My Story — DPDR And The Darkest Year

It’s been a real challenge to even consider how I would put this story into words.

Many of my closest friends and family don’t know what the last year and a half of my life has truly been like. I told myself that once I healed, I would share it — in hopes that someone else might feel less alone if they ever found themselves in this place.

As we approach the end of 2025, I can finally say that I am emerging from the darkest and most frightening period of my life.

It started one night as I lay next to my partner, trying to fall asleep. A familiar feeling crept in — one I had known on and off for as long as I could remember. It usually happened at night, sometimes in brief flashes during the day. A sensation as if my identity were dissolving. As if the pieces of who I was suddenly didn’t fit together.

Growing up, I would sometimes wake up in this state — confused, panicked, unsure of who or where I was. I’d grasp for something familiar until my body finally settled and I could fall back asleep. Other times it would hit me during the day: a sudden, visceral awareness that life was… strange. Unreal. Like I had just arrived here and couldn’t understand how any of this existed.

It felt spiritual. Terrifying. Otherworldly.

I once tried to explain it to a friend at a festival. She laughed and said it sounded like being on mushrooms — something I never dared to try. I was convinced that if I ever touched psychedelics, I would lose my mind completely. Somewhere deep down, I believed something was already wrong with me.

That belief had been planted early. As a child, my emotions were intense — rage, sensitivity, overwhelm. Doctors, medications, and labels reinforced the idea that something about me was broken.

So I searched. I read. I studied spirituality, altered states, consciousness, meditation, shamanism — anything that might explain this strange inner experience. And for years, the feelings came and went. Uncomfortable, but manageable.

Until October.

That night, as I drifted toward sleep, the sensation returned — but this time, I fixated on it. And it took over.

I jolted out of bed in terror. My body was shaking. I was sweating. The house looked unfamiliar. My couch, my TV, my dog — everything felt foreign. I felt like I was floating in a dream I couldn’t wake up from. My heart raced. I purged. I paced.

I woke my partner, sobbing and trembling, convinced something had gone terribly wrong. He held me until I finally slept.

But this time, sleep didn’t fix it.

When I woke up, the world still felt unreal. I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t recognize my home. Worst of all, I felt disconnected from my son — as if my mind couldn’t access the love I knew was there. That terrified me more than anything.

I was certain I was losing my mind.

Days passed. Then weeks. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t work. I was afraid of everything — light, sound, thoughts, existence itself. I felt trapped inside my own consciousness. I genuinely believed my life was over.

Eventually, shaking and terrified, I searched the internet.

That’s when I found it:
Depersonalization / Derealization (DPDR).

Thousands of people describing exactly what I was experiencing.

I was horrified… and relieved.

Then I found something else — people talking about recovery. About how DPDR isn’t dangerous. About how it’s a nervous system response, not a mental illness. About how it’s driven by anxiety and fear — and how it can resolve.

TikTok, of all places, saved me.

I learned that my brain was stuck in fight-or-flight. That depersonalization is a protective mechanism — a way the nervous system disconnects when it believes you’re in danger. Not a sign of psychosis. Not permanent damage. Not insanity.

I found Shawn O’Connor’s work. Then Robin, who became a lifeline for me. I watched videos on repeat. Learned how to stop fearing the symptoms. Learned how to stop monitoring my mind.

And slowly — painfully slowly — things began to shift.

What shocked me most was how little this condition is talked about. How many doctors don’t understand it. How often it’s misdiagnosed. How many people are told they’ll “just have to live with it.”

The truth is: DPDR feels terrifying, but it is not dangerous.

It’s a nervous system stuck in survival mode.

I had been anxious my entire life. High-functioning. Overachieving. Holding everything together. A single mom without support. A caretaker. A dreamer. A doer.

Eventually, my system hit its limit.

I had what I can only describe as a nervous breakdown.

There were nights I lost my vision from panic. Nights I hid under blankets waiting for it to pass. Moments I truly believed I was disappearing.

And yet… here I am.

What healed me wasn’t forcing the fear away.
It was learning to stop running from it.

I learned that anxiety must be allowed, not fought.
That fear dissolves when it’s met with softness.
That the nervous system heals through safety, not control.

And strangely — beautifully — everything I needed to heal was already within me. The breathwork. The mindfulness. The embodiment practices I’d been teaching for years.

It was as if my life had been quietly preparing me for this moment.

2025 held both my deepest fear and my greatest awakening.

I am no longer afraid of my mind.
I am no longer afraid of sensation.
I am no longer afraid of being here.

And for the first time in a long time…
I feel truly alive.

2026 will not be about survival.
It will be about living.

The Body’s Wisdom

Well before I could articulate why, yoga became a deep passion.
There was something so blissful about moving my body with my breath.
Something grounding. Something transcendent.
The rhythm of my spine, the activation of muscle, the lift of my heart—
it felt like medicine, though I couldn’t have told you why.

