Not Connecting

[mladams]

Basically I've been having this issue for about a week now and it's really concerning me as it's beginning to effect my every day life.  Last weekend I was taking pictures with a friend at a wedding and I had one of those odd experiences where you're interacting with people but it's like you're not really the one interacting.  It's happened before but has always passed.  I had taken L-Theamine and DLPA the night before and that morning.  It somewhat passed as the night went on but I still didn't quite feel like myself.

The next two days were stressful as I was not connecting with the normal things I would connect with, people, my interests, even the things around me seemed foreign to a degree.  This whole week I've just felt intellectually slow, like I can't think properly or I'm just not "with it".  I have a history of depression and I'm not currently on medication but this doesn't feel like depression, it feels like a complete inability to think or connect with normal thought processes.  I have a hard time being excited about the things I was excited about or even connect to them emotionally.  I go about doing the things I used to do but with no real thought about them or connection to what I'm doing.

I've been seeing a nutritionalist for a little while which was really taking care of my depression pretty well.  I was still a bit anxious but we've been working to figure out the cause and a solution.  Work has been very stressful as well as my personal life but I was begining to handle everything very well.  I was getting things done at work and understanding what I was doing, then last weekend came around and I'm just completely out of it.  I'm going to see a psychologist this week but my concern is that it could be medical and that there could be something wrong with my brain chemistry, something that could become permanent and I really do not want to have this problem the rest of my life.

Any help you can provide would help me a lot.  
Thanks,
Matt

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Matt,

It is difficult to answer if your symptoms are due to a medical condition. If you are consulting a PCP, he/she is in a better position to rule out that possibility. The symptoms of feeling disconnected could be due to depersonalization or derealization, basically forms of dissociative disorder. Anxiety and stress are commonly associated, and often precursors to these symptoms. You might want to discuss any pressing issues when you visit the psychologist.

As far as the brain chemistry is concerned, the role of neurotransmitters has been known since a long time now. However the usual antidepressants may not be quite as much effective as we expect them to be. How long you will have these symptoms really depends upon how effectively you can explore any anxiety/stress inducing issues and learn to deal with them.

The dizziness and over-stimulation do not seem to be causing any of the feelings of being disconnected, but they appear to be part of the overall depression-anxiety complex (so to say).

Best Regards

[mladams]

I just wanted to add that the night before I was having issues feeling like there was a lot of activity, or overstimulation right behind my eyes and I was having very slight dizziness. Not enough to really cause bug issues, but enough to be noticed.