Derealization and depersonalization in NPD and BPD.

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Worlds_Collide___Phaeton___by_Meckie
Worlds Collide-Phaeton: by Meckie at Deviantart.com

A common symptom of both NPD and BPD is dissociation: a splitting or fragmenting of the personality not very different from what occurs in the Dissociative disorders such as DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) and Psychogenic Fugue. It usually happens in response to a severe loss of supply or major narcissistic injury, or a sudden awareness of oneself as not oneself (realizing your false self is not who you really are–which happens when a narcissist becomes self aware). These disorders themselves, especially NPD, are dissociative in nature because a split in the personality has occurred. In the narcissist, it’s a substitution of the original personality for a false one.

Borderlines, rather than having a false self per se, are more like chameleons, adapting their personalities to fit the people and situation around them. That’s why Borderlines can seem so changeable.

I first started to experience dissociation as a young child. I remember at age 4, waking up for breakfast and walking down to the kitchen where my parents were already eating, and seeing colored specks like glitter falling all around me. When I asked my parents if they saw the “glitter,” they just looked at me like I was crazy. I also had dreams that would continue after I awoke and often felt I was living in a dream. Maybe that’s the case with most young children though. I also remember hearing music from TV shows late at night after everyone was asleep that couldn’t possibly be coming from anywhere, as this was in the 1960s and no one had the capability to record a show on VCR yet, nor was there TV after midnight or so–all we’d get in those days was a test pattern until morning.

I remember at around the same age, banging my head against the wall in the family room to relieve some kind of congestion in my head. I think it may have been to relieve those odd feelings of unreality–not much different than the way a Borderline will sometimes cut herself to “feel alive.” In fact, this may well have been an early symptom of my BPD (and I always thought it was autism).

Most people have probably experienced dissociation, perhaps under the influence of a drug. Sometimes people experience it on hearing shocking news that could be either tragic or fortuitous–like hearing one’s child just died, or winning the lottery.

But for people who have certain personality disorders (as well as people with various dissociative disorders and psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, and also those with PTSD and C-PTSD), dissociation is both common and chronic. It’s also severe enough to sometimes interfere with functioning.

Q: So what does dissociation FEEL like?
A. Because something so ungrounded in the tangible and everyday reality is so hard to explain in words, I’m not sure if these descriptions of what it feels like will make a lot of sense, but I’ll try.

Derealization.
I’ve actually experienced this the most. The world seems odd and dreamlike. Reality seems somehow “off” the way things are in a dream. In a dream, a familiar scene can look the same as it does in reality, but at the same time there’s this feeling of offness and otherworldiness about it. When I was younger and used to ride the subway, sometimes I couldn’t look up at the people because they all seemed like masks…sinister, somehow. It’s a very weird feeling but not always unpleasant. Sometimes that dreamlike oddness about everything is sort of compelling and interesting.

Depersonalization.
This definitely causes me serious panic attacks. I first had episodes of this at about age 9 or 10 and thought I was going crazy. I felt oddly disconnected from my body, like I was floating. People talking to you sound like they’re coming from either a great distance or out of a tube. You can’t focus on what they’re saying because you’re freaking out and panicking but trying to hide it to keep from appearing as crazy as you feel.

I think people with NPD and BPD (as well as the Schizoid, Schizotypal and Paranoid PD’s) who do not improve or try to change, are probably at high risk for developing psychotic disorders and even schizophrenic like conditions when things are going badly for them, there’s been a massive loss of narcissistic supply, or when the person becomes gravely ill or very late in life.

18 thoughts on “Derealization and depersonalization in NPD and BPD.”

  1. You described it very well. I experience both derealization and depersonalization a lot. Especially during times of stress, or when I am very tired.

    Late at night, when the poodle needs to go potty, I go with him out into the back yard. I stand under the huge ancient elm tee and look up at the moon and stars, and I think about how everything is made up of swirling atoms. I remember that I am standing on a great big spinning ball whirling through space, surrounded by other spinning balls, fiery suns and black holes… and suddenly everything things utterly impossible and alien and I wonder… is any of this even real?

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    • I meant to say that suddenly everything seems utterly impossible and alien… I got caught up in the feeling and forgot to proofread, sorry.

      Liked by 1 person

    • I think it may be real sometimes…I think there are other levels of reality we can’t see but that drugs or dreams (or mental illness) can open up to us. I know that sounds very woowoo and New Agey but I think it’s entirely possible. I definitely don’t think the reality we see every day is all there is.

      BTW, I edited my post to add that dissociative episodes like yours are VERY common in C-PTSD and PTSD. So it’s not surprising you would have experienced them.
      Sometimes they’re really disturbing but other times they’re kind of cool.

      Liked by 2 people

      • I agree, sometimes the unreal feeling is kind of cool!

        What you said about the reality we see everyday possibly not being all there is… I think you are correct. Did you ever see the movie The Matrix? Or The Thirteenth Floor? Both are really cool mind-benders about the concept of what reality might be.

        About a year ago I had a dream that seemed so real, it was freaky. I dreamed that I was floating through outer space, past planets and stars and entire galaxies, and as I was on this strange outer space tour, it came to me in a flash, like a divine revelation, that all of the universe is in the process of “differentiating,” in the same way that identical cells in a newly fertilized ovum divide and make more identical cells which eventually “differentiate.”

        When I was in nursing school, I learned that the “zygote,” or newly fertilized ovum, starts out with just a single fertilized cell. Then this single cell becomes two cells, then the two cells become four cells, and so on and so on. All of these multiplying cells are identical at first… but, as the fetus continues to develop, some of the cells begin to differentiate and become heart muscle cells, some become brain cells, some become skin cells, and so on. In my strange dream, the universe also started out as just one thing, just one single “cell” if you will. Then it began to multiply itself and eventually the one thing that was the universe, began to differentiate into all the different things that eventually became planets and animals and plants and all different kinds of people…. a weird concept, huh?

        And yes, thanks for adding that, dissociative episodes are very common with PTSD.

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        • um….holy flying f%$k. I HAD THE SAME DREAM!!!! 😮 The outer space one, omg. Not exactly the same epiphany, but I remember there was an epiphany after racing through the stars and planets–which seemed unbelievably vast (as it is) and more colorful than they seem in reality.

          That “epiphany” in your dream seems like it could be plausible. You never know. There was a scientist who spent days or months stressing over how to diagram what the benzene ring looked like and finally had a dream that showed him it’s hexagonal nature. I think a lot of brilliance in both science and art comes from dreams, in fact.

          The Matrix was amazing, incredibly cool concept of the nature of reality. What is real? what is fantasy? Maybe dreams are another reality.

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  2. When I was in the nuthouse, I had a very vague image of how I looked. Part of it was the time in Bellevue when I was without my glasses so I literally couldn’t see myself in the mirror. But they say psychopaths have a kind of loose identity. We can be whatever we need to be at a particular time.

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