Derealization, Spiritual Crisis, and the Nervous System in an Accelerated World

By Aurora Roseline Lane, PhD

Introduction: Loss of Orientation and the Body’s Return

In my life there have been many nights when sleep would not come, not because of racing thoughts, but because the sense of being a self, my self-hood was not available to me, like it had thinned out or was slowly evaporating. Lying in bed, I could feel my body resting against the mattress, yet the sense of familiarity or inhabiting of my body had almost completely receded.

Some sensation remained, but meaning felt distant, and at times, even the simple act of placing my hand on my forehead required deliberate attention. I would wait for the moment when pressure registered clearly enough for me to distinguish where my hand ended and my head began. Orientation returned slowly, through contact rather than thought.

During these periods, I relied on the same principles I teach clinically. Cues of safety became essential. Gentle rocking to reestablish rhythm. Weight and pressure to anchor sensation. Warmth to signal continuity. The nervous system responded not to explanation, but to reassurance delivered through the body.These moments clarified something I had long understood conceptually but now encountered directly. Derealization and depersonalization are not abstract constructs.

They are lived states that emerge when regulation falters and the psyche retreats from immediacy.As a depth psychologist trained in Jungian theory and somatic approaches, I began to observe these experiences with both personal vulnerability and clinical attention.

The loss of self-presence did not announce itself as fear or panic. It arrived as absence, as a hollowed quiet in which perception persisted without intimacy. That absence became the starting point for inquiry. The question was not how to force presence back into place, but how to understand what the nervous system was communicating through distance.

Derealization and depersonalization refer to experiences in which one’s sense of self or surrounding world feels altered or distant, while reality testing remains intact (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). From a depth psychological perspective, such states may be understood as compensatory responses that emerge when ordinary consciousness can no longer manage internal or external demands, prompting a temporary withdrawal of orientation in service of psychic regulation (Jung, 1953/1966, CW 7, para. 121).. Thus, the following reflections approach derealization and depersonalization as states that arise at the threshold between nervous system regulation and symbolic life, where withdrawal serves as a provisional form of protection rather than collapse.

Inspired by my own experiences of these states of perceptual and psychological distortion, this paper reflects my effort to examine derealization and depersonalization through Jungian depth psychology and polyvagal theory, informed by lived experience and oriented toward understanding how these states arise, what they protect, and how orientation can gradually return.

Cultural Conditions and the Rise of Derealization

In a world that places sustained pressure on the nervous system without offering adequate containment, derealization and depersonalization appear with increasing frequency. Contemporary life often draws attention away from bodily sensation and emotional attunement, favoring rapid cognitive engagement and intermittent reward. Repeated exposure to stimulation without rhythm or integration weakens orientation to embodied experience over time.

These states rarely emerge from a single cause. They tend to arise where trauma, prolonged stress, technological saturation, and unintegrated spiritual activation converge within the same psychophysiological field. Public discourse often struggles to hold this complexity. Some explanations narrow these experiences to anxiety alone, while others frame them primarily through spiritual language. Each perspective captures part of the phenomenon, yet neither accounts fully for the layered conditions under which these states develop.

What appears clinically and phenomenologically is a threshold condition. When the nervous system is required to process more stimulation than it can integrate while remaining oriented to ordinary reality, consciousness often responds by creating distance. That distance may be experienced as perceptual flattening, emotional detachment, or a sense of unreality that oscillates between psychological distress and existential disorientation.

Trauma, Dissociation, and Protective Withdrawal

From a polyvagal perspective, derealization and depersonalization often correspond to dorsal vagal dominance or mixed autonomic states. When mobilization through fight or flight no longer resolves perceived threat, the organism shifts toward conservation. Sensory input softens, emotional intensity dampens, and perception becomes less vivid as the nervous system attempts to reduce demand.

