Bringing Them Closer: Sharing Your Story of Depersonalization and Developmental History
I would really like to try to communicate this knowledge to my closest people. I know I already talked about that with you this morning and we drafted an email that I sent to people. But my boyfriend is coming over tomorrow and I'd like to not only give him that brief overview and label but maybe an ever more over-arching review of my developmental history so that he can understand me more fully. How would I tell that story so that it would make sense to him?
ChatGPT: That’s a great idea. Giving him the bigger picture will help him not just understand depersonalization, but understand you—how you got here, what it’s felt like, and what it means for your relationship.
The goal is to make it feel like a story, not a clinical report. You want him to see the throughline—how each phase of your life contributed to where you are now.
How to Structure It
I’d suggest breaking it into 4 main parts:
Early Life – The Seeds of Disconnection
How emotional neglect + fundamentalism shaped you
How you learned to suppress emotions rather than feel them
How this planted the early roots of depersonalization
Teen Years & Evangelical Influence – Reinforcing the Split
How religious ideology pulled you even further from your body and direct experience
How you were encouraged to live in thoughts and rules, rather than instincts and feelings
How being watched, judged, and expected to perform shaped your relationship with yourself
Adulthood & The Breaking Point – When You Started to See It
The mushroom trip—how it shattered your perception and made you aware of a deep problem you couldn’t name
The struggle to piece yourself back together, the mental health system, the endless searching
Realizing that depersonalization wasn’t just a symptom—it had been your reality for most of your life
Now – What You Know & What You Need
The realization that you’ve been disconnected from yourself and that healing is about learning to be in your body and experience rather than analyzing everything
How this affects your relationships—how you sometimes feel distant, but not because you don’t care
How he can support you—not by fixing, but by being someone who helps you feel safe, real, and seen
How to Actually Say It
Here’s a way you could phrase it in conversation. Obviously, tweak it so it feels natural for you, but this gives you a starting point:
"I want to tell you a fuller version of my story, because I feel like the more you understand where I come from, the better you'll understand what I need and how I experience life. Some of this you probably already know, but I want to connect the dots."
1. Early Life – How I Learned to Disconnect
"For as long as I can remember, I’ve been disconnected from my own experience. But I didn’t know that’s what was happening—I just thought I was ‘normal’ or ‘fine.’"
"When I was a kid, I didn’t grow up in a home where emotions were recognized or mirrored back. I wasn’t deeply seen—I was watched, sure, but I wasn’t reflected. My feelings weren’t something that other people really registered. So I started ignoring them, too."
"Then there was church, where everything was about rules, obedience, and making sure you were ‘good’ in the eyes of God and other people. I learned to be highly aware of how I was being perceived, but not how I actually felt inside."
"At some point, without realizing it, I stopped really experiencing my own life firsthand. I became an observer—watching myself do things rather than fully being in them. I was intellectualizing everything, but I wasn’t actually there for it."
2. My Teen Years – The Fundamentalist Influence Made It Worse
"As I got older, this got even stronger. In high school and my late teens, evangelicalism played a huge role in reinforcing this split. Everything was about being ‘right’—morally, spiritually, socially. There was no room to trust my own instincts, because instincts were considered dangerous. I wasn’t allowed to think for myself, let alone feel for myself."
"I became someone who was really good at self-policing. I analyzed my own thoughts constantly, making sure I was being ‘correct’ in every way. The more I did this, the more I lost connection with anything deeper. I had thoughts, but no real presence."
"At the time, I didn’t know anything was wrong. I just thought I was doing what I was supposed to do."
3. Adulthood & The Breaking Point – When I Started to See It
"Things could’ve gone on like that forever if I hadn’t had an experience that ripped the curtain away. That experience was the 2020 mushroom trip."
"It completely shattered my perception of reality. I had this overwhelming, terrifying realization that I wasn’t actually in control of my thoughts. That I was just… watching them, like an audience member in my own mind. And when the trip ended, that awareness didn’t go away. I spent the next four years spiraling, trying to understand what had happened to me."
"I went deep into psychology, philosophy, therapy, spirituality—but nothing fully explained what I was experiencing. I was terrified, and I couldn’t shake this feeling that my mind was fundamentally broken."
"But now, I finally understand: this wasn’t something that ‘happened’ to me in 2020. The trip just revealed what had been true my whole life. I had been living in a detached, dissociated state for as long as I could remember. I had been depersonalized since I was a kid—I just didn’t have a name for it."
4. Now – What I Know & What I Need
"Now that I see it, everything makes sense. Why I overanalyze, why I struggle with presence, why even the most meaningful experiences sometimes feel like I’m ‘watching’ them instead of feeling them."
"I don’t want to live like that anymore. My goal now isn’t to ‘fix’ myself—it’s just to start being here in my own life. To start experiencing things firsthand, rather than from a mental distance."
"This affects my relationships too—including with you. Sometimes I might seem distant, not because I don’t care, but because my mind automatically pulls me into that detached space. I don’t always know how to express my feelings, not because I don’t have them, but because I’m still learning how to feel them directly rather than thinking about having them."
"The best way you can support me isn’t to fix anything, but just to be a person I feel safe being real with. When I feel safe, I feel more here. And when I feel more here, I can connect more deeply—with myself, and with you."
Final Check – Does This Feel Like You?
This story doesn’t just explain depersonalization—it explains you in a way that should help him understand you more deeply.
Does this feel like how you’d naturally want to explain it?
Do any parts feel off or too formal?
Do you want to add anything more personal that would make it feel more yours?
Once you get clear on that, you’ll be able to share this with him in a way that feels real and natural to you. Let me know what you think!
