[Axel19]

No there is no possible link between DP and Spice Girls lyrics, but I'm fed up with posting precitably gloomy titles.

Well now I have your attention.
I've just had my nineteenth nervous breakdown, and as usual I'm convinced it's the worst yet.
There I was yesterday morning with my usual philosophical ruminations that have at least the vaguest link to something rational. Then I started thinking about the process of reasoning itself, like how we come to link different sense experiences together to form logical conclusions about reality. This is of course not a very good idea for a dp'er. But I feel I have to, to gain some stable ground in reality. My thoughts quickly escalated. Then I began thinking of nothingness, before asking myself how I could prove even that I exist. This is of course nonsense, the product of a screwed up, dp'ed and horrifically obsessive mind.
Then I went....well...sort of mad. I was staring at stuff asking myself am I actually seeing it. Perhaps I'm imagining it, perhaps I'm imagining evrything including my own mind (I realise that makes no sense, but then we all know sense goes out the window when we are in these states). Perhaps there is in fact nothing, and perhaps I am in fact dead. Again I realise this makes no sense, but by this point I was so paralyzed with anxiety and hoplesness, that I didn't stop to think. And I still feel that way now.
I'm doing what Janine describes as 'trying to master a fantasy of self annihiation'. I am literally trying to imagine nothingness out of sheer terror, and in doing so have got so caught up in the fantasy that I haven't the sense to see that I am in fact still alive, still exist etc. I'm sorry I really don't know how to articulate myself better than that now.
I've forgotten how bad this sh*t was. I feel absolutely beyond despair right now, whilst simultaneously doubting that there is anything there to feel despair (again I know that sounds nuts).
Where the hell did this one come from? I thought I was past the really hellish sh*t.
If anyone has any clue what I'm talkign about, some support would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Guest]

You have to take control of it!!!!!!!
Don't go down that road it only leads to fear!!
Everytime you start to think that way yell STOP!!!!!!
Get tough on yourself.
xo
Sassy

 

[Ben]

Sassy's remark is, actually, the quickest way to get results (I imagine), as, really, any of the questions you have made don't have answers. Face it - they don't. You don't know if what you see about you truly exists, or whether what you see is simply the fantasy of your mind.

Descartes, Bertrand Russell, and so forth had contemplated these thoughts (sidebar - I just changed my accidental misspelling of "thoughts" in this sentence from "thongs" - I guess we all know what's on my mind) long before you or I came around; and people will be contemplating these thoughts (or thongs) - without answers - for a long, long time after we're all dead. There is, simply, no answer that can be found by our minds, currently.

What's going on here, in my opinion, is someone's attempt to reconcile themself with reality, while also being afraid of reality - which is the duality of depersonalization, a duality brought upon by conflicting desires: the continuous desire of the human creature to learn his or her place in the world against the consistent desire to escape the reality that is troubling him or her (in our ultra-sensitive state). No other system than that comprised of dualities could give us the recursive nightmare we experience. You comprise both sides - and one side has to lose.

Next time you stare at something and ponder its existence, think for a minute what it means to you if that thing existed? And I mean in in the extremely global sense of what it means if we are real (ergo our thoughts are real to us). Truthfully? It means we really experience pain, that the world does consist of hate, that there are spouses out there who are abused and sad and frightened, that there are children starving, that there are meaningless attacks upon people such as rape and murder, that you could be diagnosed with a brain tumor tomorrow and die from it in six months, that you could suffer some strange illness and die suddenly, that you could lose your parents in a car accident and never see them again, etc.

These things I spoke of would be real if that clock, sitting in front of you, were real. Suddenly it also means, it's true, that you don't understand the world - for if the world is real then something exists beyond your control (out of your grasp). If you fear loss of control, then you face something which you will never control (for one, your own mortality). You face your death - straight on. You face things you fear to face. I think you get my drift.

You ping pong yourself to death - either the world is real, and therefore you are suddenly wide open to the results of your frailty as a human, or the world is fake, and you're alone, lost, abandoned in a universe you still don't understand.

This is the nature of your experience, in my humble opinion.

Now, since it is a Saturday night, after all, and I apparently have thongs on the mind - don't expect a response from me anytime early tomorrow....

 

[Guest]

No disrespect to Alex,please excuse me.
Ben got me giggling.

Ben I like the idea of thong contemplation lol assuming you are American or similar you might be interested to know(or not)that we Aussies wear thongs on our feet.........no way are those flip flops going up my bottom

Shelly :wink:

 

[Ben]

...I contemplate thongs a lot. I wish for many more case studies, however.