This pattern illustrates survival physiology responding adeptly to overwhelm rather than pathology arising in isolation. Trauma, whether acute or chronic, is pivotal in influencing this reaction. Extended uncertainty, relational tension, illness, sleep deprivation, and continuous hypervigilance progressively diminish the nervous system's ability to remain attuned to the present.

When external safety cannot be reliably established, the body generates safety internally through withdrawal. For many individuals, derealization follows periods of burnout, illness, or emotional overload for precisely this reason. Presence tends to return gradually as the nervous system begins to register conditions that support regulation rather than vigilance.

Spiritual Activation and the Risk of Disembodiment

Along with trauma-informed treatment models, people who are going through derealization often talk about their experiences in spiritual terms. Contemporary first-person narratives often utilize terms such as kundalini activation, awakening, ego dissolution, or expanded consciousness to describe shifts in perception, identity, and embodiment. These descriptions closely resemble phenomenological attributes documented in contemplative and mystical traditions, including altered self-boundaries, changes in temporal experience, and a feeling of disconnection from ordinary reality.

The overlap doesn't mean that derealization and spiritual realization are the same thing; it only means that people are having comparable experiences in different ways. When there is no systematic direction or integration during these experiences, spiritual language may be an attempt to make sense of things when medical models don't seem to work.

For those that struggle with derealization for instance, Issues arise when changed states manifest without enough preparation, containment, or integration. A potential numinous experience amplifies, the feeling of self shrinks, and the connection to the physical realm diminishes. Such experiences often become destabilizing instead of enlightening when they lack a foundation.

Spiritual bypassing makes dealing with these distortions of reality even harder. Particularly, when dissociation is viewed exclusively as transcendence, physical cues are often neglected. Jung characterized this phenomenon as inflation, a condition when consciousness extends beyond the ego's ability to assimilate experiences. From my own experience and what appears to be common is that expansion without embodiment tends to fragment rather than unify the psyche.

Jungian Symbolism and the Function of Meaning

Jung’s methodological approach to psychological and spiritual experiences is particularly useful when examining conditions that disrupt perception, identity, and the stability of ego consciousness. In his clinical work, Jung frequently encountered individuals who reported visions, voices, or encounters with autonomous figures that felt external and real, especially during periods of psychological strain, exhaustion, or developmental transition.

For instance, Jung treated images, encounters, and altered states as symbolic expressions that emerge in response to psychological conditions and developmental pressures. Their significance, in his view, lay in their psychological effects: how they reorganize meaning, influence behavior, and alter the individual’s relationship to self and world.

As Jung observed, “The psyche creates reality every day. The only expression I can use for this activity is fantasy” (Jung, 1960, CW 8, para. 78). By attending to the symbolic function of experience rather than attempting to resolve its ultimate origin, Jung preserved a method that allows depth psychology to engage unusual states without collapsing into belief or reduction.

Jung examined the psychological conditions under which these numinous or supernatural experiences emerged. He understood such phenomena as symbolic expressions arising when consciousness could no longer adequately manage internal conflict or demand. As Jung noted, “When the conscious attitude is no longer able to cope with the tasks before it, the unconscious compensates the situation” (Jung, CW 7, para. 121). From this perspective, disturbances in perception and identity are not random symptoms but meaningful responses within the psyche, reflecting attempts at self-regulation and reorganization under pressure.From this perspective, derealization can be understood as a symbolic disengagement in which consciousness withdraws from immediacy in order to reorganize

Even when involuntary, the experience carries information about what the psyche has been asked to endure. Jung observed that fear intensifies symptoms when experience is stripped of meaning. When derealization is treated exclusively as defect, the psyche often tightens further. When approached as an adaptive response that requires pacing, care, and interpretation, the system frequently begins to soften. Meaning does not resolve nervous system dysregulation on its own, but it often reduces the secondary anxiety that keeps dissociation in place.

