As a syndrome, depersonalization develops against the background of various mental disorders. In mentally healthy people, the syndrome occurs as a reaction to a traumatic situation.
Depersonalization is a painful experience of one’s own change, change in one’s own mental processes, one’s own “I”: patients complain that they have become “somehow not the same as before”, “lost their emotions, feelings”, “lost their own “I”, etc.
With depersonalization, it seems to a person that he is observing himself from the outside. It seems to him that he does not control his actions, and the parts of the body seem to be wadded, distorted, enlarged or reduced. Remembering the events of the past in such a state, a person may doubt whether this happened to him.
Violation of the perception of one's own "I", a feeling of unreality of what is happening, anxiety attacks, panic attacks and loss of emotions - these are the symptoms of depersonalization disorder, which is often confused with schizophrenia.