[Guest]

(I do write good titles, don't I? grin grin)

But there is some truth in that title, because most of us have hopeless goals. We are stubborn and we are determined and we are desperate. And we will fail.

We WANT to finally get to the point where we can edge right up to the "OH MY GOD!" moment of abject terror - that moment where we feel each time 'this is it! I am really honestly going to lose control of myself in two seconds!!!!" - and be able to REALIZE in that moment that despite how it feels, we will be okay. We want to master it.

We want to be able to FEEL like we're right on the edge of total insanity and then TURN IT AROUND and be able to say 'now I understand...yes, that was only a thought and now I am in control of myself.."

That is how we WANT to recover. We want to master it.

However, that is not ever going to be possible.

NEVER.

Not ever.

Not today, or tomorrow or next year.

NOt with the "right meds' or the "right person" or the right attitude.

THAT IS NOT HOW THE MIND WORKS.

What you are chasing after is as ridiculous as if you were to say 'I want to heal my depression by realizing I don't need to be so SAD when I'm depressed."

IF you're IN it, you're IN IT. If you are having a massive anxiety surge, there is NO way, NOTHING you can say to yourself will make you able to turn it OFF at will. Nor will you be able to convince yourself to not be afraid of the terror!

You will HEAL when you stop GOING there in the first place.

You guys are too focused on trying to STOP the horrible feelings once they are flying full force. You can't. If it ever seems like you DO, it's an illusion. They were just abating anyway and you fooled yourself into thinking you "did it"

You cannot "have" a panic attack without PANICKING!

You cannot "have" feelings of unreality without feeling highly unreal.

You cannot "have" a loss of sense of self without being very freaked out by it!

So how do you stop yourself from getting to those horrible peaks and surges? You stop focusing on your own symptoms. you stop LOOKING at yourself like you're under a microscope. Naturally, you will still have anxiety and ruminating thoughts and dp and dr and all kinds of awful mind states for awhile - but you can FEEL the states and still not focus straight into the eye of them.

You keep yourself stuck EVERY SINGLE time you turn your focus inward - every single time you try to WIN in the battle over these mind states. It's not a Jedi battle where you can fight them head on. You defeat them by starvation, not by direct contact.If you turn your attention away, as much as humanly possible and yes, it is VERY hard - every single time you want to monitor yourself, every time you want to "check in" on yourself and observe closer and try to figure out why you're feeling this way, etc.....TURN AWAY from those powerful urges to self-investigate, then you will begin to recover. And if you can KEEP doing it, you will recover.

Will you stay recovered? I have no idea. Personally, I can't imagine how you could unless you do some indepth work on yourself in therapy and learn more about yourself and learn to really LOOK at reality and you and your place in it.....but that is the long and very time-consuming work ahead. That's how people STOP having breakdowns, and stop falling back into the pit.

But to climb out of the pit? STOP OBSERVING THE PIT.

Stop trying to win the battle, and instead, win the war.

Love ya,
Janine
p.s. and I was just like the "we" I describe above. I spent nearly 15 yrs. trying to do it my way. And what a sad waste of time.

 

[Imagine]

Thank you for that, J.

 

[SillyPutty]

Say someone decided to go through the therapy and whatever was neccessry to work it out so they don't ever return to the pit again, will you have to explore the pit in therapy? So that may make it worse in the beginning right?

 

[Sojourner]

I'm not who you probably want an answer from, but I'll offer one anyway, Silly:

Maybe, but not necessarily. With good therapy, you're likely to feel better immediately when you relieve the pressure of those bottled up unconscious feelings that are likely causing your misery. The "DP" is (1) the buried feelings trying to get out, and (2) your plugging the crater of the volcano so that they are kept inside, where the pressure builds and builds and builds and builds.

In therapy, you let out the feelings slowly and relieve the pressure. As a result, the pressure should reduce.

The pain of what you don't want to face may be great, but it's usually not the monster your unconscious wants you to believe it is.

The cure is NOT worse than the disease.

 

[SillyPutty]

Thanks, well said.

 

[MrMortgage]

Well said! Just like the Linden Method!

 

[Guest]

There is alot more to it than letting your feelings out. Trust me, I was a master at venting my emotions all over the walls, lol.

