I am sure everyone remembers me from this subforum. I got my DPDR on 21st of November, 2016. I can even remember the precise time, it was about 8.20 am. Me and my friend decided to go and smoke a joint of weed. It was not my first time so I didn't think anything of it and agreed to go with him. So, we finish smoking and start walking to school. Suddently, I start thinking about something and it kind of visualises in front of me. Then, I start noticing severe derealization kicking in. Suddently, I freak out a lot from all these weird feelings and sensations (basically got high too fast). So I had a huge panic attack, with extreme fight and flight response (everything started looking so surreal).
So I try to remain calm in this situation and my friend, who is feeling excellent, helps me get home. I then take like a 3 hour nap and find out my effect has passed, but I still had relatively large DPDR but there was no more of that scary stuff. Few days go by, but this does not pass, in fact it goes even worse. Anxiety climbs sky high along with my derealization. It was terrible, I cried almost all day at those times. So I felt really really bad for like 2 weeks, but then it slowly got better. One day I just felt better in the evening. At the first month, everything still felt really weird, like the world was alien and it was really terrible to say the least. Around the first month, I started doing a bit more cheerful things, such as building a relationship with a girl I like. Lucky for me, at first everything went really well and it provided me with lots of dopamine and instead of constant thinking about DPDR, I started thinking constantly about her (Still do). A breaking point in DPDR was a trip to Switzerland with my dad. There, I endured the worst (I felt lot worse when I was away from home). Though, time there also made me realise why I have this. It was all due to my childhood.
Also did not mention I got a therapist somewhere after 2 weeks since DPDR hit and this therapist helped me a lot.
So, after the first month, I started feeling better and better as time went by. I started engaging more with friends, with that girl and I put more effort into defeating this.
Slowly, day by day, with trauma procession and realisation, I have gotten to the point where I feel 80% recovered. No more weird vision, derealization has decreased a lot, no more anxiety. I feel almost like before.
Recovery will not come in a day, it takes a long time and it is really really slow. Of course, effort must be put in too.
Btw, you can check recovery stories section where I explain further about my past trauma.