[whiterabbit]

No concentration, just endless emptiness and feeling like a zombie, an observer, an automatom, very difficult to do anything - can't connect. Help!

 

[rob]

Hi Sarah

I'm truly sorry to learn that you seem to have slipped back into the abyss. Is there anything that happened in your life that might have caused this?

Those rare creatures like you that seem to drift in and out of dp/dr must hold the key to this strange condition. Do you see the people at the dp unit at the iop? - I'm sure they'd be interested in you and might even be able to set you back on your feet - they seem to have helped a lot of people who have endured years of unremitting dp (not me unfortunately) so perhaps the intermittent nature of your "disorder" might be especially responsive to their treatments.

Just a thought - hang in there - you have my best wishes and sympathy.

rob x

 

[whiterabbit]

Thanks Rob for your support. I felt like I was making progress this past year, but now I seem to have gone back to Square -1 - The Walking Dead. Well yes I think, but I am not certain, there are things that happened in my life earlier this year that caused me, if I am honest, to shut myself back into it - I think what i have learnt, only the past few years really, is that I cannot tolerate difficult feelings, and i have lived so long with being like a zombie that life stresses, which others could survive with pain but without resorting to dp, for me just turn me back into the dp cupboard - and I become blank and androidal with an unconnected smile. One of the things was that my closest friend was diagnosed with cancer in February. That was hard to endure and then it got more complicated on various levels and I don't think I could tolerate it so I seemed to have turned myself into a void where I don't feel anything at all and I can barely formulate thought, can't seem to remember anything or imagine the future, barely functioning. Jut blank. That is the honest truth. And I just have no idea h ow I am ever going to come out of this, and yes you are right I do come in and out of it and I know it does pass, because I remember it doing so previously. When it passes, its like a thawing process where the disconnection and the monologue ebb away, over a matter of minutes or hours, I reconnect with by body (physical energy sensations, a tingling in the limbs) and I can function again and do things.....but how or when that will ever happen now I just can't see. Just have to get through each day with no, or very slow thoughts and no feelings, feeling unconnected from the world, and the endless observing monologue......do you relate to these kind of symptoms? How are you do ing at the moment? I remember that you are very high functioning and manage to work very effectively - wish I could do that...I admire that a lot, mine just turns me into an intellectual cretin.

Let me know how you are doing either here or by pm - would be good to hear from you.

Sarah x

 

[whiterabbit]

About the IOP, no I haven't been to the dp unit, perhaps I should sign up, although I begin to think that this isn't dp, that i have just made it all up, that I am just a completely non-functional android. What I really hate is the feeling of blankness that pervades.....and its really hard trying to remember what its like not to have that, just to connect, yes strange disorder indeed.

Thanks again for your supportive post Rob, perhaps I will sign up at the unit.

Sarah x

 

[falling_free]

No concentration, just endless emptiness and feeling like a zombie, an observer, an automatom, very difficult to do anything - can't connect. Help!

I feel the same, I don't really like talking anymore or enjoy 'life' as I should do, Life seems to have lost the spantanous joy that there used to be. I just want to come back to earth again, reconnect with life.

feels like theres no one at the controls in my head, and that is scary

 

[Sojourner]

I cannot tolerate difficult feelings

Therapy in which you feel safe enough to let your feelings come out will get you back on the road to feeling your personal unity.

Then, when you have your emotional integrity back, you can work in therapy on how to handle the negative feelings when they come -- and they will surely come. Being alive requires us to be able to handle our emotions without so much difficulty, and we know life is no bed of roses, right? Good/bad mixed up all together, and we do not have to be people who cannot handle that reality. The bad, in other words, doesn't HAVE to be so devastating.

I have a similar problem, and without psychoanalytic psychotherapy, I never would have gotten on the right road.

It's painful to feel the feelings -- I know. I still run from them a bit, but it's doable.