Depersonalization Anxiety Symptoms

What causes depersonalization, derealization anxiety symptoms?

There are many reasons why anxiety can cause depersonalization symptoms. Here are four of the most common:

1. Anxiety and an active stress response

Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the fight or flight response, also known as the stress response.[1] The stress response releases stress hormones, which are stimulants, into the bloodstream to prepare the body for immediate action – either to fight or flee.

As these hormones travel throughout the body, they cause physiological, psychological, and emotional changes in how the body functions so that our defenses are maximized. This emergency readiness heightens emergency functions while suppressing non-emergency functions.[2]

While these changes affect many parts of the body, they also affect how the brain interacts with itself. For example, when stress hormones are at normal levels, the rationalization, learning, and emotional areas of the brain interact normally.[3] This normal interaction allows us to think, remember, and experience thoughts and emotions normally. As a result, we FEEL normal, experience normal emotions and thinking processes, and feel complete within ourselves and in our reality.

However, when we perceive danger, this interaction changes. For example, stress hormones cause the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, to become dominant while causing the rationalization and learning centers of the brain to become suppressed.[4] It makes this change because our priority becomes survival when in dangerous situations. All functions that aren’t involved in the emergency response mechanism are suppressed so that the body can maximize its resources to either defend ourselves against or run away from the threat. While this change enhances our emergency readiness, it impairs our ability to think clearly and remember short-term information.

This emergency-readiness change in brain function can create a sense of “depersonalization” while the stress response is active.

The stress response causes other changes, too, such as heightening our senses, dilating the pupils, rushing blood to the head, narrowing vision, increasing fear detection and reaction, and so on. All of these changes can also alter our sense of perception, reasoning, and emotions, which can enhance a sense of depersonalization.

For more detailed information about the many changes the stress response brings about, visit our “Stress Response” article.

Stress responses are supposed to cause these changes. It’s part of the body’s instinctual survival mechanism. As the perception of danger increases, so does the body’s level of emergency preparedness.

When anxious behavior has triggered a stress response, we can experience an acute feeling of depersonalization.

2. Stress-response hyperstimulation

When stress responses occur infrequently, the body can recover relatively quickly from the physiological, psychological, and emotional changes the stress response brings about. However, when stress responses occur too frequently, the body can remain in a state of semi stress-response readiness, which we call stress-response hyperstimulation since stress hormones are powerful stimulants. Hyperstimulation can cause the body to exhibit symptoms of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn't been activated, and for as long as the body is hyperstimulated.

Hyperstimulation is a common cause of chronic depersonalization.

For instance, rationalization and short-term memory suppression due to sustained emergency readiness impairs the brain’s ability to rationally process and store new information.[5] Consequently, the areas of the brain that normally communicate well have difficulty doing so. This difficulty can be experienced as a disconnect between how we perceive, process, and store information, which can affect how we feel about ourselves and the world around us.

This combination of disconnects is at the root of feeling “separate” or “detached” from how we normally think, feel, and remember. “I feel like I’m living outside or separate from myself” is a common description of how this disconnect can be experienced.

Hyperstimulation caused “processing impairment” can make us feel depersonalized, separate from our self, separate from our reality, and cause memory, emotional, and even performance problems.

We feel depersonalized because the brain isn’t communicating with itself correctly due to the adverse effects of hyperstimulation.

It’s not that we are disconnected or detached from reality, but that the chronically stressed brain is having processing challenges. Therefore, it can SEEM like we are disconnected or detached from reality.

Essentially, depersonalization is a brain-processing problem and not a reality problem.

As such, depersonalization is just another symptom of chronic stress (hyperstimulation). Chronic anxiety and stress often produce this symptom.

3. Hyper- and Hypoventilation

Hyper- or hypoventilation is another cause of depersonalization.[6] When we breathe too shallowly and don’t take in enough oxygen (hypoventilation), CO2 levels in the blood drop, which can cause a depersonalization feeling.

If, on the other hand, you are breathing too aggressively and take in too much oxygen (hyperventilation), CO2 levels in the blood can rise, which can also cause a depersonalization feeling.

Even though depersonalization caused by breathing issues can seem odd and even unsettling, they are harmless and needn’t be a cause for concern. They will subside when breathing is normalized. Depersonalization caused by hyper- and hypoventilation is typically a temporary condition and isn’t the cause of chronic depersonalization.

4. Adverse effects of medication

Depersonalization can also be an adverse effect of medication, including anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications.[7] If you believe your depersonalization is caused by an adverse effect of medication, you should discuss this with your doctor and pharmacist.

I (Jim Folk) also experienced depersonalization…and to a severe degree. It scared the daylights out of me when it first occurred. In my hyper-reactive state, having my reality altered was the last thing I needed. Since depersonalization shook the foundations of my reality, I reacted badly to it initially. I had no idea what it was or what was causing it, so I imagined the worst: brain tumor, MS, ALS, some other serious mental illness or neurological disease, or that I was drifting into another state of consciousness. Even though I found out that depersonalization was a common anxiety symptom, it still took me a long time to accept it and not react to it.

While depersonalization can be unsettling and impairing, it’s not harmful in itself or an indication of something more serious. It’s just another symptom of hyperstimulation, and therefore, needn’t be a cause for concern.

Similar to ALL anxiety sensations and symptoms, when you work to eliminate hyperstimulation and give the body sufficient time to recover, depersonalization subsides as hyperstimulation is eliminated.

Once again, many people experience depersonalization anxiety feelings when the body is hyperstimulated. The difference, however, is that people who aren’t overly anxious don’t worry about it whereas anxious people do. Since worry is apprehensive behavior that activates the stress response, worry can aggravate hyperstimulation and cause the depersonalization symptoms to persist.

5. Other Factors

Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:

• Recreational drugs
• Stimulants
• Sleep deprivation
• Fatigue
• Low blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Dehydration
• Hormone changes
• Pain

Select the relevant link for more information.