You may want to consult a mental health professional. This sounds serious.

Make clear to them you are not looking to be medicated. Perhaps you can get a referral to something else, alternative.

I recommend you to see a psychotherapist specialised on trauma. What you describe is exactly what trauma patients experience when their traumatic memories who where dissociated through childhood begin to leak into their everyday consciousness.

Usually people are older when they begin to eperience this. If you are very young it might be connected to drug use. Anyway, I would see a trauma therapist, because dissociative thrusts are the consequence of split off personality parts (We all have them) you had to dissociate during childhood to endure traumatic moments your everyday personality wouldn't have endured if it didn't split off.

There are other things besides working with a practicioner which help in the process to integrate this personality parts into the main "you". That is

• meditation
• writing down your dreams
• visiting childhood places
• taking to people you spend your childhood with
• writing about your daily thoughts in a diary

Medical drugs will never help you in the long term. They wreak havoc with your brain chemistry and coat the real reason you dissociate: Your memory and childhood experiences.

Having said that, I am sure diet can help. What others have said is quite helpful.

You can increase saturated fat intake, especially MCT's to heal your brain (if it is damaged, at all), decrease omega6/increase omega-3 and avoid any potential allergens or things which can disturb your gut:

• gluten and grains (possibly psychoactive)
• dairy (possibly psychoactive)
• maybe eggs and nuts
• nightshades

That means mainly bone broth, fatty meats, fish, steamed veggies and fruits for a while.

It may be helpful to heal your gut this way. You can also take the following supplements to heal it:

• Glutamine
• Cat's Claw
• N-Acetyl-Glucosamine
• Probiotic (debatable)
• hydrochlorid acid
• Curcumin (also good against inflammation)
• Digestive Enzymes
• Bone Broth (important)

These things all can support the main problem, which lies in your psyche but nutritional deficiences, leaky gut, allergens and inflammatory diet can exacerbate it.

I wish you the best!

I'd second Pablo. See a mental health provider. Start with your general practitioner and get a referral so that he/she can initially rule out medical causes of your symptom. Make it clear you don't want medication.

Ultimately, lots of folks experience depersonalization in varying degrees in their lifetime. You have a history of anxiety which can be related to depersonalization, this may merely be another manifestation of that issue. Either way, it warrants a full medical work up before moving forward with any type of treatment.

If I were you and wanted to attack this from a purely diet POV, I would try to consume a lot of saturated fat, cholesterol and DHA to repair any damage I may have done to the myelin sheaths on my neurons. That's kind of a wild stab out there, but who knows?

Now that I think of it, I'd probably want to take 5000IU of D3 a day and 100mcg of k-2. That would be on top of eating liver every week.

But yeah, pablo's right about the seriousness of such a thing, though I'm sure they're just going to try to treat the symptoms with meds.

I have epilepsy and will occasionally experience partial simple/complex seizures; these seizures are typically accompanied by a feeling of disorientation and dissociation. I wonder if, perhaps, you might be having seizures as well?

If per chance my dissociative seizures and your periods of depersonalization originate from the same area of the brain, then I'd suggest researching coconut oil. There's ample research that demonstrate a ketogenic diet + coconut oil (rich in MCTs) for the treatment of seizures. Also, Omega 3's (such as those found in fatty fish) also has been shown to help ameliorate these episodes.

Google dissociative seizures (which are NOT epileptic, just to clarify, and can arise out of nowhere) and partial complex/simple seizures and let me know if that sounds like what you may be experiencing. If it is, then perhaps the ketogenic+MCT+O3 diet may help? A quick google search also reveals that some patients have found relief through CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) in reducing the occurrence of their seizures.

I wish I could help further. I know my reply is based on the premise that you may be having seizures, so I apologize if I haven't been very useful to you. However, I do think Travis has offered an excellent suggestion, as well, in advising you to repair your brain through a healthy diet.

Good luck with everything! :)

Sorry I don't have any definitive answers for you, but it occurred to me while reading your story that maybe these are the effects of all the toxins your body has stored away during your years of drug use. Maybe they are finding their way back out into your system as you liberate your fat stores. Have you been working to get leaner?

EFT is a great tool (essentially acupressure tapping) to clear the early trauma that likely led to your depression, anxiety and addictions. Your current symptoms could be another manifestation of this distress.

You may want to search for a practitioner in your area to help you. Feel free to pm me if you want more info. (I'm a practitioner specializing in prenatal & birth trauma.)

There are "evolutionary psychiatrists" -- psychiatrists who know that the mainstream nutrition theory is bunk and that you can't diagnose or treat someone's mind apart from their body and their diet. Well, there is at least one such psychiatrist: Emily Deans: http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com . Maybe you should write to her and ask if she knows any psychiatrists in your area.

Hi Jayme

I'm sorry to hear you're going through this - you're obviously really brave and also dedicated in beating a drug addiction and now dealing with serious anxiety issues.

