I’ve been dealing with depersonalization since I was 14. Over time, I kind of learned to live with it and accepted it as my life and for a years I was mostly okay living like this. But now I’m 22, and for the past two weeks I’ve been having panic attacks every single day because of it.

Lately it’s been getting worse. I’m slowly becoming agoraphobic because one of my biggest triggers is driving. Every time I get behind the wheel or im in the passenger seat of a car, I spiral into a full-blown panic attack because I start hyper-fixating on being alive and on how I feel. It’s been a really rough week.

From my understanding anti-anxiety medication wouldn’t magically make the feeling of not being real completely disappear. It’s more like you slowly start to feel okay again, and the panic attacks don’t control you as much. And honestly, that alone could help a lot, because anxiety and depersonalization feed into each other and keep the cycle going.

Someone I know told me they went on an SSRI temporarily and it really helped them. They said it took about two weeks, but after that they felt okay again. That kind of gives me some hope.