[peacedove]

Okay, I wrote the following in response to Mipmunk's post "I have been crying-please help me" but no one responded to it and I was just reminded of it by Tidal's post "Does anyone have paranoid thoughts?"

Janine... what you say makes a lot of sense to me. I definitely focus too inward. And I never used to think I was a control freak, but then I realized that when I start to fall asleep and then I jump awake scared right away it's because my mind doesn't want to lose control to my dreams.... Or someone told me that or something.

But anyways... this way out you speak of... Is it possible for someone who has had DP for 16 years... since they were a kid? Because it seems everything is just there or it just happens to me... I have no control. And I think it seems this way cuz I've been this way for so long the thoughts come automatically, everything is automatic. How do you go about changing when something is so ingrained in your brain? How do you focus outward when your mind won't let you stop focusing inward?

P.S. So I am at the point where I can't bounce back....my paranoid/obsessive thoughts are definitely ingrained... where do I begin?

Sorry so long, thanks for reading.

 

[Guest]

I certainly don't have a universal answer for this one, but I can tell you that it CAN be done.

Rather than obsessing in a controlling way on "what is the right approach to stopping my obsessive self-control?" grin....the answer lies in the following: first you have to truly work AGAINST the way you have thought all those years.

It's very very hard. Won't lie to you. It's hard. But the main thing that prevents us from succeeding is that we really do not try. What we do is THINK about trying. We talk about trying. We ask how we should try. We decide we WILL try. We feel determined to try.

Then we don't try.

We wake up every single day and immediately surrender right into the same old way of being.

We say "it's the way I AM!" well, yeah. And look at you. What you've been doing does not work.

So we get angry and we SWEAR we are going to try. THIS time we will really do it! We are so mad at ourselves, and we get madder and madder and lament that we did this for so long....(now we're distracted from trying by being so angry that's all we can think of)

We don't ever actually try.

We just worry about why we DON'T try.

And that is the life of obsessive illness.

Peace,
Janine