Depersonalization

Depersonalization is a dissociative experience in which a person feels detached from their own thoughts, feelings, sensations or actions, sometimes describing the sensation as watching themselves from outside their body or as though separated from reality by a pane of glass. It is classified in the DSM-5 as a dissociative phenomenon, and when it becomes chronic and distressing it is diagnosed as depersonalization or derealization disorder. It also appears as a symptom within anxiety disorders, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder. Reported triggers include severe psychological trauma, prolonged stress, life threatening accidents, head injury, sleep deprivation, and the use of cannabis, hallucinogens, ketamine, MDMA or alcohol, along with withdrawal from benzodiazepines. Researchers have linked the experience to altered activity in the brain regions that integrate internal bodily sensation with outside sensory information, and people experiencing it typically retain insight that the detachment is a subjective feeling rather than an objective change in the world around them.