Depersonalization is really bizarre and unsettling. During the pandemic while working from home (and shortly after our first child was born), I started to get t

Depersonalization is really bizarre and unsettling. During the pandemic while working from home (and shortly after our first child was born), I started to get these periods of time where life didn’t “feel real”. A room in my apartment wasn’t a room; it was just an arbitrary box that my body was inside of. Things that had substance or meaning started seeming sort of “hollow”, and I felt like I was watching a movie about myself rather than experiencing it. I started Googling and depersonalization / derealization showed up in the results. I’d like to say it’s gone away since it first appeared two years ago, but it hasn’t entirely. The “not real” sensation seems to linger in the background of my life permanently now. I notice it’s worse if I’m stressed, haven’t had sleep, or haven’t hung out with any friends in person in a while. I also wonder if working remotely via Zoom meetings all the time contributes to the problem; it would be interesting to know if diagnoses of depersonalization spiked during the pandemic.