Help for DP/DR Related Vision Issues

Visual disturbances like seeing floaters, afterimages, tracers, etc. are often common when experiencing depersonalization and derealization. Not only that, people also sometimes report that their environment can seem bright or foggy to them. What’s the connection between DP/DR and such visual distortions, and what can we do about them?

Depersonalization and derealization disorder (DP/DR) is honestly one of the most confusing mental health issues a person can experience in their life. Even though many people often experience this issue for a short while, a sizable portion of our population can get stuck with it for long periods of time. People who get stuck with DP/DR can become easily scared and confused because of the clear lack of research and understanding of this issue, even among the medical community.

My website exists in part to educate the world about this condition and to offer guidance on how to fully recover from depersonalization and derealization. Every day, I answer many emails from sufferers asking for tips for recovery or about specific DP/DR symptoms. Many among them write to me seeking clarity about the visual distortions that accompany their DP/DR experience.

You see, so many DP/DR sufferers experience visual disturbances like seeing floaters, afterimages, bright objects, etc. People start to wonder if something is seriously wrong with them. They ask me if they are in any danger from DP/DR and whether they may have permanently damaged their vision.

In this article, I’m going to address these issues and try my best to calm the sufferers down. Of course, I don’t intend this to be a substitute for medical advice. Please be sure to always consult with a medical doctor if you feel strongly that you need help.

What are the visual distortions?

There are many visual or perceptual distortions that people experience when they are depersonalized. Here are some of the most common ones:

• Presence of afterimages
• Seeing floaters
• Experiencing visual snow
• Seeing a halo around lights
• Experiencing bright vision and other visual problems

Let’s look at these in more detail

Presence of afterimages

This is when you look at something, typically on your phone or your computer screen, and this image continues to persist for a short duration even when you look away from the object.

Seeing floaters

Floaters are tiny black or gray spots in your vision, but sometimes they can also look like strings or cobwebs. They appear to drift or float around when you move your eyes.

Eye floaters are very common and they seem to increase as we age. A routine eye exam can reveal if they’re something to be worried about or not. The majority of the time, their presence is just insignificant.

Visual Snow

A significant percentage of DP/DR sufferers report experiencing visual snow. People describe it as a kind of constant, flickering static across their visual field. Some of us are old enough to remember TV static. When you have visual snow, it appears as if that TV static is superimposed on your field of vision.

Halo around lights

This is where you see a sort of blurry, glowing border around a bright object like a light source. You may have noticed this when you were driving your car during depersonalization, typically at night. The headlights will appear to have a halo around them.

Some of the less common symptoms include:

• Blurry or sometimes foggy vision
• Seeing tracers
• Altered distance
• Altered sizes, sometimes also referred to as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS)
• Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD)

If you’re experiencing any of these common or not-so-common symptoms, it’s best to first get your eyesight checked by a qualified doctor. If the doctor says that there’s nothing to worry about, then you can rest assured that this is all just due to DP/DR.

But this begs the question, why do these visual problems accompany DP/DR?

The underlying link is sensitization

One way to look at DP/DR is to look at it as a collection of symptoms; symptoms that arise due to nervous system sensitization. Let me give you a brief overview of it. When we experience stress or trauma in our lives, our nervous system becomes hypersensitive. At this stage, some of the hormone levels (adrenaline and cortisol) in our bodies change drastically. Consequently, we become hypervigilant. We look around and see danger even where there is none. We are always on high alert. We enter a constant state of fight-or-flight.

We evolved to be in a fight-or-flight state so that we can immediately get ourselves away from danger. In the past, during our caveman days, that meant a saber-tooth tiger chasing us, or an enemy tribe attacking us. DP/DR puts us in the same hypervigilant fight-or-flight state even though there isn’t any immediate physical danger.

Being in a hypervigilant fight-or-flight state can dilate our eyes to help us spot danger easily. With a dilated eye, everything can appear really bright since more light gets into your eyes. This probably explains why DP/DR sufferers say their vision looks bright at times.

When I had DP/DR, I hated going to supermarkets with bright fluorescent lighting. Back then, I didn’t know those lights looked really bright because my eyes were chronically dilated.

The same can be responsible for seeing a halo around bright objects.

