The Anxiety Disorder Nobody Talks About Enough: Living Through the Isolation of DPDR

I kept waking up hoping reality would feel… real again.

But every morning, the second I opened my eyes, the fear was already there. It started from minute zero of the day.

It’s hard to explain, but the world around me felt separated from me by some kind of invisible veil. Things in my surroundings almost looked artificial, like cardboard sets rather than real life. My feelings became distant too. I knew who and what I loved, but in those moments, that love felt far away, almost unreachable. I wasn’t emotionless, just numb in a way that made everything feel muted.

By Cynthia Jreige

DPDR, short for Depersonalisation and Derealisation Disorder, is a dissociative condition usually triggered by intense anxiety, chronic stress, panic attacks, or trauma. Depersonalisation creates a sense of detachment from yourself, as though you are observing your own thoughts, body, or emotions from the outside. Derealisation, on the other hand, affects the way you perceive the world around you, making places, people, and situations feel dreamlike, distant, foggy, or unreal. The terrifying part is that you still know logically that reality is real, but emotionally and physically, your brain struggles to connect to it.

It’s nearly impossible to explain DPDR to someone who has never experienced it, even to many of the psychologists and psychiatrists I turned to for help. You are inside your mind, but at the same time, you don’t fully feel there. You look in the mirror and you recognise your reflection, you know logically that it’s you, but you don’t connect to it. You look at your hands knowing they are your hands, yet they suddenly feel like nothing more than moving flesh and bones that could belong to anyone.

I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever lived through anything more isolating than depersonalisation and derealisation. Even growing up as the only obese child throughout all my school years, not a chubby kid in sight besides me, did not compare to the loneliness of DPDR. You want to scream, cry, disappear, because nothing around you feels like it could possibly make you feel better again.

What many people don’t realise is that DPDR is often the brain’s way of protecting itself after trauma. It disconnects you from the outside world because everything has become too overwhelming to process. The problem is that while your brain thinks it’s protecting you, you end up feeling trapped inside yourself.

And then comes the exhausting part: pretending. Because how do you explain to someone that you are physically present, yet mentally feel absent? That you know you are a human being, but your own identity suddenly feels abstract and unfamiliar?

Now imagine trying to run a business, attend meetings, build an empire, and continue showing up every day while deep down you feel completely detached from reality. Imagine feeling like you’re living on a movie set while anxiety paralyses you so intensely that too much noise, too much light, or too many people can make you feel like you’re about to die.

For me, it built up over years, but one major traumatic event in 2015 triggered the beginning of my DPDR experience. Today, I can thankfully say I’m almost on the other side of it, but I also know something in me changed forever after understanding what this kind of mental illness feels like. Healing took time, patience, grounding techniques, forcing myself to reconnect with reality over and over again, and above all, acceptance. Because acceptance is such a huge part of overcoming anything.

But grieving who I was and looking forward to who I am and am becoming didn't come easy; some days I still wish I was able to go back to a place where these feelings didn't exist. Because the truth is, they do come back, sometimes when something identified or unidentified triggers me. I just learnt to tell my brain that we're safe. During Mental Health Month, I wanted to share my story because God knows I prayed for answer and a community to turn to when I was in the thick of my troubles. And please no matter what you do, do NOT believe these forums that will tell you you're stuck forever. You're not.