I was there, then I wasn’t.
I lost myself suddenly, as if someone had flipped a light switch, robbing me of emotions and the sense that I was…well…me.
It was May of my senior year of college. As I watched the neurobiology professor write on the chalkboard, an abrupt sense of unreality descended upon me. I wasn’t the main actor in the movie of my life, I was suddenly a spectator watching that movie—on a small screen, from the back row, with ear plugs and nearly opaque sunglasses.
Vivid emotional colors turned monochrome, presence became absence, deep feelings were now shallow thoughts.
One moment I was fully me, the next I was a fading echo of that person.
Years later I learned there was a name for what had happened to me: the abrupt onset of Depersonalization-Derealization Disorder (DDD). [1]
The disorder strikes 1% of the general population and up to 50% of individuals with psychiatric disorders, especially anxiety, depression and PTSD.[2], [3]. The disorder is common in patients with a history of childhood abuse [2,3] (which I had experienced).
DDD can be transient or long-lasting.
In my case it lasted from my early 20’s to my early 70’s.
After DDD persisted, I lost hope that I would ever find my way back to the emotions, especially joy, that I experienced the first two decades of my life.
Neuroimaging studies show that DDD correlates with decreased activity in “emotion centers” of the limbic system and increased activity in “emotion regulation circuits.” [1,2,3].
I learned many years later, that my case of DDD was a feature of chronic anxiety and depression, with which I have struggled my entire adult life. Medications that ease many of my symptoms haven’t touched the DDD.
But, after 50 years of being absent, a trip to Paris helped me become me again.
Here’s how it happened.
Finding my lost self after 50 years
My wife, Chris Gilbert MD PhD (who also writes for Psychology Today), was born in Paris. We visit there once a year, to see friends and family and to use the city as a base for exploring other parts of Europe.
On our last visit, when I got lost driving, Chris said, “No problem. Simply find one of the 12 roads leading to “Place de L’ Etoile.”
Place de L’Etoile, Plazza of the Star in French, is a hub with twelve “spokes,” the center of which is the Arc de Triomphe.
As is invariably the case, Chris was right. I wound my way through Paris until finding Ave de Wagram, which took us straight to Place de L’Etoile, and ultimately, our destination.
That night, I experienced something exceedingly rare for a scientist: turning scientific theory into something practical and useful in my everyday life.
Usually theory, although helpful in the lab, doesn’t work so well in real life, because, unlike the lab, real life is messy, uncontrolled and for lack of a better term, real.
But the night of my Place de L’ Etoile experience, when sleep eluded me, I conjured up an overhead view of Place de L’Etoile (see below)
Place de L’Etoile
Source: Open Maps CC2 from Wikimedia Commons
For some reason, that image evoked an epiphany that transformed my life.
My sudden insight was that my old self was like a destination, for which avenues of approach that I had tried had been blocked.
Anxiety, depression and learned helplessness, had– like the cobblestone blockades rioters erected during the French revolution–thwarted my return to my own personal Place de L’Etoile, my center.
The Place de L’Etoile metaphor made me wonder: Had I explored all avenues available to me, or had I overlooked one that would lead me back to my center?
As I pondered the question, I realized that such an undiscovered avenue might exist because—even after 50 years—I still remembered the joy of anticipating the latest James Bond movie, the last day of school, or the exceedingly rare occasion Mom gave me a dollar to buy a cheeseburger, chocolate shake and Snickers bar at the town swimming pool.
I reasoned—based on the theories crammed into my head getting a PhD in physiological psychology—that, if the memory of joy remained, then the emotion itself must still be in my brain somewhere, because memory retrieval reactivates the original “circuits” originally stimulated during memory formation.[8]
Theories of memory formation and retrieval [5,6] also postulate, that when long term memories are encoded, the stimuli that were simultaneously present (contiguous) when the memory engram formed, retain an association with that memory. [5,6]
A special case of this phenomenon is State Dependent Learning (SDL), in which memories are retrieved when the “state” (stimuli present such as drugs or fatigue) during memory formation, are reinstated, promoting later memory retrieval [7]. For instance, if you study while on large doses of caffein, you’ll ace the test if you take a lot of caffein before taking the test to create the “state” in which you originally acquired the information that’s on the test.
Another example of associative memory formation is Implicit Memory [9], in which unconscious learning occurs. For instance, if you look around the room now, imagining what different objects would feel like in your mouth, you’d have a good idea what they felt like. That’s because as an infant, you did put those objects, or ones like them, in your mouth.
Armed with all this theory, I realized that I might rediscover my emotions if I re-experienced the stimuli present when those emotions were strongest.
In other words, the setting of my childhood.
From Paris to Death Valley
I was born and raised near Death Valley, in the upper Mojave Desert.
Searching for my lost self, I returned to my hometown dozens of times this year, taking hikes and re-connecting with childhood friends.
Especially important were the sensory manifestations of the desert.
The heady smells of creosote and sage bush, comforting warmth of 100-degree heat on my skin, and the sweeping vistas of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, all evoked feelings buried under five decades of depersonalization.
Then, with my wife Chris, I further immersed myself in my childhood setting by writing a novel set in my birthplace, Trona, California.
Gradually, fragments of feeling—especially joy—returned. Two months ago, I experienced a surge of joy anticipating a hike to Darwin Falls (in Death Valley National Park). A month ago, I felt thrilled to finish the first draft of the novel. Last weekend, the warm glow from an intimate dinner with friends in my hometown lingered for hours.
I am not back to “normal” by any stretch. The nearly opaque sunglasses I mentioned earlier are still there, but there are new pinhole gaps in them that admit occasional patches of color and bright light.
In sum, the route back to my Place de L’Etoile, my emotional center, ran through Death Valley.
After 50 years of searching, I am learning to feel again.