Some of the most useful changes/insights that can arise in therapy involve areas where we stay stuck. We're not stupid - we can listen to someone say "you MUST focus outward to get over the DP!" and we certainly comprehend that advice. But we don't WANT to do it. And that part of self who KEEPS us stuck, the stubborn part that is getting something (or is searching for something) by continuing to do the SAME THINGS in the SAME WAY must be faced and understood.

It's not easy work. But if we keep repeating ways of being, trying, acting, coping that clearly are not working, then there are reasons. Human beings are not just simple souls who need direction. You could be given the Rules to the Universe and Happiness in a damn scroll, dropped at your feet by an angel, and you would STILL be pulled like a ten ton magnet towards doing OTHER things, in the ways you've always done them.

We do not want to change.

We SAY we do, we THINK we do - we truly believe that we woudl do ANYthing to get over our symptoms. But we're not that simple and straight forward.

Every human has a myriad of agendas and motives and reasons for being - and sometimes those collide with each other within the same person. Do the "best" ones win? Nope. The STRONGEST ones win, and strong usually means oldest, most hidden, most misunderstood and most linked to feelings and thoughts about ourselves that we don't want to deal with.

That is the "meat" of the Depth Therapies. Change is slow and very hard won. WHEN it works, and very often it doesn't, it is a victory of self over self - we have managed to battle our own worst enemy, laden with poor defense mechanisms from years gone by. But the prize is soverignty over our own minds.

 

[Guest]

you can never master something you dont fully understand

I have been DP/DR free for the past few days.... mainly cause i did so much reseach about dissociative disorders, i pretty much had no choice but to relate my symptoms to techniques to overcome them

To master this, is to understand it.

 

[Mipmunk]

but I know why I got DP, the self defence protect mechanism protecting me from what happened to my cat. But now it won't switch off, and I don't know how to switch it off?

Mip
x

 

[Universal]

I think we need alot more insight, suggestions and guidance to properly be led into the path of recovery. If it would be as easy as some of you suggest, none of us would be here. Indeed we are all suffering primarily because DP/DR is NOT as certain as some of the other illnesses. It's a fairly changeable and unpredictable phenomenon, with each having different symptoms and complications and so forth. IF there was only that magic key that would unlock our troubled minds, I would do anything to obtain it. But there isn't. I remember once I did come out of DP, but now I am in it again. It's a bitch. It's a bitch to try and cure with simple techniques like CBT or Hope And Help For Your Nerves by Claire Weekes. These work, but they by no means signal a victory over this unpredictable monster. To slay the monster there has to be alot of work done, most likely with a caring, understanding professional who is willing to work with you.

just my 2 cents

 

[Guest]

your right it isnt as easy as i make it out to be...

But i also think nobody listens to me.... i might as well just stop giving advice cause i really dont wanna help people that dont want my help

 

[Monkeydust]

Good post. And welcome back. Those of you who read that advice and are thinking "hmm...that makes sense" really need to actually listen to it, and implement what it says. The woman's right.

However (disclaimer) I disagree that we all need therapy. I don't think that's necessarily true, and believing it is often sets up the kind of mindset that says "well I might as well not bother to do this, I still need years of therapy to be able to etc. etc."

What you need is change. Change in the way you think, the way you realize what you're doing and why you're really doing it (self-realization, unsurprisingly, tends to help depersonalization), change in lifestyle and so on.

SOME of us need therapy, as a result of some deep-seated issues or traumas that have occurred. Many of us, however, don't.

 

[Sojourner]

I'm starting to think that CBT techniques are also applicable, in addition to depth work.

 

[Monkeydust]

It depends who you believe, I guess.

All this "focusing outward" stuff is really a form of CBT. It's changing your thought patterns to change the way you feel.

The difference seems to be that some people, Janine being one, believe that there needs to be more than that - that you need some therapy to uncover the deep-seated causes of your symptoms. Others think that it's JUST the thoughts and behaviour patterns bringing on the symptoms, and that by changing those, you can eliminate the beast.

I'm not sure who's right. But I think that for at least SOME people, the latter alone suffices.

