[nitkum]

Hello people,

I wanted to drop by here and give some words of advise so that people can start their recovery journey from today and not suffer even one more day pointlessly.

I am going to keep it short this time since I am quite busy nowadays and also I am not fully fully out yet.

About me:
I got dissociated some 18 months back after being in chronic stress( self + work induced as I work in Investment banking) followed by a very intense vertigo that totally disoriented me. The debilitating symptoms developed gradually in a day and got stuck for a long time, which seemed like forever. Living days totally dissociated further is traumatic enough to keep the primitive part of the brain stuck in the dissociative state. I got little help reading posts here since majority of them are around 'live your life', 'accept' which is BS mostly.

You, just like me have physical changes in the brain, in Insula( sense of self and body ), Hippocampus( time keeping and memories ), frontal lobe( emotional regulation ) and many more which needs proper psychological treatment. Infact, the treatment is readily available.

Now:
I started 2 therapies some 2.5 months back and they have worked like wonders:
1. Psychoanalysis for Dissociation - This allowed me to regain positive sensations in my body, in other words merging body and mind.

2. EMDR: I started this one only 1 month back, after being confident that my dissociation is negligible.This therapy helped in resolving the trauma caused by the long term dissociation and sudden change in life.

As of now I don't feel dissociated at all through out the day. The stress and emotions regulation is still not perfect as the brain is still sensitive. However, I am positive that in some more time I will be back to normal. Infact, I have felt phenomenal for many moments recently.

I urge everyone to really look for help and not just 'live'.

Once I am fully out, I will surely write my entire journey here.

TIP: The break in timeline/old memories seem very old and new seem I never lived etc etc are all hippocampus issues majorly and will go away as you recover. It's fascinating to see the symptoms evaporate in front of your eyes gradually.

All the best.
Namaste!

 

[Trith]

Hello, I am glad it works well for you!
One question, and I hope you won't take it personally but you are saying that people's advices of "live your life" and "accept" are BS, but these pieces of advice come from personal experience just like yours, so what makes you think theirs is BS and not yours?
Also what makes you think you have "physical changes" in your brain as opposed to other types of changes? Also doesn't everything we do and experience correspond to changes in the brain?
I will be glad to read your story later on as it evolves.

 

[nitkum]

Bonjour! I am glad you asked. Also, good critical question.
In the last 1.5 years I have tried almost everything, all medical checks, all techniques including accepting, living life etc. However, it didn't help me at all even after committing myself to it for months. See, I am no doctor but I believe that 'trauma' is a wound which takes treatment to heal.
On your brain physical change question, I hope you have read the work by Bessel Van der kolk and Peter Levine. If not, I urge you to start today. There is so much content on YouTube as well.
Having said that, I don't disagree that people have recovered just by distraction of accepting, however, if that is not working and no significant improvements are seen even after weeks of trying. It clearly will not work for that individual. Human nervous system is still a mystery to us, what works for one might not work for another.

 

[leminaseri]

Bonjour! I am glad you asked. Also, good critical question.
In the last 1.5 years I have tried almost everything, all medical checks, all techniques including accepting, living life etc. However, it didn't help me at all even after committing myself to it for months. See, I am no doctor but I believe that 'trauma' is a wound which takes treatment to heal.
On your brain physical change question, I hope you have read the work by Bessel Van der kolk and Peter Levine. If not, I urge you to start today. There is so much content on YouTube as well.
Having said that, I don't disagree that people have recovered just by distraction of accepting, however, if that is not working and no significant improvements are seen even after weeks of trying. It clearly will not work for that individual. Human nervous system is still a mystery to us, what works for one might not work for another.

what if my traumas are so deep ingrained in my childhood and those events dont terrify me anymore? i mean i know exactly those events created my personality and traits and they were very very painful for me. but more than 20 years passed and i dont feel any emotional issue for those events. priorly to my relapse i had still very deep emotional problems and codependency. but i never adressed this as a byproduct of my childhood issues. so now im depersonalized and even the more recent things dont trigger anything in me. the trauma is too deep ingrained. the wound is to hard for me

 

[tikobird]

Hello, I am glad it works well for you!
One question, and I hope you won't take it personally but you are saying that people's advices of "live your life" and "accept" are BS, but these pieces of advice come from personal experience just like yours, so what makes you think theirs is BS and not yours?
Also what makes you think you have "physical changes" in your brain as opposed to other types of changes? Also doesn't everything we do and experience correspond to changes in the brain?
I will be glad to read your story later on as it evolves.

