99% Recovered After 10 years - This Is How I Did It (video)

Broken said:

Thanks for sharing, a great video. Would you say the meditation on the breath was a vital part to your recovery? I have tried many times to keep it in my routine but struggle to fit it in

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Yes, absolutely meditation and breathing was a big part and I still use them today. Breathing affects so much of our body, mind and emotions, and so training myself to maintain a steady deep breath gradually helped to reduce overall anxiety which in turn gradually reduce the DP symptoms. You are physically affecting the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) by using breathing techniques. The key difference was that I did not just use breathing techniques at specific times (while meditating as an example), I trained myself to keep a good breathing pattern as much as possible in daily life. This way I was not influencing the anxiety triggers by keeping myself calm as much as possible. This of course took a lot of time and practice to make it generally automatic and I did not see results for a good few months, but it was completely worth it. I would suggest that meditation even just for 5 minutes a day can create benefits, as long as its consistently practiced, but the constant practice of keeping a steady breathing pattern to influence the sympathetic nervous system + not resisting and accepting the DP/DR experience made a big difference.

Aridity said:

Can you explain what kind of symptoms you experienced and in what way did they affect your daily life? Were you able to do most of the things or where you at times bedridden?

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Yes sure. Symptoms were: DP - experiencing my body as not my own, feeling detached from it like I'm someone elses body, feeling like a robot, physically and emotionally numb, emotions were not my own, voice was not my own, brain fog, pressure in my head, pain was not my own.

DR: detachment from reality and others, like i was in an endless lucid dream i could not wake up from, everything seeming unreal, people seeming fake, like "NPC" characters in a video game, I would see strongly a 3D static haze everywhere I went and looking at things for about 40 seconds would create "after-images" like negative ghost images of them.

All of the above created:

Massive concentration problems, massive short term memory problems - couldnt remember basic things or what happened a few minutes ago when it was really bad, perception of time was all over the place, felt like time didnt exist, "missing" time, like it just vanished from it and I couldnt remember anything that happened in between, loss of purpose, life seemed pointless, felt like i was dead but alive at the same time, intrusive negative thoughts (from anxiety and depression) experienced high anxiety levels or complete emotional numbness, this all put a strain on relationships and every day basic living.

Yes I had many days where I was absolutely exhausted and just stayed in bed, anxiety was draining and depression from it made things seem completely pointless - no energy. I had to quit my job because I just couldnt even do it, and went for therapy several times and did my own research, study and practice for years over and over again, each time making some progress and gradually getting back into work and building a normal life. At its worse I couldnt really function beyond doing just basic survival things because anything else would either become complicated or seemed pointless.

Writing this seems like an entire world away because of how things are so different for me now thankfully.