Technology, Overstimulation, and Fragmented Attention

Continuous exposure to screens, rapid information cycling, and algorithm-driven emotional stimulation keep the nervous system in a near-constant state of low-grade activation. Doom scrolling in particular places the organism in a paradoxical bind, in which the body remains largely immobilized while the mind absorbs repeated threat cues.

Over time, this configuration mirrors the physiological conditions that support dissociation. The nervous system is unable to act, resolve, or rest, and attention gradually fragments. Presence thins, and the body loses its role as a reliable anchor for experience.

For very sensitive individuals, healers, and those inclined towards depth, these effects frequently amplify. Withdrawal can be an adaptive strategy when engaging in social scenerios moves beyond a person's regular capacity, particularly in environments that offer minimal opportunities for regulation.

Why These States Are Appearing More Often

It appears that derealization and depersonalization appear with increasing frequency as modern life places sustained strain on perception and regulation. Ongoing uncertainty, the digital mediation of reality, exposure to spiritual frameworks without adequate integration, and the erosion of communal rhythm and rest all shape nervous system responses over time.

What has begun to shift is the interpretive lens through which these states are viewed. Dissociation is increasingly understood as a meaningful signal rather than a problem to eliminate. It reflects the psyche’s effort to adapt when sustained presence becomes physiologically costly. Integration Through the Body

Recovery from derealization rarely unfolds through choosing psychology over spirituality or spirituality over psychology. From a polyvagal standpoint, restoration involves reintroducing cues of safety through rhythm, warmth, predictability, and gentle sensory engagement.

From a Jungian standpoint, it involves curiosity rather than alarm, attending to what the psyche has endured without forcing interpretation. From a spiritual standpoint, discernment becomes essential, particularly in distinguishing between experiences that require grounding and those that invite expansion. Across perspectives, integration unfolds through the body. The nervous system responds less to belief than to lived conditions.

Toward Wholeness

Derealization and depersonalization emerge where the demands placed on consciousness exceed the available capacity for integration. They appear across contexts of trauma, technological saturation, spiritual strain, and prolonged uncertainty, not as anomalies, but as patterned responses within the psyche–body system. From a depth psychological perspective, these states mark moments when orientation temporarily recedes in service of regulation, reorganization, or protection.

Read symbolically, dissociation reflects a withdrawal of immediacy rather than a loss of meaning. Jung’s work suggests that such withdrawals occur when ordinary ego consciousness can no longer mediate internal or external demands, prompting compensatory activity from the unconscious. From a polyvagal perspective, this same movement can be understood as a shift toward conservation when mobilization fails to restore safety. Together, these frameworks point toward dissociation as an adaptive, though often distressing, response rather than a deficit of functioning.

The increasing visibility of derealization and depersonalization in contemporary life may therefore signal less about individual pathology and more about the conditions under which subjectivity is currently being asked to operate. Acceleration, abstraction, and disembodiment place sustained strain on perceptual coherence and self-experience. Under such conditions, withdrawal becomes one of the few remaining strategies available to the nervous system and psyche alike.

Understanding these states requires approaches capable of holding physiology, symbolism, and lived experience simultaneously. When dissociation is approached only as a symptom to be eliminated or only as an awakening to be embraced, its regulatory and symbolic dimensions are obscured. An integrative lens allows these experiences to be read as meaningful responses to pressure rather than failures of adaptation.

From this perspective, the task is not to override dissociation, but to understand the conditions that give rise to it and the functions it serves. Orientation does not return through force, interpretation alone, or transcendence, but through the gradual restoration of conditions that support coherence across body, psyche, and meaning. In attending to these conditions, derealization and depersonalization can be recognized as part of a broader dialogue between consciousness and its limits, one that reflects both the strain of the present moment and the psyche’s enduring capacity to respond intelligently to it.

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). DSM-5-TR: Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders(5th ed., text rev.). APA Publishing. J

Jung, C. G. (1960). The structure and dynamics of the psyche (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1928). (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8)

Jung, C. G. (1966). Two essays on analytical psychology (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1953). (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 7)