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Understand DPDR - a psychosomatic approach

5K views 19 replies 6 participants last post by  leminaseri 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone,

I have experienced DPDR at least 3-4 times before and now again, it has reappeared two days ago following a prolonged period of anxiety and a flight (I have great fear of flying).

I thought I'd share my experience and thoughts so far if it helps.

The first two times I experienced DPDR was after panic attacks and was such a scary experience. Truth is, after 3-4 months it faded away by itself. The other times was during periods of very high anxiety when ti eventually faded away after 1-2 weeks. As many people say in this forum, once you stop thinking about it, it kind of magically goes away. Of course, we know very well how difficult this is in practice.

I would describe my case as mild. It's still scary don't get me wrong. I feel for all of you.

What is DPDR? In my own understanding (I have a background in Psychology) and in simple words, it is a defence mechanism your mind activates to protect you from high stress/anxiety. Believe me, it's as simple as this. It's a smart move from your brain... by dissociating you with external stimuli, it protects your physical and emotional being. In my opinion, the fact that my DPDR was so strong right after panic attacks, shows that there is some relationship between cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline) overflow. For me this is a key parameter.

And I ask... if your mind actually activates a mechanism to protect you from prolonged stress/anxiety, perhaps will disable it if you "convince" it you can manage your stress/anxiety. Could it work this way? I repeat, "convince" your mind that all is OK. You can manage by yourself now!

How I'm planning to do it then? I'll work both on a physical and mental/cognitive level.

Physical
I'm planning to flush out cortisol and adrenaline by exercising, drinking lots of water, eating as healthy as possible, absolutely avoid alcohol and caffeine or any other substances, stretch etc. This way I control the physical aspect of what I'm experiencing. Remember, everything we experience in life (even love!) is chemistry. So let's work on that chemistry as much as possible! And of course, where all the aforementioned is not enough, perhaps medication can help. This is about rebalancing our hormonal levels since in essence, cortisol and adrenaline won't go totally away. They are actually vital for many bodily functions. It's all about dropping their level and rebalancing/resetting our chemistry.

Cognitive
As much as everything is chemistry, cognitive patterns play an important role and that's where a different kind of work needs to happen. That's how you train your mind and "convince" it that you are now ready to manage stress/anxiety by yourself and without DPDR. How? Well, therapy for a start (CBT in my case) and meditation. This includes working on traumas, thinking patterns, etc. Also, be positive and keep smiling as much as possible.
Let's release those dopamines and serotonins (anti-cortisol) as much as possible (physical + cognitive impact). I realise that music also helps me a lot by the way, especially when it comes to songs I know very well and can sing along. This way my mind doesn't trip too much, analysing the lyrics, and overthinking. I suggest music with lyrics.

That's all from my side. Would be very happy to discuss and learn from you.
We can do it! I know that some of you may have tried this without success. This cannot stop us from trying.

Let's f------ do it!
 
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#2 ·
one question. how can you speak for people who have this for decades, while you did have it only for 3-4 months?
 
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#3 ·
Hi there,
I speak for my self and explain that my case is mild. I want to motivate people (including my self) and explain how this can be approached both physically and cognitively. It has worked for me in the past it's what I say. I feel for everyone and wish I could help. If one single person gets help from my post then I'm happy. I understand the struggle as I'm struggling myself too at the moment. I wish nothing but the best to all sufferers, short-term and long-term.
 
#5 ·
I agree that it's good to have a positive outlook about it, because obsessions can probably feed DPDR, at least this is my experience. But it is important to not fall onto the other extreme: to think that one can get out of it through wishful thinking, or that if someone cannot find the way out it necessarily means they are being negative. In order to draw these conclusions we should have a deep knowledge about DPDR, but we are not even researchers in neuroscience or psychology, and even them don't really know. Some people have had it for a long time (it's called depersonnalization disorder), not all of them are being negative. And perhaps for some there is indeed no way out. Unless we are in everybody's mind we cannot know for sure, and we cannot pretend to know what we don't know just for the sake of positivity. Personnally my knowledge about myself and the disease needs to have solid ground. I prefer to admit what I don't know and live with it rather then make up beliefs and not trust any of them completely because I know I made them up. I have been running in that loop of believing and being disappointed for too long. I prefer to learn to be comfortable with not knowing. To the contrary, I think that making up our own truth is a kind of pessimistic path, because we don't trust that reality will be bearable.
 
