in a different post, explaining each one.

• Using ‘safety behaviours’

Safety behaviours are things which people do to make them feel more at ease with a situation. Some examples are: sitting at the back of class so you aren’t noticed, avoiding eye contact during a conversation, mumbling during a conversation or rehearsing what you are going to say next during a conversation. Safety behaviours make the anxiety persistent, because, even though you are being exposed to the situation more (which would naturally result in less fear over time), by doing these safety behaviours, you are telling your mind that the situation is dangerous and you need to do these behaviours to protect yourself. It’s important to start recognizing these safety behaviours and gradually diminish them over time.

Using CBT to Treat Social Anxiety

CBT, also known as Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy is a method used by psychologists to treat a variety of disorders ranging from anxiety to depression to even schizophrenia. As time passes, there is more and more evidence to suggest that CBT is the best way to treat anxiety disorders and some studies even suggest that CBT is the only effective method in eliminating anxiety disorders for the long term. Here, I’m going to show you how to do a very basic CBT technique which relies on the ABC model by Albert Ellis.

The ABC model states that there are 3 phases:

Activating Event: This is the event that happens

Beliefs: This is the person’s beliefs about the event

Consequences: This is what the person does or how they react to the event

Here’s an example of how this applies to social anxiety.

A: Your friend has agreed to meet up with you over the weekend and he arrives 15 minutes late.

B: You believe that he arrived late, because you aren’t important enough so he didn’t put effort in making it on time.

C: You feel sad and spend the rest of the day being distant from your friend.

Now compare that with this example:

A: Your friend has agreed to meet up with you over the weekend and he arrives 15 minutes late.

B: You believe that he arrived late, because he’s lazy and woke up late.

C: You ask him why he’s late, he tells you that he got stuck in traffic and apologizes. You have a good time together that day.

See how much your beliefs can impact your decision making and emotions? A person with social anxiety will have all kinds of distorted, negative beliefs. It’s up to you as your own psychologist to recognize these faulty beliefs that are causing you harm, and then restructuring them to something else that’s realistic and rational. Next time you are doing something that makes you feel uncomfortable, think ‘why is this making me uncomfortable?’ For instance, if you get anxious when meeting someone new, ask yourself why you are feeling anxious? Below is how it would look on the ABC model:

A: You are meeting someone new

B: ???

C: You feel uncomfortable and start acting nervous around them, mumbling and not knowing what to say.

What are your beliefs that are causing you to feel this way? Everyone will have different reasons, but I will fill it in with the most common reason.

B: He/she probably thinks negatively of me, or he/she probably thinks I’m pathetic.

Now whether this is true or false (most of the time it is false), it is not a reason for you to be afraid. Sure even if they think negatively of you, it’s not going to cause you any harm and the only thing that you can do about it is find out the cause of why they think negatively of you and fix it for next time.

Maybe you did something really stupid like put your shirt on the wrong way? Even then, most people aren’t going to hate you or think too negatively about you for that reason. If I met someone who wore their shirt the wrong way, I’d just think that they were late and had to rush to somewhere in the morning and made a mistake. Whatever the reason is, all you have to do is fix it for next time and there won’t be a reason for them to think negatively about you.

Start doing the things mentioned in this post, and you’ll find yourself less scared of social situations over time. Don’t expect it to happen overnight, everything takes time. At first, you may find that your emotions are too strong, but over time, you’ll be more and more used to rational thinking, and youwon’t have negatively distorted beliefs to affect you anymore.

Please do share this article if you are feeling thankful :)

Perhaps, that was something as innocent as blowing your nose loudly in a cafe. Or you wanted to start a conversation with a girl in a bus, but got scared that other passengers would not approve your initiative. What if someone would consider you too annoying or impudent, right?!

To some degree, everybody is afraid to “lose face”. Unfortunately, sometimes we let this fear go way too far.

Everything uncommon, one way or another, attracts people’s attention. It’s natural. So if you act in an unusual way in public, other people will notice it, no doubt. However, it is a mistake to conclude that unusual equals bad or wrong.

Lots of people think that if they attract other people’s attention they are somehow harassing or insulting those people with their uncustomary behavior.

Yes, sometimes this may be true. For instance, if somebody, sitting next to you, feels tired and sleepy, and you call a friend and begin a lively conversation.

The fact is that there’s always someone who is tired or sleepy. There’s always someone who won’t like you or won’t approve what you do. Is this a reason to stop doing what you want to do? (The right answer is No ).

***

We all know it – strangers actually don’t care that much about you, as you may think.

If you watch your own thoughts and judgments you have and do about other random people for a while, you’ll notice how tiny portion of your overall thought process a thought about other people occupies in your mind.

Yes, your attention may be attracted by some person who behaves in a strange way. You may even make a witty comment about him/her inside your head, but you usually forget about this person as soon as s/he is out of sight.

***

If you like playing computer games, I guess, you are familiar with the “NPC” term. This abbreviation stands for Non-Player Character and represents a game character who is controlled by an artificial intelligence (simply computer), and with whom a player character (controlled by you) can interact.

When you find yourself struggling to start a conversation in a bus, a bar, or some other public place, imagine that other people around you are NPCs. Moreover, they are not even those NPCs, who may give you some quest. No. They are just one of those dummy NPCs, who roam around the village and have one predefined lame phrase to say when you click on them, men in the street.

Would you care about an opinion of such a character, if you were playing the game? Would you seek an NPC’s approval on how you should walk through the game? I doubt it.

Please do share this article if you are feeling thankful :)

My initial plan was to create a motivational infographic wallpaper, but unfortunately, I didn’t think it through very well. It appeared to be that the results of the survey are not very convenient for being represented as “motivational wallpaper”. Still, I found a person who managed to convert them into an infographic picture. I hope my readers will be interested in the survey’s results.

Please do share this article if you are feeling thankful :)