[enigma]

That I'm able to relax and let go of it for short instances at a time?

What does it reveal about the nature of it (at least, as experienced by me)?

Everyone's dp and/or dr is a little different, I know.

But for fleeting moments I can grasp the sensation of reality.

By allowing the thinking process to shut down, letting my mind become still, focusing on my surroundings, accept that this is me, I am centered at this particular location (allow myself to feel it), I can recreate for a few seconds (just like physicists can briefly recreate the conditions of the early universe in particle accelerators) the way it felt before.

I can never hold on to it for long.

The instant my brain resumes normal operations the bubble bursts.

Why?

And what does it mean that I am able to do so at all in the first place?

Does this offer a clue, a tantalizing hint as to how I might possibly be able to overcome it?

If nothing else, though, what could it say about my particular case?

In need of insights, here. (Thanks in advance for any offered.)

e

 

[Sojourner]

I think you're on to something important. It's our fight-or-flight response that needs to be over-ridden by our conscious mind. Our body system is not reacting to a real physical danger to us, but to an intra-psychic "danger" -- something outside of our immediate conscious awareness that we fear and feel we have to flee. That's what's happening on a physical level. It's a real physical response -- not to an outside circumstance, but to an intra-psychic event in our minds.

Personally, I cannot just "let the feelings wash over me and do not fight them" -- which is Claire Weekes' advice in "Hope and Help for Your Nerves," a classic self-help book that you can get at amazon.com. I need to obliquely address the intra-psychic cause via psychotherapy.

Try therapy and try letting the feelings just wash over you. The problem I had with letting the feelings wash over me and disappear is that I had a hard time re-programming my conscious mind without thinking about the feelings. It's a Catch-22, where if one is going to tell oneself that the feelings don't really mean "danger," one simply MUST think about them -- at least while one is making this suggestion to oneself. So that makes us do what we are told NOT to do. Catch-22 -- you know -- a paradox that makes escape impossible, like in the book...

So, obliquely addressing the issue seems to be the best choice for me. I'm dealing with how I REALLY feel and letting it all hang out in therapy. Zoloft made me depressed and since stopping -- no depression and no anxiety. It may come back, but if it does, I'll go on a different SSRI.

The best thing is to do both -- (1) therapy and (2) become so engrossed in something that you just forget about the anxiety. We cannot think about more than one thing at a time. That solution is always available, so it seems that sometimes we actually choose to suffer, doesn't it?

 

[ShyTiger]

Hi enigma.
I think your post sounds very hopefull. Can u start practising doing what you have been doing (with getting that result of reality) more often. Maybe just to start with just practise it and see what happens. I think you will get answers as you go along. Maybe its your brain yet again wanting to disect things so deeply that has you only keeping the feeling for a couple of seconds??
I do think that if you are getting feelings of connectedness that it does indicate a direction to pursue.
When you say you focus on your surroundings, when you are not what are you usually focusing on?

 

[enigma]

Can u start practising doing what you have been doing (with getting that result of reality) more often. Maybe just to start with just practise it and see what happens. I think you will get answers as you go along. Maybe its your brain yet again wanting to disect things so deeply that has you only keeping the feeling for a couple of seconds??
I do think that if you are getting feelings of connectedness that it does indicate a direction to pursue.

I've been doing it everyday for weeks now, but for some reason I can't increase the duration.

When you say you focus on your surroundings, when you are not what are you usually focusing on?

I only wish I knew.

It doesn't feel like I'm really focusing on anything, though I suspect otherwise.

Thanks Soj and Shy, for your feedback.

e

 

[peaceboy23]

Hey enigma. I am with you there to the T. I get these moments where I don't think about it and everything is cool, and then I go and F it up by thinking how I wasn't thining about it and feeling good. I'll have a moment or two of feeling good, and then I think "hey that was good" and then it's all back to how i felt before. Those few moments give me hope, but then I think about what I was doing that made me feel better, and that just makes it worse again. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer gives up beer for a week at the request of Marge, and he is saying to himself "don't think about beer, don't think about beer" and all he can think of is beer. Sigh. I think i've discovered that the underlying factor here is fear. It makes me feel the DP/DR and it makes me constantly worry that it will come back. Although I guess that is pretty obvious :? Maybe just as a refresher to me, just to make me feel better, is it dp/dr (i need this reassurance to make sure that I'm not actually going insane or dying of a brain tumor) to feel completely gone in my head, to view some empty tunnel in my mind, to feel a vast space where my mind is, to feel like my brain and thoughts are escapting from me and that my head is too small for the size of my mind? It is so hard explaining this feeling, but the more I hear that it's common to dp/dr the more reassured I am that I'm not just majorly insane.

