[Mipmunk]

I have been suffering with DP for the last 12 weeks (main symptom, complete loss of identity and detachment from myself). Each day I have been getting better, but I am so confused at the moment and feel horrible. The DP is going, I have been getting a bit better each day and can feel my sense of self coming back. But now I feel right on the border line of being ok and dp'd, it is awful, I kind of feel normal but then again I don't. I feel right on the cusp/edge of it going, I feel one more trigger and it will be gone. I am scared in case that final trigger doesn't happen. Put it this way, if I was an orange, I have a small segment missing, when I first had the DP severely I felt like I only had one segment. Now I feel like an orange with just one small piece missing, it is driving me insane - thus "the who am I" questioning is still buzzing around my head.

Can anyone relate to this? Being right on the edge of coming out of DP, but just not quite. It is driving me mad...

Anyone - your advice/help.... please...

Mipmunk :?

 

[Sojourner]

Mip,

Take your left arm and extend it horizontally, with your palm facing the sky.

With the palm and fingers of your right hand, strike your left forearm, making a "slap" sound. Let your right hand rest on your forearm for 2 seconds, and then remove it.

Repeat five times.

Report back here what you experienced.

 

[Martinelv]

Yes I can, albeit in a slightly different way. When my DR/DP faded I was left with an obsessional worry that it was just about to return...or it was lurking somewhere in my unconscious and only needed something to trigger it off. I usually fretted that any undue happyness, or relief, I was experiencing would trigger it off again - until I came to realise that it was the DP itself, or rather some kind of latent self-destructiveness, that was causing these thoughts.

It's a difficult beast to shake loose, for sure. But the key is (and it's much easier to say it than do it) to try and somehow stop yourself obsessively ruminating...it's definately the key in the final stages. How you do this, of course, is a different matter. Now that you've at least started to recover, you can perhaps employ probably the best technique...distraction!!! Go out and start to enjoy your life again, throw yourself into whatever you did before you came down with DR/DP. Refuse to let yourself be consumed by the obessional 'who am i' thoughts, because you won't be able to rationalise an answer. If you like, just shrug your shoulders and say bollocks to it - that word is probably the summary of my entire advice. I bet a thousand pounds that you wuold have done this before you came down with DR/DP, so why not now! Pack these thoughts away with the other questions you don't know the answers to - like 'is there life on Mar's' !!!, and then, especially when you've completely recovered, you'll see what a goddam waste of energy it all was. And when you look back, you'll either laugh or cry at the pointlessness of it all. But if you want, you can get back to the 'who am i' question when you're completely well. Trust me, it won't scare you as much.

When I was preoccupied by these kinds of thoughts, post-DR/DP, I used to imagine my brain as a sandwich dropped on the beach. I just had to pick out the irritating bits of sand and - hey presto, a scrumptious return to normality. (Except of course if that beach was an english beach. Then you'd have to pump out a gallon of sewage and not a small number of used condoms.)