What other choice do you have but to accept and live your life? Acceptance helps us to not obsess about the symptoms of depersonalization. Sometimes it takes a combination of things to stay comfortable during difficult feelings. I've had chronic DP for 4 decades and it hasn't been easy. DP isn't something you can think your way out of. It's a process of listening to and being willing to take in all information and then weigh all. I fully accept someone else may have an idea I can benefit from. For most of my life, I've tried to carry on in spite of this psychological problem. This is not something carved in stone.

 

[nitkum]

what if my traumas are so deep ingrained in my childhood and those events dont terrify me anymore? i mean i know exactly those events created my personality and traits and they were very very painful for me. but more than 20 years passed and i dont feel any emotional issue for those events. priorly to my relapse i had still very deep emotional problems and codependency. but i never adressed this as a byproduct of my childhood issues. so now im depersonalized and even the more recent things dont trigger anything in me. the trauma is too deep ingrained. the wound is to hard for me

So sorry to hear that.
I don't have the answer to your questions since I had a more than perfect 27 years before this condition. The purpose of my post is to educate and motivate people to seek out help. I don't know your background and with all due respect, have you read all the relevant literature? Have you tried all the therapies available? If not, then why? Dissociation and Trauma have plagued humanity since the dawn and although it isn't understood fully, there are numerous treatments available. Uncountable people have really changed their lives.

 

[nitkum]

What other choice do you have but to accept and live your life? Acceptance helps us to not obsess about the symptoms of depersonalization. Sometimes it takes a combination of things to stay comfortable during difficult feelings. I've had chronic DP for 4 decades and it hasn't been easy. DP isn't something you can think your way out of. It's a process of listening to and being willing to take in all information and then weigh all. I fully accept someone else may have an idea I can benefit from. For most of my life, I've tried to carry on in spite of this psychological problem. This is not something carved in stone.

Exactly my point. These are coping strategies and coping is just coping, not recovery.

 

[Phantasm]

Now:
I started 2 therapies some 2.5 months back and they have worked like wonders:
1. Psychoanalysis for Dissociation - This allowed me to regain positive sensations in my body, in other words merging body and mind.

2. EMDR: I started this one only 1 month back, after being confident that my dissociation is negligible. This therapy helped in resolving the trauma caused by the long term dissociation and sudden change in life.

Hi nitkum,

That's great you are doing so well. I'm familiar with EMDR, but could you go into more detail about what the process was in your psychoanalysis treatment?

 

[tikobird]

what if my traumas are so deep ingrained in my childhood and those events dont terrify me anymore? i mean i know exactly those events created my personality and traits and they were very very painful for me. but more than 20 years passed and i dont feel any emotional issue for those events. priorly to my relapse i had still very deep emotional problems and codependency. but i never adressed this as a byproduct of my childhood issues. so now im depersonalized and even the more recent things dont trigger anything in me. the trauma is too deep ingrained. the wound is to hard for me

DP can be difficult and it may be from trauma but there are different types of therapy for trauma. Sometimes it's good to feel things regardless of the pain to get something good from them. I too have an anxiety disorder and sometimes panic, have suffered from emotional neglect growing up, and have a very dysfunctional family. I've been hospitalized for severe depression which made my chronic DP increase. After having DP for decades I'm still looking for a good therapist who works with dissociative disorders. Deep or not most therapists have ways to work with it. It's worth the pain to gain your mental health

 

[nitkum]

Hi nitkum,

That's great you are doing so well. I'm familiar with EMDR, but could you go into more detail about what the process was in your psychoanalysis treatment?

It's about making ways for feelings in your body. In DP all I could feel in my body were intense choking in chest and throat and no good feelings at all. The process is to talk about various feelings like Rage, Excitement, Success, loss etc etc. and doing critical analysis about your current relationship with them, How the relationship has changed over time, Where exactly the feelings were felt in the body before, How does it come up now in the body etc etc. As the sessions progressed, I started feelings tingling and warmth feelings in my hands and legs. Almost like, I can sense the blood flow in my limbs and body. With that came intense calmness. As I became more embodies, the load on the brain to hold those emotions and feelings decreased and dissociation lifted.
In a nutshell: Body should hold the feelings, not the brain. It took 15+ sessions to reach here.

 

[Phantasm]

You mentioned Peter Levine, so do you think your therapy was Somatic Experiencing? Or perhaps more like Eugene Gendlin's Focusing, which also utilises the bodily "felt sense" but involves identifying or labelling feelings in a similar way to how you described.

I liked your last line.