Say yes to the regress
I feel pretty good. But I’m living in a fog.
In the last few months, some of the endless, grinding, “subclinical” (psychiastrist’s words) depression I’ve felt for the last few years finally started to lift. Things were just… easier. I read a book. I took a 6 week dance class. I bought a DJ mixer that I still haven’t used.
Of course, something else had to go wrong.
I can’t say with 100% certainty what it is. I’m not sleeping well, probably due to an ongoing sinus problem. I had COVID which seemed to bring back some of my latent insomnia. And I had a bike accident that gave me a mild concussion.
But I blame going off birth control.
I’d been taking the NuvaRing for about 7 years when a OBGYN I was seeing suggested I go off it to see what happened to some other symptoms. I don’t know if it’s had the desired impact, but I am pretty sure it’s causing me to feel like I’m living in a movie.
Depersonalization/derealization disorder (DPDR) is not much talked about or understood, but neither are the effects of going off birth control—in fact they’ve barely been studied at all! Who can say why. Anyway, the gist is that you feel that either you or your surroundings are distorted or unreal. There are multiple accounts around the internet of this symptom emerging after people go either on or off hormonal birth control.
For me, it sometimes feels like I’m looking at the world from behind a pane of glass. That the “real me”, my homunculus, is observing what the “me” controlling my body is doing from a remove. Oh, she’s washing the dishes now, I think. She’s petting the cat. Look, she’s talking!
Sometimes I’m actually surprised that when I touch something I can that it’s feel hot or cold, that I can open a door and it actually opens. I don’t feel responsible for the cause and effect.
It’s homunculuses all the way down.
That all being said, I’m still actually, somehow, doing ok! The extremely frustrating part of all of this is that my mental health is still the best it’s been in years. I just don’t often feel present for it.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered these symptoms. As a 20 year old at college in New York, I spent months feeling the ground was moving under me when I walked. The skyscrapers above me looked like paper cut-outs. I thought I was dying, that I had a brain tumor or MS. It’s surfaced a few other times over the years as well. These feelings were usually paired with extreme anxiety. But if I ignore it and focus on staying calm and grounded, the feeling eventually recedes, though it can take weeks or months.
At least this time, I know not to panic, that I probably am not dying or going insane. That this will one day, hopefully, pass. But I’m getting really sick of it.
Anyway, how are you?