Dissociative Disorder – Adam Duritz

Psych Central today mentioned a Men’s Health article written by Adam Duritz, of Counting Crows fame. It caught my eye because, in it, Adam talks about his struggles with dissociation, something that I have had problems with in the past, and something I don’t tend to see written about very often, outside of the more obvious cases of multiple personality disorder. (Which is a form of dissociative disorder, but one on the far end of the spectrum that starts with simple things like highway hypnosis)

I was glad to see someone writing about something that was very similar to what I experienced, shutting down during difficult or stressful times:

This was not depression. This was not workaholism. I have a fairly severe mental illness that makes it hard to do my job — in fact, makes me totally ill suited for my job. I have a form of dissociative disorder that makes the world seem like it’s not real, as if things aren’t taking place. It’s hard to explain, but you feel untethered.

I agree, it is hard to explain. If you’ve never felt like this, I’ve always described it as the difference between something happening to you, and watching it happen on TV to someone else. When you have this disorder, you don’t see any difference between those two things.

Thank you Adam, for having the courage to talk about it publicly!