A Springtide Retrospective

by Alex Sirek

Barefoot, I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart, digging my toes into the snow blanketing my front porch.

I am here. I am real.

a voice said.

Only seconds later did I realize that voice was my own. Consciously, I recognized that voluntarily exposing my appendages to sub-zero temperatures could give me frostbite but at that moment all I could think of were the words of my painfully cheerful dialectical behavior therapy group caseworker, "Next time that dissociation of yours gets really scary, try standing outside! Maybe the cold air will bring you back to the present!"

So I did.

When I looked down at my hands, questioning whose they were, I was struck with the realization that this feeble attempt at grounding was not working. Not only that, but I could see my fingers and toes turning crimson.

Once I hobbled inside, I could not help but pace around my bedroom in an attempt to calm myself down. Like a zoo-animal with too little enrichment, I walked back and forth aimlessly for what felt like hours.

I soon noticed that my perception of time had dramatically shifted. Seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to millennia. When I looked at my phone, I expected at least an hour to have passed. In reality, ten minutes had elapsed since my severe spiral of depersonalization had commenced. That was when true panic held me in its grasp. I was now too struck with fear to even continue to pace.

For as long as I could remember, I had experienced the occasional bout of mild dissociative symptoms. After all, dissociation is a vital function of the limbic system. However, this time was different. Past episodes of derealization were relatively mild and typically resolved themselves within a matter of a minute or two. Yet for ten full minutes I had been endlessly self-soothing in an attempt to convince myself of my own reality. Needless to say, I had no luck in convincing myself. The harder I resisted my delusions the deeper I fell into the bottomless pit of unreality.

While I do not remember much from the remainder of that night, I do remember thinking that I was going to die. I did not want to. I just thought it was a plausible explanation for what was happening to me. My fifteen-year-old self had no way to comprehend what had overtaken me. Even in my adulthood, I still do not quite understand. My mind was slipping away from my body, and I had assumed this would cause my consciousness to cease. Eventually I fell asleep, with the hope that it would all be over when I awoke. It was not.

I had to attend my intensive outpatient therapy group that morning. One might think that a therapeutic setting could bring a recently traumatized person a grounded sense of peace. However, when I attended and heard my peers lightheartedly discussing depression and anxiety this brought about intense feelings of isolation and detachment. They conjured up experiences that I was all too familiar with, but these mental health conditions were relatively straight-forward and easily understood.

When I spoke on what had happened the night before, and how it persisted, I was looked at as if they thought I should be placed in a facility akin to the infamous Pennhurst Asylum. Noticing the tonal shift of the once convivial therapy session, the catastrophically bubbly caseworker momentarily pulled me from the group. The overly optimistic therapist had me complete a set of deep breathing exercises. Apparently, simply breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth would snap me out of this dissociative spiral. Seemingly proud of herself, she remarked to me, “Now doesn’t that feel better?”

It clearly did not.

I stopped attending high school that week. The district was under the impression that I had decided to finish my sophomore year online. I did not and had no intention to. I was so hyperfocused on surviving with my newly acquired condition that I was utterly unable to be productive in any way, shape or form. Two weeks later I stopped attending group therapy. Not only was it incredibly pandering and unhelpful, but every time I attempted to leave my home I began anxiously dry heaving and gagging in my driveway. For seemingly no reason, I was absolutely terrified of leaving my home.

So, I didn’t.

For a period of three months I confined myself to my bedroom. All of my time and energy from this period was expended on trying not to let my condition worsen. I did not speak to any of my friends, even though I cared for them deeply. At the same time, I was unbelievably unwell and felt undeserving of help. My illness had caused me to sever my most vital connections, both with loved ones and internally. Looking back, I speculate that I was deeply ashamed of myself and what I had become.

Recovery is a difficult and confusing process.

Mine began with a simple trip to the zoo with a girl who was not afraid to push me when she knew I needed it. “I’m going to the zoo with some friends and I want you to come with me. Nobody has seen you in months and I’m worried about you. For the love of God, get out of bed and come look at penguins with me.”

I did. It was wonderful.

As we wandered around the zoo together, we came across a leopard who was pacing back and forth in his enclosure. “Damn, that’s depressing.”, my friend remarked. I chuckled in agreement, not noting that I spent my time very similarly up until that point. I missed my friends and the world around me, more than that I missed myself. I did not want to hide myself away, but something inside of me forced me to. It took a long time for me to get comfortable existing inside my body and inside the world as a whole.

I learned to. I had to.

In the present, I am not entirely free of my derealization and occasional depersonalization. Far from it, these symptoms still remain a daily struggle for me to manage. But with time and effort, it gets much easier and much less frightening. Miraculously, I am wholly able to comfortably interact with my surroundings in a manner free from catastrophization and self-destruction. With ample self-compassion, I have gotten to a point of reconnection with myself and the greater whole of my world.