[Staunchy1916]

Hello I'm Staunchy, 18 years old, college student and all round ambitious guy.
I guess my story starts when I was 13 years old and I was diagnosed with GAD which led to pretty bad insomnia + frequent anxiety attacks. It was made worse by my parent's very messy divorce when I was about 15. When I was 16 my mother had a psychotic episode and my father is an alcoholic, while my mother was in hospital it was like I had no parents. Thank God I had my brother and his girlfriend around, they've been a huge source of emotional support for me. (also my brothers girlfriend also suffers from depersonalisation as a symptom of extreme OCD so I have someone that can relate to me)
I had a few traumatic experiences from seeing and hearing my parents disputes, being brought to a court to make a statement about my father, threatening my father with a knife during a dispute, my mother's mental breakdown (which I witnessed) and when I became 17 I got a call that told me my mother had just taken a load of pills in an attempted suicide attempt, I got home and had to keep her awake till the ambulance got there.
My father when drunk would sometimes be borderline emotionally abusive towards me, mocking me, degrading me and driving me to the point of tears which made me feel emasculated. From that I built up a resentment towards my father and had a lack of male figures in my life besides my brother although my brother also resents my father. Another level of support during this time was my priest who acted as a therapist to me. I also had been to state psychiatrists, my first one was great but she transferred and because my country is a joke when it comes to mental healthcare so I didn't get another psychiatrist for months and the new ones were... bad.
The winter of 2019 was very tough, I was diagnosed with seasonal depression, was having anxiety attacks more frequently and was being bullied in school because I had become very quiet. I barely attended school and I was prescribed Prozac which did not help, washed away all my emotion and thankfully I made the decision to drop it after 1 month. (This is not to say that anti-depressants are not necessary but for me they made the situation 10x worse)
During early 2020 I had a bit of a mental breakdown and there started my Dpdr and oh boy was I absolutely terrified. The pure terror of not thinking things were real or that I wasn't real was something that was so against my philosophy on everything that I closed myself off, became afraid to interact with anyone and anything. By week two I was contemplating suicide and was brought to a therapist who did help. It was during this time that I watched this video >

The wave of relief I got from it was like a high and the day after I was somewhat lucid.
Skip forward a year to today and I haven't had any suicidal thoughts, I've become actually comfortable within my Dpdr and sometimes forget about it. I am stable but if people wanted to be ''just stable'' instead of improving then we wouldn't be anywhere as a society. I believe that I need to move towards the next step of actively improving and hopefully coming out of Dpdr and anxiety. So I would like to frequent this forum to document this and I would love to hear some tips on improvement and recovery. I'm very optimistic!
Thank you very much and God bless.

 

[ThoughtOnFire]

Heya Staunchy,

Welcome to the forum! There's tons of advice all over, especially in the Recovery Stories section. Sounds like you are on a good path, seeing that you are stable and sometimes forget about it. I'd say keep on going in that direction. Also with medications, I was prescribed different ones over the years, yet only the last one I tried, and still take now, helps. So don't give up!

 

[Findmywayhome]

Thanks for sharing your story. Ive had DPDR for a little over a year also. And im 17, going into post secondary next year.
I remember feeling those euphoric waves of hope during the early days. Like you though, I feel mostly indifferent and inert nowadays, which is not a bad thing at all, because at least my emotions are more consistent. But again, like you, I hope things can get better. It’s still hard sometimes, but It’s no surprise that life with mental illness is going to be particularly more difficult.
best of luck!