Depersonalisation - Feeling Unreal, Strange

Depersonalisation is a psychiatric technical term, which refers to a changed experiencing of the own person. The persons concerned, experience themselves as unreal, strange or changed. This can also refer to the body. E.g. sometimes they have the impression that individual parts of the body do not belong to them anymore or that they have a body of a stranger. (e.g. "I do not know whether I still belong to my body. The left arm and the right hand do not belong to me any longer").

Also the own identity can be doubted. The patients can feel as if they were somebody else or experience themselves as split.

With the following questions you can perhaps get a hint about if you could be suffering from depersonalisation:

• Do you feel changed in some way?
• Do you feel as another person?

Depersonalisation can occur briefly e.g. from tiredness or when using alcohol and drugs and is therefore not a primary symptom of a heavy psychological disturbance.