post-DP life aka horror life

[lisa0406]

I haven't made a thread in such a long time. partly because I feel like I can only post a thread in this section if I am currently suffering from DP/DR, which luckily I am not anymore. Partly bc I was doing better but now I am bad again. So this thread is about the horror life offered me after I thought it could not get any worse and I feel like I am alone with that. So if someone can relate please respond to this bc I feel like I am all alone with this.

I suffered from my first severe DR/DP episode two years ago and it was extremely traumatic, felt like a ****ing matrix movie. By the time it got better but I completely freaked out. I didn't even have panic attacks, it was something worse, like sheer horror or terror which I felt over weeks and two times I just fainted bc of that. I suffer horrible existential thoughts, reality is so complex and terrifies the hell out of me. I realised how my family of course is my family but basically we are all just strangers who share memories. I was afraid I might go psychotic but every doctor I saw told me i am not at all psychotic, which is the only good thing.
The DR/DP went away after almost two years but it ruined my whole life.
Two years I suffer from all this crap that DR/Dp and its aftermath brought me. I am severly depressed by it. I try to have a normal life but it is just not the same. I was in psychiatry two times but I just completely freaked out there. They all told me they don't know what is wrong with me and sometimes, most of the time acctually, I don't even know what is wrong with me myself. I lost my University (which I had to quit due to my symptoms), I am terrified of going crazy but even more terrified that I do not match an official diagnosis. What if noone can help me out of this mental hell? I am often suicidal bc of all that happened. I started therapy a few weeks ago and I like my therapist a lot. I was doing so well and started to find my way back into life but after my last session I got really bad again. My reality perception is intact but I am in this altered existential state again. I cry most of the day, which is rare bc most of the time I don't even feel a thing anymore. I am just so freaked out by my own bad mental health state and also so completely desperate that I will never overcome this and have to end it all.
I don't even know if it makes any sense to post this thread, I am probably really the only person who feels like this. But anyway, if anyone can relate or whatever - here you go.

[Karaboudjan]

I'm going through something very similar at the moment, after a couple of weeks of particularly severe DP/DR symptoms.

It feels a lot of the day like I'm experiencing abject horror that I just can't explain - like waking from a nightmare and the sensation of the nightmare lingers with you for a few minutes, but for longer and much MUCH worse. And it's always accompanied by abstract existential thoughts - am I real, what if this is a nightmare I can't wake up from, and an intense feeling of "wrongness".

I can carry on my day to day life at the moment only by constantly telling myself that I have to believe this is real and the feelings will pass. And reminding myself I wasn't always like this - most of my life up until this point has not been like this. We WILL get better.

I'm not sure if this helps, but have strength

[Jenijar]

hello, has this improved for either of you? I pretty much constantly have existential thoughts, the main ones are;
Am I dead and this is just my spirit imagining everything
Life doesn't make sense - how do I know how to do things / will I just forget how to do things

[CArl_34_m_UK]

I've been experiencing existential terror 24x7 for months now
Every day I wake up and feel as if my mind has created a new perception on reality.y dp dr actually went because of the severity of the existential fear. It has consumed me completely and 'life' and everything about it has become irrelevant. It's a completely traumatic state of mind to be in and the anxiety it brings is unbearable. I don't know how long this will go on for but I honestly feel the pain of anyone suffering this way. When you are disturbed about reality and your own consciousness there is no escape
No where to hide, no where run and no comfort zone.

[Jenijar]

Hi Carl, I can totally relate to "no where to hide, no where to run and no comfort zone".
How do you know your DP/DR is gone and that the existential thoughts aren't part of the DP?

[CArl_34_m_UK]

Hi Jenijar. The dp dr feeling left me. I can't say when or how but the existential thoughts took over. I know that the dp dr went away as nothing felt dream like any more. I felt in the real world. Also it did return for one day at random. I felt it so obviously and I wasn't sure how long it'd last but it was just one day amd then I felt back on the planet. I honestly feel that if it wasn't for the anxiety and fear that these thoughts have given me then I'd be fine. I know it may sound as if it's part of the dp dr still but I remember how I felt when I was suffering that and I no longer feel that way.
How are you doing?

[Jenijar]

I just wonder if it is still part of the DP/DR but just without the unreality feeling?

do you go to work? I'm signed off.

I hate it all so much, I feel like I'm in an alternate reality, or that I died and this is my spirit imagining life. I then also feel that nothing makes sense, whatever I'm doing I constantly doubting that I understand things, even for example talking and reading, I question how I understand it. Life also just seems to bizarre and complex to be real.

I don't want to die but I'm really hating living this way, like you say there is no comfort zone whatsoever, I never feel safe from these feelings, I never feel normal even for a moment. Sometimes I have around 3 seconds of realising I haven't had any of those type thoughts because I've been distracted by something normal, but that's literally a few seconds once or twice a day. It's an absolute nightmare, I cannot even put into words how strange it feels. It's ruining my life, all I want is to feel normal again, I would give everything I own including my house and car if someone could make me just feel normal again. People who haven't had this can't begin to imagine just how much suffering it causes. People say to just accept it and get on with your life but my mind is constantly questioning no matter what I'm doing.

