Has Anxiety & Depression About Tinnitus Ever Caused You to Have Depersonalization or Derealization?

If you don't know what I am talking about, don't look it up and do not read any further. I don't want people to get any bad ideas or get scared. I ask because back in December I was trying to get off klonopin while dealing with tinnitus and I had a couple of bad nights with it. Much better now and hopefully I won't have that again. Anyone else experience that?

 

No, but I once had a 9 month episode of pretty intense DP/DR for other reasons. Unpleasant!

 

9 months?? Wow I don't know what I would do if I had it that long. I am sorry to hear that.

 

Oh by the way, can I ask how you were able to stop it?

 

just kept moving forward, going to class, going to work. When I felt incredibly distressed, Valium was somewhat calming, but didn't really change the nature of the DP/DR in any meaningful way.

Truth be told, I don't really know if it "went away", so much as I more or less integrated all my sensory experiences again and stopped feeling like anything "abnormal" was going on. I still get that glass-wall feeling from time to time, but never very severely or for very long, so it doesn't really faze me.

Stuff like meditation was absolutely impossible, and perhaps even counterproductive, during that period... but I will say, people with meditative experience in general, usually seem to have a better grasp on how malleable the mind is, and how much our thinking can change our experience. When I was deeply in the DP/DR hole, I remember my mother telling me that obsessing about my state of mind seemed to be hurting. Specifically she said something like "if I myself started asking 'What is real? Am I real? What is I?' over and over again, I would very quickly become very distressed, or at least alter my consciousness significantly".

That advice didn't seem especially useful to me at the time, but with ten years of perspective, I don't think she was wrong. Which is not to suggest that "incorrect thinking" creates DP/DR -- only that consciousness is a cascading set of feedback loops, and so distressed states of mind generally have cyclical self-reinforcing machinery as part of their basic nature.

My best advice is, do whatever you reasonably can to stay calm and comfortable, go about your day to day routine as if nothing were wrong even if you feel like you're alone on an alien planet that doesn't make any sense anymore, and try to have some faith in the ability of your mind to accept and integrate your sensory experience. Avoid all drugs and alcohol if at all possible.

 

Which is not to suggest that "incorrect thinking" creates DP/DR -- only that consciousness is a cascading set of feedback loops, and so distressed states of mind generally have cyclical self-reinforcing machinery as part of their basic nature.

Well said, @linearb. As usual.

I have had DP/DR twice over my three years with tinnitus. Never had it prior to T.

First time, toward the beginning of my tinnitus, I believe it was due to extreme anxiety and rolling panic attacks, which can screw you up royally. Had to turn to medication, low doses of alprazolam/Xanax to be specific. The DP went away in a couple weeks as my anxiety decreased. I also used guided meditation, deep breathing, meditative walking and other natural things at the same time, which I believe helped as well.

Second time, my DP definitely was due to drugs: large doses (1800 mg daily) of Neurontin, technically an anti-seizure medication but used off label for nerve pain. The meds truly lowered my tinnitus, although I was taking it for shingles, not T. But it seriously messed with my head and brought on extreme DP, worse than the first time. So I stopped the Neurontin and it went away.

It truly is a strange and frightening experience that I would wish on no one. Linearb's advice is spot on: try stay calm, go about your business and ignore it. Paying attention to it,or constantly questioning if you are going insane, makes it much, much worse.