Depersonalization Disorder

[Mad Jack]

I think I may have finally found a name for what I have...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

I could have literally never heard of this disorder and have written down my experiences of what's going on in my head and have almost identical results as this article.

I distinctly remember feeling 'depersonalized' throughout my life - especially after some of my childhood traumas. But the initial 'shock' of it diminished - and I do remember returning to 'normal'. In other words, I wasn't 'in a depersonalized state' 24/7.

However, the depersonalization began to creep back in after I lost my Uncle and my mother essentially blamed me for the fact that we missed his final moments by minutes (I was driving and got lost on the way to the hospital).

Over the years, it became worse. It came to the point where it was nearly a 24/7 state. I called it, at the time, different things - 'zoning out', 'disconnected', 'in la la land'. Whatever.

I never understood what 'dissociation' was or 'depersonalization' until I met Moonvoice - and through her experiences, I started to become clued-in and research on my own. I was reading about different disorders pertaining to dissociation, and while some of them were 'similar', they weren't exactly what I experience. So I found 'depersonalization disorder'. I couldn't believe it - it was so very much what I experience that I wanted to scream at my therapist and psychiatrist and ask them why they hadn't mentioned this when I had clearly and plainly described to them a dissociative state, which easily fit into the category of 'depersonalization'.

I told them this numerous times - even described what I felt almost exactly like the diagnostic criteria state!! This was BEFORE I knew anything about this disorder!

They never once mentioned it. Told me they didn't have the 'tools' and 'tests' to diagnose dissociative disorders - and that I would have to go to a paid psychiatrist to get those kinds of tests. I was basically told that I was lying, that no one could be in a dissociative or depersonalized state for more than a few hours, and that they had (and I quote) seen people in dissociative states and I didn't act anything like them.

Oh - did I mention that my psychiatrist couldn't even correctly pronounce 'dissociation'? He called it 'dis-association'. Brilliant.

I still can't be sure what the 'cause' of this feeling or state is. Because since I have the epilepsy diagnosis, it could be that some of this is coming from my actual brain firings. But even so - I think it's deeper than that. And it pissed me off that I was called a liar, essentially.

Anyway - this was more of a rant.

[Natara]