 

[ShyTiger]

Hey again e. Sorry i have another question for you. When you get the feeling of reality/connectedness, when you say your brain goes back to normal and you lose it, do you know if you have a thought that first interupts the feeling of reality? ie:How long will this last? This is amazing ect.if your not aware of a thought maybe the next time you do it see if you can be aware of if you do have a thought or even a feeling or just see where your focus goes. Id be interested in the very first thing that breaks the feeling of reality.

 

[enigma]

Hey enigma. I am with you there to the T. I get these moments where I don't think about it and everything is cool, and then I go and F it up by thinking how I wasn't thining about it and feeling good. I'll have a moment or two of feeling good, and then I think "hey that was good" and then it's all back to how i felt before. Those few moments give me hope, but then I think about what I was doing that made me feel better, and that just makes it worse again. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer gives up beer for a week at the request of Marge, and he is saying to himself "don't think about beer, don't think about beer" and all he can think of is beer. Sigh. I think i've discovered that the underlying factor here is fear. It makes me feel the DP/DR and it makes me constantly worry that it will come back.

Do you actually feel 'fully here' (that you're aware of) when simply not thinking about it?

Hey again e. Sorry i have another question for you. When you get the feeling of reality/connectedness, when you say your brain goes back to normal and you lose it, do you know if you have a thought that first interupts the feeling of reality?

Any thought interrupts it and causes me to lose it.

That's the problem: My mind has to be entirely blank in order for me to be able to feel it.

'Thinking' and sensing reality simply do not coincide in my brain.

How long will this last? This is amazing ect.if your not aware of a thought maybe the next time you do it see if you can be aware of if you do have a thought or even a feeling or just see where your focus goes. Id be interested in the very first thing that breaks the feeling of reality.

I have to be 100% focused on my surroundings, and it lasts only so long as I am able to maintain this (which is never very long).

e

 

[peaceboy23]

Hey Enigma...I do feel "fully here" as far as I can tell. Earlier tonight was a good example, I was playing a computer game, concentrating, and then all of a sudden, I realized that I was feeling good, so i started thinking about that and how good it was, and then I got the fear and the dp again. Or i'll be doing something at work, feeling fine, and think "hey I'm feeling good...what is it that I felt like before" and then the dp/dr comes back to me..."Oh right, THAT." I'm starting to wonder if I'm somehow sabotaging myself, like I don't know what to do as a normal human being. It is so crappy, becuase I feel like half (or more) of my day is spent thinking "how are you feeling now, are you ok? better, worse, good, bad. Should you try to think about the worst feeling you had to compare this to?" (How messed up is THAT). I remember Janine saying this type of thinking is a pitfall for us, and it's true. But I don't know HOW to stop thinking these things. I try to focus on other things, so I think "focus on other things to get rid of these feelings" but it doens't work unless I am not thinking about focusing on other things. Sigh, it's such a crappy circle.

 

[Sojourner]

"But I don't know HOW to stop thinking these things."

Did you ever hear the story about the man who tore up paper?

His wife was going nuts with her husband always tearing up paper everywhere he went. Wherever there was paper around him, Bobby would tear it up. His wife was finally going to put an end to it, so she took him to a psychiatrist. And then she took him to another psychiatrist, and another, and another, and another -- and then, one day she took him to the last psychiatrist he ever saw.

She ran into that doctor at the supermarket a couple of days later and said to him, smiling ear to ear, "Doctor, I can't begin to tell you how happy we are -- everything's fine now. But....tell me, what magic did you do with Bobby? What on earth got him to stop? What did you say to him?"

The doctor put his arm around Bobby's wife gently and then stood back and looked at her kindly, saying, "I told him to stop tearing paper."