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Austin can leave his body.
Well, not literally, but in a mind-separates-from-body sense. Unless you’ve experienced the classic “out-of-body experience” sometimes associated with near-death episodes, sensory deprivation or drug-induced hallucinogenic states, it’s likely your mind and physiology feel inseparable.
Not for Austin. He endures frequent episodes of feeling mentally detached from his physical self, as well as the equally unsettling perception that events happening around him are unreal. This undermines his own sense of being real, which instigates anxiety, panic attacks and fears of going crazy.
“When most people say ‘I’ or ‘me,’ they’re speaking from a solid sense of who they are. I don’t feel that. It’s like I’m speaking for someone who isn’t quite all me,” he struggled to explain.
Feeling Unreal?
Most of us have brief interludes when we feel a bit unreal, as if one is a remote observer dispassionately watching oneself think, feel and act. There is evidence this predilection has increased during the digital age. The mind is bombarded with sensory overload and, to protect itself, mentally checks out at times. However, when this mindset becomes chronic, there’s cause for concern.
Mental health types call it “depersonalization disorder.” While you may not have heard of it, this condition is just as common as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, affecting roughly two percent of the population. Due to a lack of awareness among professionals, not just lay people, depersonalization disorder is frequently misunderstood. Tell someone you suffer from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, and they’ll probably possess at least a rudimentary understanding of these conditions. Do the same with depersonalization disorder, and blank stares are the most likely response. As such, folks like Austin struggle to be understood and often find empathy in short supply.
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“The worst of it is feeling unreal. Not just that I’m unreal, but that everything is, even existence itself,” Austin related.
Another client of mine with this mental malady speculated we may all be part of a highly sophisticated game simulation created by a much advanced, but not divine, intelligence. The movie The Matrix is based on this theme. Far-fetched or not, it can feel that way.
What causes it? Most studies suggest childhood trauma as the most likely culprit, while others include chronically high anxiety or residual flashbacks from so-called bad trips (think LSD, ecstasy and the like). When traumatized as a child, one’s mind may split into a “victim self” and an “observer self” to defend itself against extreme fear and emotional suffering. To blunt these impacts, the observer self assumes a disengaged mental posture (“not me”). In the spiritual realm, one client with this condition framed it within her Buddhist orientation, asserting that her soul failed to fully reincarnate in her body.
Whatever the cause, treating depersonalization disorder remains challenging. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has helped some, but its benefits appear limited. Medications only seem to address the symptoms (anxiety, depression) rather than the experience of depersonalization itself. Some clinicians recommend mindfulness, but for certain individuals, this makes matters worse. Somatic therapies that strive to anchor conscious awareness within the body (yoga, tai chi, massage therapy, forest bathing, etc.) show promise for some, including Austin.
One of my colleagues proposes that, in certain folks, depersonalization disorder represents a unique, if disturbing, form of consciousness that sees through the fog of mental representations we use to interpret reality. Physicists and cognitive psychologists assert that we don’t experience so-called reality directly, but by conjuring a mental schematic of what’s “out there.” As scholar Alfred Korzybski asserted, “The map is not the territory.” So, maybe some who experience depersonalization are actually seeing through this illusory map, creating the sense of “unreality” they often report.
Feeling depersonalized places one on the murky dividing line between what we consider real and what we regard as illusory. People like Austin remind us of how little we understand about the true nature of consciousness, self and the embodied mind.
For more, visit philipchard.com.