#7 ·
That's right. I don't believe in the law of attraction. Manifesting a positive outlook doesn't solve all problems. Of course there is a way out for a lot of people, there are a lot of examples here and I have never seen anyone who denied that. But how do you know if people who say there is no way out for themselves are just manifesting a "future negative reality" before themselves? How do you know they are not simply telling the truth? What experience do you have that prooves there is no one in the world who will have this forever? When someone has lost their legs, nobody tells them they should believe their legs will grow again just for the sake of positivity. And as a matter of fact they can even have a positive outlook on their life without believing their legs will grow back. This is irrelevant.
And yes, DPDR is often a symptom of another disease. But specialists do say that DPDR can also be a stand alone disease. They call it depersonalization disorder. Elaine Hunter talks about it in her book ( Overcoming Depersonalization and Feelings of Unreality (Overcoming S): Anthony S. David, Dawn Baker, Elaine Hunter, Emma Lawrence: 9781845295547: Amazon.com: Books ) . She is the head of a department in a clinic in London who only treats patients with DPDR. She is a specialist in this field and has studied this in university, she has 20 years of experience about this disease and has probably seen and treated hundreds of patients with DPDR. She says that sometimes DPDR can be caused by panic attacks and even if you manage to stop the panic attacks and make the person free of anxiety, sometimes DPDR stays the same, and then they call it DPDR disorder and it is indeed a stand alone disorder. But my own psychiatrist did tell me that it could not be a stand alone disease, but he also exhibited a terrible lack of knowledge about DPDR. He could not even understand what a feeling of unreality could mean, he thought it was a philosophical problem and was clearly not up to date about it.
So what is your source of knowledge to say it cannot be a stand alone disease? Where did you get this information from?

Also here
"Researchers don’t know what causes these disorders. In up to half of the cases, healthcare providers cannot identify what triggers the disorder. "

Or here
"Depersonalization/derealization feelings are considered a disorder when the following occur:
  • Depersonalization or derealization occurs on its own (that is, it is not caused by drugs or another mental disorder), and it persists or recurs."

Or here
"The disorder tended to be chronic and persistent. Seventy-one per cent met DSM-IV criteria for primary depersonalisation disorder. "
 
#8 ·
almost everyone who recover tell the same and similar things. and almost everyone who tell they have it for 60 years are the same negative personality as well.

i think accepting something is not that easy, that people can say „nah bro i accepted it for 20 years and it is still there“. your metaphor with the legless man was good. but i will give you another here. if you chase your ex girlfriend, until you make the clear and 100 percent decision to accept, that she will never come back, you will never forget her. and to call her every month once or twice is contradicting with „i accepted that she left me“. for me acceptance is „well i have those symptoms and this is my destiny so i have to accept it and look for good things at life.“ the man who didnt have a leg anymore could cry all his life why he lost his leg and whine and bitch everyday. but he could also be like this man here:


Shorts Track and field athletics Playing sports Sports uniform Sports equipment


this picture above does not mean that he miraculously got legs. but he could also lay at home and search a forum for bionic legs and innovations.

this is just my opinion. i dont know what others think. but if santos barrios recovered after 35 years, this alone means to me that this illness is in particular curable. because if santos barrios would have a version that is „soft“, he would recover on its own after 6 months (like many others here). and i watched his spanish videos as well and he did consistently various things and tried so much. so he achieved his recovery and he can be proud about himself. no one gifted him his recovery. there is one philosophical incontradictable thing: you can never try everything at life time. there is too much to try at an average lifetime. but i think with the negative thinking „no matter what i do my life is shit“ and „im a victim of my illness“ this person wont get anywhere at first place.
 
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#9 ·
Thanks to everyone for your replies.

Surely there are various degrees of severity out there.
My approach has always been positivity with physical and cognitive optimization. I wanted to share my story with people out there and to help as many as possible. I have relapses from time to time but I've learned by now how to manage it.
I remember while experiencing DPDR for the first time (lowest point of my life!), I read an interesting advice somewhere about embracing the condition: "It's like being drunk or high without spending a penny if you think about it." Somehow this funny approach helped me in the darkest hour.
Of course, scientific evidence is beyond what I tell you. But I'll keep saying it again and again. You can do it. Identify the source of the problem with a therapist, work hard on it, optimise your body and mind, take pills if you have to but don't rely on them solely. Medication can be an excellent booster if nothing else works, but it's there only to propell you and give you that extra push in my honest opinion. I've taken pills, both anti-depressant and anti-psychotics. You know what? They made me number than I was, their side effects were insufferable. It was after I stopped them that my mind could finally think and my heart could finally feel.
This story is mine people. But the fight is our fight.
We simply cannot give up! It's one life guys!
 
