[Guest]

I've been suffering from DP/DR for about 2 months. Lately I've developed these crazy thoughts that maybe I made up everything around me.. that my parents, friends, buildings etc. are all just a figment of my imagination and nothing is real... is this normal? Is this a symptom of DP/DR? How do we get over it? Do we accept the thoughts (I've been reading Claire Weekes' books) and try to focus more on the outside world or do we analyze and fight them?

 

[DutchMark]

These are symptons of DP/DR
don't analyze them.
You can fight them by focus on something else. But it's hard

 

[shadowness]

i have had the same thoughts for the last 3 months mainly...

try to distract yourself from the thoughts...

very hard i know...

so if you find out a good way of doing it let me know

 

[Guest]

I just re-read Janine's posts as well as everyone else's comments on this board and I realized something. Maybe depersonalization and derealization are a blessing in a way. I know that they might be anxiety related (and certainly are for me) but maybe they are also a sign that we were incapable of dealing with the reality and our emotions. I know that this experience is forcing me to face some things about myself which I ignored and avoided. Maybe the only way to gain your "self" back is to truly acknowledge yourself and your emotions.

Maybe what we are experiencing is not a loss of reality but rather avoidance to deal with it and withdrawal into a shell. I know that in my own case I always did supress everything in an attempt to not make people pissed at me or to not hurt people and it was slowly eating me away. I've been feeling so much pressure to be "someone"successful, loved, liked that I lost the person that I truly was.

Maybe the only way to win this is to :
a)accept and not fear DP/DR(which is extremelly difficult)
b)accept and not fear ourselves and our own emotions.

Does this make sense to anyone? I'm just trying to make sense out of this bizarre sensation....

 

[shadowness]

that does make a lot of sense....

the trouble is that i personally was ok with life and it is the dp and dr which are causing me all the stress and anxiety and depression...

need my life back damn it!

:roll:

 

[enngirl5]

That makes perfect sense Tidal. As for the fear that everything is a figment of your imagination, read Janines e book at the top of the discussion board and it mentions that dp people harbor a secret fear that all of this is just constructs of our imagination. I've had these thoughts. Not lately though. It comes and goes but is most severe when I'm having a bad attack of derealization. It doesn't mean your crazy. It just means you're a normal person trying to make sense of how you're feeling ie. dissociation.

 

[Guest]

Shadowness,

I don't know how to get rid of those thoughts either=( I'm trying to follow Dr. Claire Weekes' advice and accept every thought that comes to my mind since it's not the thought that matters but rather your reaction to it. According to her (if I understood it correctly), if you accept your thoughts and receive them without fear, at some point they'll lose significance. I don't know how correct that is but it helped me with all the other anxiety symptoms so I'll just follow it and see.

Also, I once heard that some man suffered from anxiety which brought upon DP/DR and as soon as he got DP/DR, he pretended he was drunk... just to distract himself from becoming scared about it... and he claimed it worked.

I'm not sure that something like that would work for me but I'm grasping on to anything I can at the moment.

 

[dreamcatcher]

My bf has always told me that i avoid issues that bother me so i totally agree that alot of this could be down to not knowing how to deal with things.....as for the feeling that every thing is in your imagination i suffer from that too. i try think about my family and all that goes through my head is oh my god its all real and my body feels weird as if i am going to have a panic attack....its this that i dont understand because i so want to be here so why the hell would i now be scared of it all???? weird how these symptoms effect us...and how we can all give each other advice but seem to find it hard to follow ourselves :?

 

[nayashi]

that is exactly how i feel. when my DP got so bad that's all i think about, not only did i think that i made everything up, but that i made myself up.

the thing that i've noticed works the best is meditation. not focusing on anything. but don't close you're eyes when you do it, stare at the floor or something. it works better that way.

 

[Guest]

Hmm. Depending on the degree to ow much you feel this...it might not be dpdr related. I've got that to a certain degree, but i just consider it to be a personal philosophy.

 

[sleepingbeauty]

so dont fret about it too much. try to put things into perspective. when you realize things for what they are then they arent so scary anymore. obsessing about it is futile.. youre just gonna give yourself a panic. thats the problem about obsessiveness.. you make mountians out of mole hills and everything gets distorted and unreal. whenever you start to think this way just tell 'it' to ... "F#CK OFF!" cause you KNOW youre real.. you KNOW everything is real. its obsessing about it thats the problem.