Derealization for third time

[KaylaN]

I first had depersonalization/derealization in 2011 for 1 year while I was 20 years old. I was obsessed with figuring out what was wrong with me. Lucky it ended up going away after a long battle. During that time I started paxil which helped with my mood.

I stayed on paxil all the way up until January of 2017. I got off because I was trying to get pregnant. After a month of being off I got really depressed and was put on lexapro but after a week on that the derealization returned. I’m not sure if it was from the horrible depression I felt at the time or the lexapro. I ended up going back on paxil and it saved my life. I started to feel better and by 3 weeks my derealization was on.

Fast forward to June when I got pregnant and had to get off paxil and went on a low dose of zoloft. I felt amazing for the first 18 weeks but then I started obsessing about my breathing for weeks. I went to a therapist who was no help and upped the zoloft and after doing that the derealization came back. I got back on paxil but it’s been a month with no luck so far of feeling any better. I’m scared the paxil is not working for me this time it’s the only thing that’s saved me and I’m scared I’m out of luck. My last hope is that it’s just taking longer to work because I am pregnant. Iv never felt so much fear and I just want to live my life again and feel normal. I feel like I can’t connect with anything. Please help and no one that is going to tell me they have had it for years with no luck, I need hope.

[Jeff1943]

Kayla, you will not feel like this for ever I promise you. You will recover. I had this derealization feeling myself 40 years ago though there was no name for it then. I used to call it 'like not being here'. As it was only one symptom of my anxiety I didn't give it undue attention. When I recovered from the anxiety the derealization (DR) went too.

There's a reason for everything, Kayla, and the reason for DR is that our mind is trying to distance us from the reality of the anxiety we're experiencing. It's trying to be helpful. But in fact it just makes us more anxious. So now you don't have to drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what it is. You now know.

In your post you use the word 'scared' several times. I think fear may be the cause of your troubles. You were depressed and you became scared and anxious of that. Then you became depressed by your anxiety. Maybe, I don't know your history and I am no doctor, psychiatrist or therapist, just another veteren from the struggle against nervous sensitisation.

And that's what's happened to you. Somehow, sometime in the past your nervous system became over sensitised by stress, worry, over work or disappointment. In this state it plays tricks on us, we experience some of the symptoms of anxiety, in your case DR.

Sensitised nerves are maintained by feeling scared, they feed on fear which you are supplying in huge portions. The fear causes anxiety which causes fear which causes anxiety which causes more fear in a vicious circle.

Kayla, I will now tell you the way to recover. First, stop fighting the DR. You've been fighting it for several years and it keeps coming back. Fighting causes stress and strain, that's no good, your frazzled nerves need less not more of that. So stop fighting the DR, surrender to it completely, accept it utterly for the time being. Do yhe opposite of what you've bern doing until now. I know the symptoms of DR are uncomfortable but they aren't going to kill you, disable you or make you lose your mind. No doctor has ever written a death certificate where 'Derealization' is given as the cause if death.

So I say again, accept it, learn to coexist with it for the time being, carry on as normal with your daily life, attach less importance to it. But accept it calmly and with the least fear you can knowing as you do now it is only a glitch of your nervous system and can be overcome.

If you practice Acceptance with persistance then you stop thrashing your nerves with fear. Slowly they recover. Your DR is no more and you have recovered your quiet mind.

Who says so? Doctor Claire Weekes said so when she developed her Acceptance method for recovery from all the symptoms of anxiety. She never used the word DR because she wrote her first book on Acceptance 50 years ago and nobody called it that then.

I recommend you read her book titled 'Hope and help for your nerves' in the U.S. and 'Self help for your nerves' in the U.K., same book both available from Amazon new or used for a few quid/bucks. It's a shortish book without long medical terms, you will soon recognise yourself in its pages, Kayla. Before you buy read a few of the hundreds of reader reviews on Amazon, over 90% rated it Very Good or Excellent. So read the book about the Acceptance method and practice it with perseverance - and join the hopeful band travelling the Yellow Brick Road to Recovery😊