Yoga gave my body and mind a way to regulate.
Like an animal that instinctively shakes after escaping danger,
my nervous system found a way to discharge stress—through movement.
And I kept returning to that rhythm.

It wasn’t until years later—after unraveling chronic anxiety, panic, and dissociation—that I realized my body had been leading me toward healing all along.
Long before I knew the language of polyvagal theory,
long before I understood trauma physiology—
my body knew what it needed.

How Movement Regulates the Nervous System

The science backs this up. Movement isn’t just about fitness—it’s a form of neuroregulation. Here's why:

🌀 Discharge of Sympathetic Energy:
When we move—especially rhythmically and with breath—we help the body release the buildup of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Just like animals shake to release survival energy, movement allows us to metabolize sympathetic charge instead of storing it as tension, anxiety, or numbness.

🫁 Vagal Tone + Parasympathetic Activation:
Mindful movement (especially with breath) stimulates the vagus nerve, the primary highway of the parasympathetic nervous system. This helps shift us from fight/flight into rest/digest/heal. Practices like yoga, walking, rocking, or even gentle stretching can all support vagal activation.

🧠 Interoception + Emotional Awareness:
Movement increases activity in the insula, a brain region associated with interoception—our ability to feel what's happening inside. This awareness allows us to better notice our emotions and sensations before we react to them, helping us respond with more choice and clarity.

The Body Knows Before the Mind Understands

I haven’t mastered any of this.
I’m still learning to come home to my body, again and again.
But now I recognize movement for what it is:
a deeply intelligent language of healing.

The yogis knew this centuries ago when they created asana.
They understood that conscious movement could be a spiritual practice—
one that unblocks stuck energy and reawakens presence.

Now, modern science confirms it:

“The body keeps the score:
if the memory of trauma is encoded in the viscera,
in heartbreaking and gut-wrenching emotions,
then the healing process must involve the body.”
— Bessel van der Kolk

The Nest and the Bird: A Journey Through Anxiety and Stillness

Thirteen years ago, I sat in a circle of women, freshly initiated into a specific form of meditation.

As our teacher guided us into our first group practice, I let my mantra play in my mind, following it into a stillness I had never known. And then, as we were instructed to begin coming out, I felt something… strange. My soul felt like it was shaking in and out of my body—like it couldn’t quite settle in. The feeling was so intense I had to grip my chair to keep from falling off.

From that moment on, I never let myself go deep again. I would arrive at the threshold, but never cross it. I stayed at the surface. I was afraid.

Shortly after, I found myself in the office of Dr. Fred Travis, a world-renowned neurologist and professor at the university I attended. I described what had happened, and how meditation now triggered waves of anxiety.

That day, Dr. Travis introduced me to the concept of trauma.

At 24, I didn’t fully understand it—only that something inside me had been shaken. He explained that my nervous system was reacting to an event it couldn’t distinguish from past experiences. It wasn’t the meditation that was dangerous—it was that something in me remembered something else.

A therapist later gave me a metaphor I’ve carried with me to this day. He placed his pinky fingers together and cupped his hands like a bowl.

“Your nervous system is like a nest,” he said. “And your soul is a bird. If the nest is full of prickly twigs, the bird won’t feel safe to land.”

Years later, after my son was born, I sat with an astrologer from India—the same one who predicted my pregnancy two months before I knew. He held out his hands in that same cupped shape and said:

“You’re trying to catch the rain with your hands… but you have nowhere to hold it.”

So much energy. Nowhere to ground it.

In hindsight, I see the through line. Different teachers, different languages—but the same message:
Your nervous system is dysregulated. It has been for a long time.

It took a full-blown mental health crisis for me to recognize what had always been true. Why?
Because chaos, anxiety, and hypervigilance were normalized in my life. It was all I knew—from womb to present.

Disconnection became my survival strategy. Anxiety, my constant companion.

I am a yoga teacher. A meditation guide.
And I am also a human actively healing from chronic anxiety and dissociation.

I believe there’s not enough real, compassionate information for people like me—because too often, these experiences are shrouded in shame.

But anxiety is not a weakness.
It’s a signal. It’s a messenger.
It’s a part of you asking to be seen.

Anxiety has been my most terrifying enemy… and also my most powerful teacher.

Your nervous system remembers everything.
Your body holds the pain, the grief, the trauma, the losses. And though we may carry those knots and appear to function—we cannot function well or for long if we don’t tend to them.

So sit with your nervous system.
Sit with the discomfort.
Notice where you go—or where you avoid going.

Can you be still? Can you stay grounded?

Treat your nervous system well.
Make your nest soft. Safe. Nourishing.

I am endlessly grateful for the teachers who have helped me peel back the layers. There’s still work to do—decades of knots to untangle—but had it not been for my practice, I may have never known how tightly I’d been holding on.

If you suffer from anxiety, know this:

You are not alone.
I am here. As a shoulder. As a heart that understands.
As someone who knows.
And maybe, as someone with a tool or two that might help.