Have you ever felt like you’re just going through the motions, disconnected from yourself or the world around you? It’s a feeling many experience, often associated with derealization and depersonalization. These conditions can make life feel distant or unreal, but the good news is that meditation can help you reconnect.
However, it’s not about doing just any meditation. To truly address derealization and depersonalization, you need to approach meditation with variety and balance. If you’ve been practicing mindfulness or Vipassana regularly and are feeling more detached, you might need to adjust your approach.
In this article, I’ll explain how meditation can help with derealization and depersonalization, what these conditions are, and how a diverse meditation practice can help you feel grounded and reconnected to your life.
What Are Derealization and Depersonalization?
Derealization is a feeling of being disconnected from your surroundings. It’s as if you’re living in a dream or watching life from outside yourself. The world feels distant, foggy, or unreal.
Depersonalization, on the other hand, is when you feel detached from yourself. It’s like you’re observing your thoughts, feelings, and actions from a distance but not fully experiencing them. You might feel like a spectator in your own life, as though you’re going through the motions without actually *living* them.
Both derealization and depersonalization are often linked to dissociation, a mental process where you distance yourself from your thoughts and emotions to cope with stress or overwhelming experiences. While dissociative practices like mindfulness or Vipassana can be useful in certain situations, they can sometimes worsen these feelings if overused.
Why Doing the Same Meditation Every Day Can Make Things Worse
If you’re practicing the same meditation technique every day—especially mindful breathing or Vipassana—you might inadvertently make your derealization or depersonalization worse.
Mindfulness and Vipassana meditation focus on observing your thoughts and feelings and detaching from them, which can exacerbate feelings of dissociation, especially if you’re already struggling with those ghost-like sensations. You may start feeling even more disconnected, as these techniques tend to deepen the detachment. The key to this is to balance it out with associative techniques like grounding methods, gratitude, and loving kindness. You use the dissociative methods to stop you from being too impacted by painful thoughts and feelings, and then you use the associative methods to connect with more positive thoughts and feelings. It’s about balancing things out.
Think of it like going to the gym and only working out one muscle group—your biceps, for example. While it’s great for building that muscle, you’re ignoring the rest of your body. Similarly, meditation is a system that requires balance. Doing the same technique repeatedly can leave certain areas of your mental and emotional state underworked, leading to an imbalance.
Meditation as a System: Finding Balance
Meditation isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. To truly address derealization and depersonalization, you need to practice a variety of meditation techniques that help you reconnect with both your mind and body. This balanced approach will allow you to feel grounded, present, and emotionally connected without overloading yourself with one type of meditation.
Research supports this. Studies show that dissociative practices like mindfulness or Vipassana can worsen derealization if done exclusively. By diversifying your practice, you can engage different mental, emotional, and physical aspects of yourself, helping you reconnect with both your surroundings and your inner world.
Practical Tips to Reconnect with Life Using Meditation
If you’re struggling with derealization or depersonalization, here are some practical meditation techniques to help you reconnect:
1. Diversify Your Meditation Practice
Don’t stick to just mindful breathing or Vipassana. Try these techniques to bring balance to your meditation:
– Somatic Meditation: Focus on the sensations in your body. This helps ground you and reconnects you to your physical self.
– Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta): Build compassion for yourself and others. This type of meditation brings warmth and presence into your practice.
– Body Awareness: Bring attention to your breath and bodily sensations to stay grounded in the present moment.
– Gratitude Meditation: Reflect on things you’re thankful for to shift your focus from detachment to appreciation.
2. Avoid Over-Dissociation
If mindfulness or Vipassana meditation is leaving you feeling more detached, it’s time to balance it out. Add practices that bring you back into your body, such as somatic meditation or body awareness techniques. This will help you feel more present instead of drifting further away from reality.
3. Recalibrate Your Mindset
Derealization and depersonalization often stem from an overwhelming sense of detachment. To overcome this, you need to gently recalibrate your mental state. Instead of pushing away thoughts and feelings, allow them to exist without judgment. This process of acknowledging and accepting your emotions will help you reconnect with the present moment.
4. Reconnect with Your Passions
When you feel disconnected, it’s hard to engage with the things that used to excite you. But by using meditation to tune into your passions, you can reignite your motivation. Try visualization techniques where you imagine yourself engaging with the activities you love. This can help you rediscover your connection to life.
My Approach: Reconnecting Through Empathy and Flexibility
As a meditation teacher, my goal is to meet my students where they are. If one student tells me they’ve lost connection with their passions, we’ll use meditation techniques that help them reconnect to what they love. If another student comes to me with specific goals—whether it’s managing stress, overcoming anxiety, or simply feeling more grounded—I tailor the meditation practices to fit their needs.
Meditation isn’t about forcing someone into a specific set of practices; it’s about finding the right techniques to meet their unique goals. This personalized approach is what sets my meditation lessons apart. By helping students rediscover their emotional and mental balance, we reconnect them with their passions and motivations.
Conclusion: Using Meditation to Reconnect with Life
If you’re struggling with derealization or depersonalization, remember: you don’t need to stick to just one meditation technique. A balanced, varied meditation practice can help you feel more grounded and present. By diversifying your meditation techniques and focusing on grounding practices, you can begin to reconnect with your thoughts, your emotions, and the world around you.
Meditation is a system that works best when it’s tailored to your specific needs. If you’re ready to explore the right techniques for you, let’s dive deeper into a practice that works.
Paul Harrison is a meditation teacher with 20+ years of experience and a deep passion for helping others. Known for his empathy and authentic approach, he’s dedicated to guiding individuals and teams toward mindfulness, clarity, and well-being.