[Mike_NY]

I'm kind of at the stage where I'm basically living in reality now after a year of hell but I don't feel quite there yet. I had DP and DR last June and it was chronic and an absolute nightmare. It was literally like living in purgatory 24X7 and the only relief was sleep. As the months went by I learned to deal with it and the effects lessened to just having chronic DR. I felt like my body was mine but my perception of the world was altered and I just felt spaced out all the time like I was high, but not in a good way. I went and had numerous tests and an MRI of my brain because I was convinced I had some sort of brain tumor or something. I have been terrified about my heart for over a year also which just makes my anxiety spiral out of control and makes the DR way more intense.

I had been spending a lot of time on the dpselfhelp.com forum and learned about what DP was and how it is triggered. Mine was triggered by a huge amount of stress. It started to fade a good bit on its own but then in Jan or Feb this year I relapsed and it was back again and really intense. I decided I needed to get a handle on my anxiety and I read some books like Claire Weeks and so on and learned to control my anxiety. There are literally thousands of people who are members of that forum who have lived with DP/DR. Some for decades with no relief.

As the months have went on and I've got more of a handle on my anxiety, the DR symptoms have faded almost completely but I feel weird, like lonely, depressed and I still get a lot of fear when I think is this the best I'm going to get? Or will
I ever be like my old self? All I can do is keep busy or I'll just break into tears if I think about it.

I've managed to maintain a job, get a new job with the same company, get a promotion and then get another new job with a new company in the last year also while going through this. It wasn't until I got control of the anxiety and the DR faded almost 100% that I had be confidence to apply for another company as I knew I would have to have several interviews with strangers.

Please read the below forum thread I have been commenting on. This is about people in a slimilar situation post DP/DR. You are not fully healed yet and it sounds like you are in the final stages of getting out of this, just like me. Please hang in there.



http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/inde...as-i-thought/#

[Jenijar]

Hi Mike, that's great news that you now feel you're living in reality

When you say you was living in purgatory 24/7, did you seriously used to feel as though you may actually have died but your spirit wasn't aware of it and imagining all this? That is one of the worst parts of it for me, logically I know I'm alive but a big part of my mind keeps thinking I'm really dead and then I think to myself it's impossible for me to get better because I don't really exist!
also all the memories I have from before DP started, feel like an entire lifetime ago, rather than 10 months ago.

Did you take any medication to help? I just wondered because the doctors keep changing my meds and each time they do I seem to go back to square one or worse in my recovery.

Also, did you ever feel that you were completely loosing your mind and needed to go to hospital?

One more thing did you ever find it got worse before it got better, or did yours just keep improving?

I know that's a lot of questions sorry, but if you could answer them I'd much appreciate it x

[Mike_NY]

Hi Mike, that's great news that you now feel you're living in reality

When you say you was living in purgatory 24/7, did you seriously used to feel as though you may actually have died but your spirit wasn't aware of it and imagining all this? That is one of the worst parts of it for me, logically I know I'm alive but a big part of my mind keeps thinking I'm really dead and then I think to myself it's impossible for me to get better because I don't really exist!
also all the memories I have from before DP started, feel like an entire lifetime ago, rather than 10 months ago.

Did you take any medication to help? I just wondered because the doctors keep changing my meds and each time they do I seem to go back to square one or worse in my recovery.

Also, did you ever feel that you were completely loosing your mind and needed to go to hospital?

One more thing did you ever find it got worse before it got better, or did yours just keep improving?

I know that's a lot of questions sorry, but if you could answer them I'd much appreciate it x

I never really had the existential thoughts but they are very common. I think it's more the fact that I had DR mostly as opposed to DP which is why I knew everything around me was real including myself but I just couldn't connect with it. It all looked foreign and the biggest struggle was just trying to hold it all together. Once I started with the "am I stuck like this?" questions, I would immediately go into a panic and it would make it worse.

I know what you mean about feelings prior to it. It has been just over a year since all of this started for me and it feels like it has been like 10 years. I vape nicotine and when DP started I immediately blamed it on that and I have been searching for answers ever since and trying ways to get rid of it. The only medication I ever took was vitamins and Xanax when needed. After a year I still have about half of my second prescription left because a lot of times I turn to alcohol instead to deal with the panic and fear.

Once I started to be able to control my anxiety more, the symptoms faded with it, but it's been a very long and gradual recovery. Each day feels just a little bit better than the next, but there will be days which are set backs, like if I am under a lot of stress or if I haven't had enough sleep or I'm hungover. I have come a long way in the last 5 months or so and I am almost back to normal. I'm not kidding myself about it, I know it's going to take another while before I was back to the way I was, but I'm one million times better than this time last year, that's for sure!

I still suffer with anxiety and panic though and now that the DR has subsided a lot, I have had lots of panic about my heart. I need to get a grip.

I moved to the states from the UK to work so taking time off or quitting my job etc has never been an option. You just have to get on with your life and not let DP/DR or anxiety hold you back. When you embrace it and don't let it annoy you or stop living your life, only then does it start to fade.