Derealization and Depersonalization

I recently met with someone who was experiencing what is called "derealization." This is where the person looks out on the world and experiences it as unreal or less real than he or she did in the past. Closely related to derealization is "depersonalization." This is where the person questions their existence, either their physicality (i.e., their body) or their sense of being a self (i.e., a coherent being), usually both. Extreme episodes of these can be terrifying.

Seeing this young person going through this episode brought home to me the intensity these events can cause. I myself have experienced both, a number of times. Like a lot of cases I've read about, my worst few times were brought on by smoking marijuana. One time in particular, when I was about 17 or 18 was the worst episode. My case seems similar to many others.

For me it was like taking a strong sleeping medication and falling asleep, and someone moving my body to a new setting I've never been in. And when I woke up, I felt totally disoriented. Wondering where I was, and how did I get here? (Anyone who has a read some of Haruki Murakami's short stories realizes he sometimes picks up on this theme.) Yet, for the rest of that evening that disorientation didn't go away. There was a sense of questioning everything, as if a fog had come down and all things seemed "less real" than I previously thought, myself included.

Yet, the heartening thing about these experiences is finding out the bulk of the population has gone through some version of it--usually to a milder extent--and that the episodes are self-limiting (meaning the feelings gradually decline, so long as the person doesn't continue to fuel them with extreme thoughts). From what I can surmise, a good bit can be explained by biology. Just as when someone has a panic attack (which appears to relate to these disorders, making the episode much worse), many symptoms can be explained by how the body is reacting to our thoughts.

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