[Isobel]

Hi

I was wondering if anyone else has these thoughts?

When my DP came on, i had already had anxiety and depression and also agrophobia. Id been through a very stressful time, and one night just started crying and shaking, and had this weird sensation of energy being released from my crown, and ribcage, never had this before,and this weird sensation of 'desending' as if going down in a lift. it really freaked me out.

the day after, i felt totally 'blank' as if all my knowledeg/information had gone, even the stuff i wanted to work through which was causing the anxiety. Ive had 2 breakdowns now, and always felt that there has to be a sense of continuity , emotionally and spiritually, if i was to have any internal peace. Kinda hard to explain.

Now, what i wanted to ask was,since the dp started there has been a lack of continuity in self-knowledge, as regards to who i am,etc and am having thoughts like, ...what if i have been kidding myself that i was something i wasnt and my outlook has been all wrong, or ................the person who i thought i was wasnt really me, and ive never discovered my true self.....thoughts like this are really freaking me out and so scary, this may be the case (even wondering if ive got BPD, not being able to deal with reality, etc) and is the cause of my anxiety, or its just the anxiety itself
making me think this (think i can sense a Janine reply coming up!! hee hee
I just feel so mixed up and frightened, everything was a mess before this DP, but in some sort of order like i knew what was what, but now, i just kinda want to end it all, sorry to be morbid, but its just too much to bare
just dont know what to think anymore, any advice would be appreciatedxxxxxx

thanks

xxxxx

 

[Guest]

Well, I had to take that bait! LOL...

the "answer" is in your quote. The self we're searching for (and the self we think we "lost") is in us all the time, has been in us, will remain in us as long as we live.

However, that's both the good and the bad news.

For many of us (and caution: this is a psychoanalytic explanation coming up) our sense of who we are is not who we always PRETENDED we were. We lived half in reality and half in fantasy, we nurtured secret ideas about who we were and who we "should/could" be. We sort of used reality to enhance our fantasy self-image (whereas most people use fantasy to enhance their reality).

We were living inverted in a way.

Then the onslaught of dp can actually be a sense of reality breaking INto those illusions. And we're terrified by something real. DP can be the result of illusions being punctured too fast, and we "freak" and try to either 1) gather the old self-image back desperately (which is destined to fail) or 2) deny self entirely, out of frightening and enraging feelings of being out of control.

So yes, it's anxiety doing it to you, but it is a certian "Flavor" of anxiety, one that is based in self-annihilation fears. There is also a regressive quality to all of it - we're almost transported back to the earliest mindset we ever had, where we did NOT know who "I" was, or if "I" was, or how much "I" was blended into others (mother), or if "I" was the entire universe. To the infant, that's probably traumatic enough, but to an adult who has sense then established, or THOUGHT they established, a coherent ego structure, it's petrifying to see it all wash away like rainwater and be left feeling alive but without Self in a body we cannot control.

Peace,
Janine

 

[Guest]

Amen to that!
Janine, can you open up an institute where we could all come in and talk about our DP/DR experiences? =)

I'd be the first in line to Dr. Baker's office!