#15 · (Edited)
You really want to compare depersonalization to something like Parkinsons? If I’m hearing this right, you are in denial of what DP is. Even so-called “experts” will agree that DP has nothing to do with degradation of biological processes, LOL. By being aware of the definition DP implies and a little bit of common sense (no Superman experts needed), you can see that YOU, YOUR mind is disordered. Not unavailable background biological processes, I’m talking about the conscious mind. So What’s that mean? It means there needs to be a complete mutation of the self, an actual change within ourselves to overcome the disorder. I don’t care how many experts you’ve studied or how much extensive research you’ve done, you can’t tell me im wrong. it is still belligerently arrogant to say that just because I don’t have sufficient (good enough) evidence for yourself means I’m wrong. Oh it’s because the experts said so. But who notified them? What exactly is evidence anyway? Articles on the internet? Seriously, just stop

I care about the truth. Not giving people a right to say they’r incurable. The fact is that EVERY SINGLE PERSON who beats DP says the same thing. It is US who have to change ourselves. People like you don’t want the truth, too caught up in semantics and arguing.
 
#16 · (Edited)
You are saying that it is normal not to have control over Parkinson's disease because it is due to biological processes and not "due to the mind". But you nicely picked on Parkinson's disease and left all the others out. So how about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression, narcolepsy, hypnagogic hallucinations, sleepwalking, amnesia, low IQ, autism, or some types of aphasia, or being high? Plus some imbalence in some neurotransmitters have been identify for DPDR. In all these diseases they all have distorted minds and still they can't change themselves by shear will and a "change of the self". So your assumption that "disortion of the mind" can be cured by "a change of the self" is just proven wrong by all these examples. So you need to use something else. It's not that it's not sufficient for me, it's just that that assumption, that theory, is just wrong given the number of counter examples. And also I am not into consciousness pseudoscience.
I don't see why you would be better at analyzing DPDR than researchers that analyzed more cases than just one as you did with yourself with your "distorted mind". The few articles I have posted are 1. a scientific paper, the second one is a webpage written by David Spiegel (a quick search to see all his scientific publications about depersonalization Google Scholar and if you do a research about depersonalization itself, you find 115 000 scientific publications, and just try to count how many are very relevant to DPDR depersonalization https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=fr&as_sdt=0,5&q=depersonalization&btnG= ) I am talking about scientific articles, like results of studies. Do you know how this works? It's their freaking job. What is your job? Accounting? I am not talking about the research I have done, I am talking about the research they have done, not by asking for some patient's opinion or by waiting to be "notified" by them, but by doing actual studies themselves. Do you know how this works? If just having the disease makes you smarter than them, why don't you go there to teach them? Yes, I can tell you you are wrong. I am just doing that now. How arrogant can you be to think you know better than scientists... Why don't you go there and replace them all? Fire them all and teach everyone the truth, you will save the world. Talk about being arrogant...
And, no, some people who "beat" DP do so thanks to medicines and not the way you say. Some recovered by doing a lot of sports. Countless people say they recovered spontaneously and they don't know why. You are throwing away all the evidence that doesn't match your theory just based on your theory itself. If anyone says they have recovered not the way you say, you will still argue that they did but don't realize it. You are disregarding the evidence that doesn't go along with your theory and wonder that everything proves your theory is right... And also you are only considering people who did recover, again only to confirm your theory. But how about people who did not recover during all their life, since this is what we are talking about? How do you know if they could have recovered since they didn't during their lifetime? Of course they will not confirm your theory nor disprove it, precisely because they didn't recover during their lifetime. And you will say that they could have recovered if they did this and that. How could you know how they could have recovered since they didn't? If there existed a from of DPDR that could not be cured (and I don't know this) you would have the exact same result as we have now. Some people just don't recover during their lifetime. Just the same. So this is just your theory and there is no way you can prove it. Actually nobody knows for sure, and this is my whole point. This is all I am saying. Maybe you are right about them but how do you know? You don't know. I don't know. That's all.
Again, I am not defending that some people can't recover. I am defending that nobody knows. Especially if we are not researchers in that topic.
And since you say we should "change ourselves" and not be "caught up in arguing", just change yourself by yourself and stop being caught up in arguing with me. Stop saying how you will recover but didn't yet. Show me how it's done. Actually don't show me. Just do it and let me argue.
 
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