 

[enngirl5]

I just don't understand how avoiding and turning away our thoughts is gonna help. I understand how it helps dp. But what should someone like me do, a panic attack sufferer? I hear from one end to fight the panic attacks head on to erase the fear, but yet that makes the dp worse. So I have dp that causes panic attacks. So how to I avoid the dp, while facing my fear of the panic attacks at the same time? Nobody seems to have an answer for this. I've been "tuning out" and avoiding the panic and dp for three years and I'm still in the same place I was three years ago. I always have that constant fear in the back of my head. I'm stuck in an idle stage of just getting along by trying to not think about the dp when it hits. It's just frustrating that I don't know how to fight the panic attacks and dp when the cures for each are on two completely opposite ends.

 

[Sojourner]

enngirl5,

Who told you to FIGHT the panic? That's the very thing that perpetuates it.

Read Hope and Help for Your Nerves.

The key is not to fight panic but to allow it to come and then let it go.

Where did you get the idea that you could fight panic successfully? That's like pouring gasoline on a fire.

 

[peaceboy23]

Thanks for a great post again, janine. The times that I'm able to focus outward it's the best i feel. I kind of think of DP like a bully, as I've mentioned before. DP is like a big, mean, ugly, scary bully. It is there and it towers over us, calling us names, taunting us. However, like a bully, the best way to get past dp is to ignore it. It's hard, and a lot of times we want to confront it, thinking that's the best way to get rid of the bully, but really it just pisses him off more. Sometimes when we ignore the bully, he harasses us even more, but eventually he gives up and goes away. The bully relies on our reactions to him to continue his bullying. Ignore him, push him to the side and walk on past him, and you'll get better. Mind you, I still confront the bully most of the time, but I know the tactics to get past him, I just need to put it into action more. (I do love metaphors, can you tell). 8)

 

[Guest]

Actually, I mostly agree with MonkeyDust there. I don't believe anyone NEEDS therapy (well, except maybe Martin, grin grin). There are always unique reasons, life situations, drug experiences, etc. that may have precipitated a person's DP experience - and for some people, resolving that particular trauma might be enough to prevent relapsing into mental symptoms down the line.

However, and yes, I am not a doctor, not even a therapist *quite yet (still in school), I cannot for the life of me see how anyone like ME, who had all kinds of murrmerings of distress all her life and then finally broke down totally, slowly pieced herself sort of back together, limped along, had another breakdown, then another - I don't see how a person like that could ever truly achieve freedom of mental torment without going to the root of the pain. I could be wrong. As Monkeyman said, CHANGE is needed. And that I agree with totally.

But I still maintain, despite those who disagree with me, these symptoms are for the most part created from self-lies, massive primitive defenses and from patterns of compulsions to repeat past unacknowledged pain. Most people who live with mental symptoms most of their lives do not know themselves welll - and the symptoms are the cost.

J

 

[Kelson12]

Actually, I mostly agree with MonkeyDust there. I don't believe anyone NEEDS therapy (well, except maybe Martin, grin grin). There are always unique reasons, life situations, drug experiences, etc. that may have precipitated a person's DP experience - and for some people, resolving that particular trauma might be enough to prevent relapsing into mental symptoms down the line.

However, and yes, I am not a doctor, not even a therapist *quite yet (still in school), I cannot for the life of me see how anyone like ME, who had all kinds of murrmerings of distress all her life and then finally broke down totally, slowly pieced herself sort of back together, limped along, had another breakdown, then another - I don't see how a person like that could ever truly achieve freedom of mental torment without going to the root of the pain. I could be wrong. As Monkeyman said, CHANGE is needed. And that I agree with totally.

But I still maintain, despite those who disagree with me, these symptoms are for the most part created from self-lies, massive primitive defenses and from patterns of compulsions to repeat past unacknowledged pain. Most people who live with mental symptoms most of their lives do not know themselves welll - and the symptoms are the cost.

J

But how do we get to know ourselves??? How do I figure out what deep down pain is causing this??? How do I discover those self-lies, primitive defenses, etc. I understand that the symptoms are the cost of these things....but if I don't know what the self-lies, etc. are how do I confront them????

 

[enngirl5]

Sojourner,

I don't mean fight the panic. I mean face the panic. You say we need to let the panic happen and wash over us. Yet Janine says to turn away from the dp as soon as it hits. Ignore it. So how can I "let" the panic heppen, and ignore the dp at the same time? I desperately need answers to this.