I have panic disorder, social anxiety and GAD. Depersonalisation is one of the sensations of anxiety that I have, though it's not the most frequent symptom. It is simply the brain trying to protect you in some way - when the anxiety levels get really high, the brain switches off because it can't handle any stimulus at all.

I am doing the following which all help. The best approach is to use multiple methods to resolve the anxiety - both short term coping strategies and also long term methods which aim to get to the root cause of the anxiety to actually resolve it.

I also agree with the commenters who mentioned seeing a psychologist, it's really important to talk to someone who is trained correctly and can reassure you that you're not losing your mind, because that is how anxiety (in its different forms) makes you feel and think. It's the most unpleasant thing anyone can go through where there is no obvious cause/trigger because it makes you feel ridiculous for experiencing it when others have worse things to deal with.

The coping strategies I use are:

• Slow breathing. The aim here is to get more CO2 in the blood rather than oxygen. Often, we may be hyperventilating without realising it. I was only recently taught this technique. The lack of CO2 is what can cause the anxious sensations. More information here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101220200010.htm

• a program called Panic Away. This consists of an eBook, mp3s that you load on to your player and take with you to use when you are feeling the anxious sensations (depersonalisation is one). There's also a great support forum. This technique builds on the work of Claire Weekes who was an Australian psychologist in the 60s who pioneered the work. It basically teaches you to observe the anxious sensations without buying into them, so it is very similar to mindfulness meditation. I think mindfulness techniques are amazing and they are becoming more and more popular with mainstream mental health professionals, and endorsed by the NHS in the UK. I highly recommend that if you look into meditation, consider mindfulness - it has many different applications aside from anxiety.

Long term suggestions:

• As mentioned above, try to see an orthomolecular physician (who specialises in mental health issues) or psychologist. Consider having your neurotransmitter status, and zinc/copper balance assessed as both of these are very important for mental health. Also, as already mentioned, gut function is important because a lot of neurotransmitter function takes place in the gut and the conditions have to be right. I have had some testing called BioScreen done and also Metametrix Organic Acids - not cheap but I have a clear path ahead of me knowing what's wrong. My copper levels are also out of control (I have a condition called pyroluria which pulls zinc and B6 out of my body, both of which are crucial for hormones and neurotransmitters). So I am treating that with supervision from my doctor, until the neurotransmitter balance is sorted out with zinc and B6 status, I take certain precursors and neurotransmitters orally to help. Interestingly, pyroluria is implicated in addiction and anxiety, amongst other mental health issues.

• Be kind to yourself. You are on the right path, this is just a hurdle to get over which you will. Accept the anxiety as it is and don't try to fight it. Keep this thought with you as you go through the recovery period. Fighting it increases the fear of the sensations and then it just gets worse and continues as the fight or flight response is switched on.

• Diet. As already mentioned, fats are your friend. They really are calming and keep blood sugar stable. Try to avoid or limit caffeine, sugar and alcohol. Those are really not good for anxiety at all.

Best wishes :)

I would also suspect Pyroluria, which causes low zinc and vitamin B6 levels. It can cause all sorts of weird brain symptoms. When I wasn't taking supplements I had all sorts of weird symptoms including massive brain fog. The brain fog felt a little bit 'out of body' like the world wasn't real. The other way I would describe it is, like being in a drunken haze all the time.

I blog about living life with Pyroluria at: http://pyrolurialife.com

Hey jayme what you re experiencing is exactly similar of what i have. I did have serious gut problems in childhood and i know for me that every symptom i have now is because of the gut. So i might also be low on zinc and other vitamins. I do have depersonalization and anxiety and depression that comes and goes thru day. I did induce depersonalization with anxiety attacks which were induced many times by smoking marihuana. There are certain supplements that help me. IF you want to talk about it send me a private message i would be glad to help you. I know others dont understand this and might think it's just in your head or docs just want to fill you with drugs which can induce even more depersonalization and addiction to meds.

Anyway i hope you get better and if you want to talk about it just send me a message.

Take care!!!

Thanks!!!

Jayme, please read this. I went through a terrible ordeal very similar to yours. After a few years of a growing sense of detachment, I fell into a state of full blown depersonalization, with depression and anxiety attacks. For three months I lived through hell, going to hopitals and neurologists, trying for figure out what was wrong with my body. I thought I had had a stroke or something. After a while I finally stumbled on the opiate-peptide theory of disease. All the information on gluten and casein made sense, so I cut them out of my diet. I also incorporated omega-3 sumpplementation, an slowly things started improving. After a while longer I finally found paleo and it was off to the races. I incorporated intermittent fasting to boost BDNF levels, and after 6 months i feel better than i have since i was six years old. all the symptoms i was having have completely disappeared. what i speculate happened was between the opiate activity of the gluten and casein, and the inflammation from gluten/omega 6's/chronic cardio/ect, i had simply worn down my nervous system. please, try the three things i mentioned and see if they help. they've certainly changed my life.