[Mipmunk]

I feel so frustrated that I don't know what to do with myself. I have been in a DP'd state for 3 months (since 1 May), my cat going missing, being really ill and then dying caused this DP to start again. I have been getting a bit better each day. I would say at the moment I feel quite normal, but not really normal. I am connecting to my sense of self, but I always seem to feel like I am near the end of the DP, I get another trigger upwards, but it never seems to be the one that clicks me back to normal. I seem stuck in my head "who am I" going around and around my head for most of the time. I was thinking perhaps I had become obsessed with who I was, but then I am 35 years old and for all of those years (when I am not DP'd) I have not been bothered by who I am. So I can only assume it is still the DP. Can anybody relate to this, feeling quite normal but still not right. I don't have too much anxiety/panic that stopped 2 days ago, but I still don't feel quite connected and it is really frustrating me. I am scared that I am not going to get out of this one. It is the longest one I have ever had. All the others have been 4-7 weeks long. I have been in a DP'd state now for 3 months and I am beginning to think I am not going to get out of it this time.

Help.... I just don't know what to do, I am running out of ideas on how to get "me" back again.

Mipmunk
xx
:?

 

[Sojourner]

Who ARE you? If you don't want to tell me, write a letter to yourself, like a journal.

 

[Mipmunk]

The problem is I don't really know who I am !!

I am not fully connected to my sense of self, that is the problem, I don't know!

Mippy
x

 

[Guest]

Mippyone,
The problem is not that you don't know who you are....the problem is that you are trying desperately to find some acceptable answer for that quandry and in the process, you're just tormenting yourself.

NOBODY can solve all the problems you're trying to solve all at once. Time. Steps. Slow movements, distraction from obsessions, continue to stretch and flex the "outward" muscles, and do work in therapy or some version of self-inquiry...but you are on a kind of "obsessive/compulsive" train right now as if you MUST find soothing answers TODAY. It will not happen that way.

It's the same thing as saying "I MUST get a way to be able to handle the concept of Death and Infinity...." and we sink our teeth into the conundrums of life and refuse to stop harping on them, insisting that we CANNOT (in truth, WILL not) let go of those worries until we find an acceptable answer. The REAL answers are found in living. You find the meaning to life when you're too busy doing things that matter to you to question the meaning of life.

All you're doing now is trading in THOSE obsessions for obsessions about how to prevent yourself from dipping downward into dp states or anxiety states - the attempt at massive self-control is another "obsession"

Instead, you need to say "I was doing good and now I'm doing a litlte worse, but it's what it is....and I am not going to focus so much on myself - and I AM CERTAINLY NOT going to fall for the mind's trick of thinking that I can find PREVENTIONS or SOLUTIONS or ANSWERS for some future event when I can't even get it together to live this second! LOL"

I'm SO sorry about the horrible experience you had with your pet cat...my heart just goes out to you. You totally have my understanding there. But pain, the pain of loss and the pain of loving something so much that it physically HURTS you when it is missing or gone.....that is not the same as symptoms. You need to know that in time, you can endure and survive your own feelings and life's and death's painful moments. ALL WE CAN DO is work to trust that we can endure good and bad in the future - there is no way to PREPARE today for tomorrow's heartache. NOT POSSIBLE. It's another way of thinking about INfinity - it's an unanswerable question.

Take care,
J