"This deeply personal account of depersonalisation is an enlightening, supportive work."
Sharing his personal battles with depersonalisation — a dissociative mental health condition that leaves sufferers feeling disconnected from people and the world around them — journalist Nathan Dunne’s When Nothing Feels Real is an honest, enlightening account of his navigational journey through this alienating condition.
Dunne’s seminal experience came at the age of 28, when he and his partner, Maria, took a late-night dip in a Hampstead Heath pond and, “in a single moment, in a split second, I had been locked away, condemned to wander in a body that was not my own”. In physical pain, Dunne summed up his situation thus: “I’m not myself. I’m lost”.
Returning home and a good night’s sleep did nothing to change how he felt, and months later, tingling with terror, hearing his voice as being “machine-like” and “generated from some alien apparatus outside my body”, Maria issues him with an ultimatum — “See a doctor tomorrow or else I’m going to leave you”.
And so begins Dunne’s journey through diagnosis and road to understanding an illness that causes sufferers to feel overwhelmed, disengaged from themselves, and their loved ones, and unable to deal with daily life.
Alongside generously sharing his personal experiences, Dunne covers current thinking in the fields of neuroscience, which makes it a valuable tool to understanding diagnoses and possible treatments. All of which means, When Nothing Feels Real will surely provide much support for people battling with depersonalisation.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
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