With a sensitized nervous system on high alert, it’s only common that we experience visual disturbances during DP/DR.

When we are hypervigilant, we’re constantly monitoring ourselves and the world around us. We begin to notice things that we’ve previously ignored when we felt safe.

You probably had floaters before DP/DR, but you may have failed to notice them back then. But now, being hypervigilant, you notice everything in your field of vision, including these floaters.

Afterimages can occur when our retina becomes overstimulated and thus desensitized.

Don’t look at your visual problems as something caused by your depersonalization or derealization. Instead, think of DP/DR and your visual problems as a result of the nervous system becoming sensitized and hypervigilant.

Is your vision in danger from DP/DR?

One of the frequent emails I get is from people asking me if they are in danger of losing their vision from DP/DR. As long as an eye doctor has cleared you of any underlying medical conditions, your visual problems relating to DP/DR will go away over time.

That is, as you begin your recovery from DP/DR, you will see all of these visual distortions stop being a problem for you, one by one. You are not in danger of losing your eyesight. You are not in danger of any of these issues becoming permanent. Your eyesight is not degenerating.

You may suffer from intrusive thoughts about your eyesight, but don’t worry, these are simply thoughts. They can’t turn your fears into reality.

Tips to help with visual disturbances

While your vision may be safe, these symptoms can still be bothersome, so let me tell you a few techniques that you can use to overcome these issues.

Here are some ways to find some relief:

• Wear sunglasses when you go out. As mentioned, your dilated pupils can let in a lot of light and make things appear unnecessarily bright. So, use a pair of coolers when you go outside. Avoid high-intensity light sources. High-intensity lights, such as those from electronic devices or bright sunlight, can make you experience visual disturbances. Try to avoid these sources of light or use protective filters.
• Does your home get a lot of sunlight? How about shutting those blinds a little bit. It’s easier to notice your floaters when you look at a bright surface like a white wall. It sometimes helps if you can use a different paint or break up the surface with furniture or pictures.
• Ensure you are getting enough sleep. Sleep is essential for healthy vision.
• Try using medically approved eye drops to lubricate your dry eyes if you’re prone to that.
• Stop smoking: Smoking can increase the risk of floaters and other visual disturbances, as well as other eye problems. Quitting smoking can help reduce these symptoms.
• Limit your phone or computer use. During DP/DR, we may tend to overuse our phones and other devices, hence limiting exposure to bright screens might help. Use the 20-20-20 rule: If you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen, every 20 minutes, look away from the screen and focus on an object 20 feet away for 20 seconds.
• Avoid eye fatigue: Eye fatigue can exacerbate visual disturbances. Try to avoid staring at small text or detailed images for long periods of time and take frequent breaks.
• Eat a healthy diet: Eating a diet that is rich in vitamins and antioxidants, such as leafy greens, fish, and berries, can help improve eye health and reduce visual disturbances.

Curing visual disturbances

Let’s get something out of the way: there are no overnight cures for these issues. But don’t let that scare you. Once your nervous system returns to its baseline level of sensitivity, you’ll become less hypervigilant. You’ll begin to relax and get your life back. This means you won’t be scanning for threats like you are doing right now. You will stop noticing those floaters in your eye. Your eyes won’t constantly stay dilated, so things won’t look as bright as they do now. The halo around the lights will be gone. Your vision will return to normal.

At this point, your focus should only be on recovering from DP/DR. Don’t worry about every individual symptom. Try not to focus too much on the visual problems. Learn to accept your DP/DR symptoms because that’s sometimes the smart thing to do when it comes to recovering from DP/DR.

The more you are bothered by such issues, the more stressed out your nervous system might get. As we saw earlier, a stressed-out nervous system is the root cause of all these issues. So, we must learn to relax and let go of worrying about all these issues. When we do that, we give the body a chance to heal. 

If you’re still worried about these visual problems when undergoing DP/DR, then here’s what you need to do. Get your eyes examined by a qualified doctor. When the doctor says there’s no underlying issue, then trust your doctor and learn to stop obsessively worrying about this.

As you begin to slowly recover from DP/DR by letting your nervous system heal, you’ll see the visual symptoms go away, one by one. In the meantime, learn to use the methods mentioned above to outsmart these visual disturbances for the time being.

Image Credits:

Pexels and Dall-E