Does Psychotherapy Help?

Hello! I came across this site randomly and, after looking at a few threads, felt that this community was very helpful and supportive and thought I might cast my lot here too!

I'm almost 100% sure I suffer from depersonalization disorder even though some of the symptoms don't fit - for example, I don't especially feel that parts of my body are disconnected or that I'm out of my body in a sort of astral projection way. The first really strong "episode" I can think of happened when I was in 5th grade, I was just sitting on the bus and thinking about what life even means and what it is, then suddenly I could feel like a strange, rushing feeling in my inner ears followed by a "splitting" sensation in the back of my head. I tried to think random "realistic" thoughts about people, cars, buildings, etc. just to re-orient and feel like "life" itself is a sensical concept. It honestly probably only lasted about 5 seconds at most. Nothing that severe has happened for a while, and even if I try to induce it the only physical effect that gets produced is a slight, momentary "twinge" of pressure in my head. But there's a constant veneer of that feeling over my life still. (I don't think the two are related, but for comparison purposes, I've suffered from random dizzy spells from every few months to a year since I can remember, and they would be severe-ish in the morning, room spinning and such, but by nighttime they would be reduced to what seems like the residual effects of the pain of the ravaging in the first place. That's kind of how the DD is, almost like my brain has been snapped or teased into this hazy place because of the stronger episodes, and now it can't escape.)

And yet, rereading that it's so absolutely insufficient as a description of what happened because almost everybody asks themselves at one point "What is life?" and "How did the universe get here?", so I wanted to communicate with people who might be in the position to understand how exactly it's "more" than that even though I cannot properly articulate it...

When I told my family, they were pretty supportive but didn't seem to think anything was terribly wrong or that psychiatric help was necessary, and again, it's true that occasional moments of derealization are normal (as Wiki says). So they brought up the rather good point, how do you know that this is abnormal in the first place, or that other people have this greater general feeling of being "into"/"with" reality? It was a hard question to answer, and it's interesting that one of the hallmarks of DD is "knowing better," that there is a reality and that what you're feeling is not the norm. My answer was that, if that I imagine a society full of only people just like me, none of the infrastructure or technology we have today could be sustained or ever would have existed in the first place, because I don't "understand" or feel on the same plane as this world enough to understand the parts/relationships that seem important or at least comprehensible to everyone else, if that makes sense. (It didn't seem to make sense to them, but who can blame them? )

It makes sense though, that in order for someone with DD to know something's up, their default/set point must be more like everyone else's, and that they developed DD because of trauma or another factor. At some earlier time, we must have been able to better hash out or deal with the idea of reality better, it seems. Like, I think if I'd been this way my whole life, I would be essentially handicapped because I would never have been "with it" enough to learn how to do things like communicate, read, etc., but now that the foundation is built I have enough resources to keep functioning even when stuff that's happening doesn't feel real. On the other hand, thinking back to the earliest memories I can of preschool and such, I can almost remember feeling like everything was just a dream then too...

I actually ended up arguing with my family since, again, even though they were accepting they didn't seem to "register" for them the way I wanted it to, and I got frustrated. I ended up telling them that if it wasn't for them, because I can't find a way to put meaning in anything I am encountered with, from feelings to everyday objects, if offered a pain-free suicide I would take it. Not necessarily in a depressed way (although depression and DD do seem to spark each other and/or go hand-in-hand), just because if nothing feels real except the paltry annoyances like having to get up in the morning or, like another user on the board said, feeling uncomfortable in a chair, one gets "irritated at being alive," and death seems like the better choice. (That is, when the concept of "death" even makes sense...You get tired of all this thinking too, but when you don't think you get even more "spaced out," you know?)

No offense to others with DD, but I feel so ultimately inept, honestly, to lack understanding of anything and everything; again, obviously nobody knows the great questions of the universe, nobody knows the answer to "What is life?", but feeling like you induced this sort of odd state between wakeness and sleep, a sort of hypnagogia that got stuck, just feels, for lack of a less melodramatic word, devastating. It could be worse, and I'm grateful that the life that actually exists for me is not a bad one; couldn't imagine going through this at the same time as disease, abuse, financial problems, etc.

So basically, what all that possibly unnecessary backstory was leading to was, does psychotherapy improve DD at all, from anyone who's gotten that type of treatment for it? Or have you heard any positive stories? Because Wiki says, among other things, that anti-opiates help, which I find pretty intriguing...Having had closed-eye hallucinations, visual snow, and the DD - all things associated with drug use even though I've never used them - it's odd to see that DD might be treated with the same stuff as drug addiction/overdose. It was also interesting to find out that vision problems contribute to DD, and I saw a discussion earlier on a thread about ocular migraines and how looking through the world with one eye feels slightly less real than looking with the other, and DD originates from the mismatch/blurriness, and other vision issues can contribute to DD as well. But anyway, not trying to be presumptuous but failing, I don't see how psychotherapy, with its methods being totally "in" reality, could really ferret down to the root of the problem for people who can't wrap their minds around stuff and have this brain fog to begin with.

Especially as this is my first post and I haven't actually made any helpful or constructive contributions to the board, very sorry in advance for probably coming across as rather self-serving/whiny. And probably very rambly. It would be absolutely awesome if someone could share their story too, and at any rate would help balance out how much I went on about myself.

Welcome to the forum don't worry about rambling. I have art therapy to deal with my traumas. It helps. Your situation is whatever it is. Whether or not you're based in the traditionally accepted sense of reality or not, your life is still *your* reality.

You do not have to have all the diagnostic criteria to suffer from DPD, but you should talk to your doctor about it. Therapy is helpful for some people, tho it never worked for me, but the first step is to get an accurate diagnosis.