Depersonalization and memory loss are not connected. Sure, DPDR can temporarily affect your concentration but it has absolutely nothing to do with and cannot affect the memory centres of your brain.
Episodes of depersonalization or derealization can be frightening and disabling. They can cause: Difficulty focusing on tasks or remembering things. Interference with work and other routine activities.
A growing body of neuroimaging research suggests that dissociative disorders are associated with changes in a number of brain regions. For example, studies have found links between these disorders and the brain areas associated with the processing of emotions, memory, attention, filtering of sensory input, and more.
Dissociative symptoms include derealization/depersonalization, absorption, and amnesia. These experiences can cause a loss of control over mental processes, including memory and attention.
RESULTS: The subjects with depersonalization disorder showed a distinct cognitive profile. They performed significantly worse than the comparison subjects on certain measures of attention, short-term visual and verbal memory, and spatial reasoning within the context of comparable intellectual abilities.
In depersonalization disorder, reduced gray matter volumes (GMV) in right thalamus, caudate, and cuneus, and increased GMV in the left dorsomedial PFC and the right somato-sensoric regions were observed [93•]. As abovementioned, these areas have been implicated in dissociation [10, 61, 62, 85].
Depersonalization and memory loss are not connected. Sure, DPDR can temporarily affect your concentration but it has absolutely nothing to do with and cannot affect the memory centres of your brain.
Tumors in this area can result in auditory hallucinations (hearing things), an inability to understand speech (receptive aphasia), and vision changes. Symptoms such as deja vu experiences, depersonalization, and perceiving things as either larger or smaller than they really are may also occur.
Causes. Depersonalization/derealization disorder often develops in people who have experienced severe stress, including the following: Being emotionally abused or neglected during childhood. Being physically abused.
Complete recovery from depersonalization disorder is possible for many patients. The symptoms associated with this disorder often go away on their own or after treatment that help the person deal with the stress or trauma that triggered the symptoms.
Too much dissociating can slow or prevent recovery from the impact of trauma or PTSD. Dissociation can become a problem in itself. Blanking out interferes with doing well at school. It can lead to passively going along in risky situations.
If you dissociate for a long time, especially when you are young, you may develop a dissociative disorder. Instead of dissociation being something you experience for a short time it becomes a far more common experience, and is often the main way you deal with stressful experiences.
Dissociation is a way the mind copes with too much stress. Periods of dissociation can last for a relatively short time (hours or days) or for much longer (weeks or months). It can sometimes last for years, but usually if a person has other dissociative disorders.
Can depersonalization disorder be cured? Complete recovery is possible for many people. In some people, the disorder disappears on its own. Others recover by going to therapy and dealing with the triggers.
One of the most common symptoms of Depersonalization is having constant racing thoughts, intense self-analysis and weird existential fears. Things that are usually perfectly normal and everyday can seem bizarre. When I had Depersonalization, I remember constantly thinking "I feel like I'm going crazy".
This is Not Psychosis
People with schizophrenia or psychosis commonly experience hallucinations or delusions that are difficult to distinguish from reality. Individuals with DR may feel strange about themselves or their surroundings, but they do not typically experience hallucinations or delusions.
Psychotherapy, also called counseling or talk therapy, is the main treatment. The goal is to gain control over the symptoms so that they lessen or go away. Two such psychotherapies include cognitive behavioral therapy and psychodynamic therapy.
Can Depersonalization turn into Schizophrenia? No, it can't. They are completely different conditions. Depersonalization is an anxiety spectrum condition, while Schizophrenia is an organic brain disorder.
Depersonalization can be its own disorder, or a symptom of depression, drug use, or psychotropic medications. But when it occurs as a symptom of severe or prolonged stress and anxiety, experts agree that it's not dangerous — or a sign of psychosis — like many people fear.
In fact, depersonalization is seen in a number of psychiatric and neurological disorders, including agoraphobia and panic disorder, acute and posttraumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, other dissociative disorders, personality disorders, acute drug intoxication or withdrawal, psychotic mood disorders, epilepsy, ...
In fact, researchers have found that there is a subtype of PTSD that is characterized by symptoms of dissociation and depersonalization. Trauma is essential here. These issues link strongly to traumatic events and experiences, especially childhood trauma.
Depersonalization is the sense that you somehow aren't real, while derealization is the notion that the world around you isn't quite real (Mental Fog, Stress and PTSD). The memory problems and the sense that you or the world around you isn't real are similar to some of the symptoms of brain fog.
A person can survive countless episodes of DP/DR, yet each episode still can feel new and emergent. Someone can simultaneously appear present, but be far removed from an experience when depersonalized.
Up to 30 percent of people with PTSD also suffer from symptoms known as depersonalization and de-realization––that is, they experience “out-of-body” episodes or feelings that the world is not real. These disturbances to awareness and consciousness are known as dissociation.