Let’s talk today about depersonalization. Now, some health conditions are easy to understand. If you have a sword hilt poking out of your abdomen and its long blade is emerging from your backside, a doctor may not be able to help you, but they will at least be able to diagnose what the problem is.

Other conditions are harder to diagnose. Any problem located in the brain tends to fall into this category. Misdiagnosis is a huge problem that not only delays appropriate treatments but also leads to inappropriate treatments that at best do nothing and at worst do harm.

I recently read a memoir about depersonalization, an illness that doctors find hard to diagnose. That was the author’s experience, anyway. It’s hard to diagnose because it’s a problem hidden in the brain, and also because is it’s not a well-known ailment. It hasn’t been on the radar, either among doctors and specialists or among the general public.

I hope this blog post is one small step in bringing greater awareness to the topic of depersonalization.

Mental Health Care on Three Continents

Nathan Dunne, the author of When Nothing Feels Real: A Journey into the Mystery Illness of Depersonalisation, published in 2025, has lived on several continents. He was born in Australia, grew up in India, and studied in Australia and the UK, eventually persevering in getting a doctorate despite some major mental health struggles.

When depersonalization strikes Dunne, he is in his late 20s and living in London. As Dunne points out, it’s no surprise that the onset of his illness occurred while he was a stressed-out graduate student. Depersonalization tends to begin as a result of trauma. Dunne notes that low-level, every-day stress can be just as hard on the system as a single traumatic event.

After seeking health care in the UK and failing to find relief from his symptoms, he moves to California to live with a friend. I don’t know which experience was worse for him—misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis from British doctors and specialists, or being unable to access health care at all in the U.S., since he was a poor noncitizen student.

(Actually, I take that back. I do know which is worse.)

Finally, Dunne’s mom convinces him to live with her in Australia for a bit and consult a doctor nearby. This Australian doctor is able to give Dunne an accurate diagnosis and provide treatments that help him. This occurs three or four long years after the onset of the depersonalization.

I’m sorry—it should not have to take three continents and more than three years to get the health care one needs.

What Is Depersonalization?

Dunne struggles to describe what he experienced. It’s a feeling, or rather, more than a feeling—an actual certainty, that you are no longer yourself. You are outside of yourself, looking in. (Note that in the U.S. we write depersonalization, while the British spelling is depersonalisation.)

If you’ve ever had a traumatic moment, you may have felt suddenly dissociated from yourself. It’s sort of like you aren’t really there. If you have had a traumatic moment, the feeling might have passed in a few minutes. For people who have depersonalization disorder, the feeling (certainty) can last for months or years. It might come and go. Or it might be constant and unchanging for years.

Since it’s so hard to explain what depersonalization feels like, Dunne had a hard time expressing to his doctors and health care specialists what was going on. His attempts at using language to describe an unusual, terrifying feeling ended up sounding a lot like anxiety, depression, or any number of other mental health issues.

When Nothing Feels Real and books like it are so important because we need to get the word out that this condition, and other conditions outside of our cultural awareness, really happen to people. We need a common language to talk about these mental health struggles, so they won’t be so mystifying for patients and providers to work through. Since language is the only way of expressing a problem like depersonalization, it would be good to have a common language with which to discuss it.

How Rare Is Depersonalization?

Dunne cites some shocking statistics about how prevalent depersonalization is, despite being a rather unknown disorder. I think it’s worth quoting some facts from his book:

“According to research conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, the global DSM-5 Research Group and a team of international doctors who specialise in depersonalisation, it is estimated that more than 75 million people worldwide suffer from the illness. In the United States, it affects 2 per cent of the population—6.4 million.”

If you haven’t heard of this illness or have heard of it but think it’s vanishingly rare, this is likely to be because patients who have it are being misdiagnosed. And those who have an accurate diagnosis may not share it with others because of the stigma surrounding mental health conditions, especially those that aren’t on the cultural radar.

About When Nothing Feels Real: A Journey into the Mystery Illness of Depersonalisation

This book is an easy, quick read. I read most of it while navigating the subway system during a recent trip to New York City. I found it no struggle to stay engaged in the book even in that hectic environment. The book is written in easy-to-understand language, making it fully accessible to a wide swath of the population. The book is extremely interesting. The reader gets to follow Dunne as he tries to understand and describe to others what is happening within his own brain.

Here’s one of my favorite passages. Dunne goes on a rant against the many British health care practitioners who failed him. Oh, I can relate! I, too, suffered for years before being properly diagnosed: after my concussion, I suffered from chronic pain, but it took three years for any doctor or specialist to diagnose me properly with this little-understood psychosomatic disorder. Here’s a portion (not even the whole thing!) of Dunne’s wonderful rant:

“My nightmares are full of your high-back chairs and tweed jackets—You could have helped me—What did you expect of me, to crawl into the clinic dripping in blood and shit? What could I have possibly done differently with my little speech and mortal hands? Where were the friendly doctors I’d heard so much about in newspaper columns? Where were the specialists who stayed longer after hours neglecting their own families to read newly published studies ready to give the gift of knowledge to their profession and save that one extra life . . . Was it too abstract for you? Was it too crude, too weird? What was happening? All I gave you in my hope and my language—I fought for you people to understand me, every day I fought with everything I had to stay off the high balcony on my tiptoes looking down at the great asphalt. I fought with every breath I had, . . . gasping again and again at the knowledge that eluded me—Don’t you fucking read? It was there on the shelf. All you needed to do was reach for the book and turn to the contents page. . . .”

It’s true, depersonalization is listed in the table of contents of the DSM-5. Despite that, Dunne fell through the cracks and wasn’t found for years.

How to Get a Copy of When Nothing Feels Real: A Journey into the Mystery Illness of Depersonalisation

When Nothing Feels Real is currently available in the UK and Australia. I ordered it from Blackwell’s in the UK (here’s a link to the book on their website). I was surprised at how quickly it arrived at my doorstep—only a week or so! And despite the book being quite inexpensive, they didn’t charge shipping to my U.S. address.

Other purchasing options are listed on Nathan Dunne’s website. He recently signed with a New York City-based literary agency, so hopefully the book will be available in the U.S. at some point.

My Own Research and Book Writing Continues

I read When Nothing Feels Real as part of the research I’m doing for my autobiographical novel. I’m writing about topics pertaining to psychology, philosophy, and consciousness. I think it’s important to spread the word about unusual mental states that might not actually be so unusual, after all.

Maybe they just seem unusual because we’re not talking about them enough!

Have you experienced depersonalization or something like it? If you haven’t experienced the full-blown disorder, have you experienced a brief traumatic moment when you felt dissociated for a minute or two?

There’s one final thing I’d like to leave you with. Dunne quotes a wise friend of his, who told him, “You think of this thing you have as forever . . . But I’ve lived long enough to know that there are just these seasons in life. Sometimes these seasons go on for years, decades even. And then one day, maybe when you’re out getting groceries, you get a call . . .”

In other words, don’t give up. If you are struggling with this or any other problem, keep searching for answers and clues. One day, you will find a way into a better place.

Featured in this blog post: When Nothing Seems Real by Nathan Dunne Buy it here