# I'm now recovered, and I want to share what I've learnt :)



## Guest

So this will be my last thread, as I move forward with my life, I thankfully don't need the support of a forum anymore. I hope you can stick around just until the end of this post, because I believe I have something valuable to share, of which I've learnt. You don't have to read if you don't want to - I don't mind one bit. But what I hope to share to those who feel like reading is a method to recover for good. These are my own experiences. I just feel like, having recovered, I don't want to keep the method I used to myself - I want to share it with the world!

So here goes.

When doctors label you with a mental disorder, give you drugs for it, or even if you self-diagnose online, they/you are saying that "you are ill, you get this, you can't do that because of this", etc. So from the very beginning, from the diagnosis, you/medical professionals start putting walls around you, barriers, roadblocks. You now have a narrow path to walk through life on - the path of the depersonalised. So therein starts the "I am a victim of this horrible problem, I wish it would leave me." mindset. This mindset says you are powerless, you are afflicted, and you have to wait for recovery to come to you.

But it never does. And you wonder why, so you might google this or google that, ask people this and ask people that, looking outside of yourself for answers, all the while being reminded as you search - "I am ill". Because you wouldn't be searching for a solution to a problem if you didn't have a problem, right?

But maybe the whole time, the "problem" was magnified by your and others' labelling of it. You may have ended up conforming to it more, instead of actually relieving yourself of it.

And that is the key point, because all the while we look outside for answers, when really the power resides within ourselves. We don't have to be DP'd or panicked or depressed or whatever if we don't want to be. We are no victim - We have the choice. And if we say we have no choice, we are playing victim again. We do. We are giving our "issues" power - making them more powerful than even ourselves. More powerful even than our belief that we can do anything about them. This is so common, and it's tragic.

There is a lot of misinformation out there, sites that aim to help when actually they only exacerbate your disorder, or reinforce that "fact" that you are mentally disabled in some way, shape or form. And the mental health system, although aiming to help, as I said above, gives out the indirect message that "You are ill. You need treatment."

So really when you throw all of that away, you are simply a person, who gets the fight/flight dissociative response too often and in the wrong situations. So already you're problem has been bitten down to size - a good, manageable size! And see how the problem is not you - all it is is part of your brain (the sympathetic nervous system) firing into action a little too much.
So how you get it to work for you (see how already the situation has gone from being the victim to being in total control of the situation) is that you tell it that in the situations that you don't want it to be in, it doesn't have to fire. It is not needed and it is unnecessary.
To do this, you have to avoid attaching fear or emotion to the thought or feeling, or give it any significant attention. You may briefly notice the "I'm DP'd/anxious/feel strange right now" thought - that's fine, but you stop there. And just carry on with life. Let the feeling or thought be. Do this enough, and you will desensitise yourself to depersonalisation (or anxiety, or obsessive thoughts, etc) and slowly you will notice it disappearing.
It is then that you have to be open to change, you have to be courageous and face the unknown (because who you are going to become without the DP will feel a lot different, a lot more free, a lot happier, and it is hard to accept that noticeable difference when for so long you have been depersonalised (or anxious, or obsessive, or depressed etc) but you have to accept the person you become, because that is what gets you out of the loop for good. You may have setbacks, but as long as the steps of not adding attention to the thoughts/feelings are repeated, then you will not get back into the loop.

Then, you must congratulate yourself, because through courageous action, you have shown yourself that you are in control, you always were, you were just bluffed before you knew better.

You were the initiator and the complete controller of yourself, your body, and your own recovery.

And that's how I did it.

I must mention the "tools" that really helped me recover. They were the knowledge, I was the catalyst that acted upon that knowledge. I think they are brilliant, and I would highly suggest reading through them if you are serious about deciding on recovery:

Anything by Claire Weekes. I read Self-Help for your Nerves, but I heard that Hope and Help for your Nerves is the revised, updated version.
Nothingworks.weebly.com - a webpage created by a man who recovered himself, and he goes lightly into the biology of fight/flight (which I found not only fascinating but essential in understanding why we react in the way that we do) plus much, much more. I mean, I gave what I believe to be valuable information above, but this webpage trumps all online anxiety advice, in my opinion.
Panicend.com - again, more brilliant advice that is available for free online.

Go well and go bravely


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## Guest

Some positive thoughts to consider, thanks for sharing... I still don´t think DP is a mental illness, but something of the matters of the spirit/intellect. A kind of mind-riddle that must be solved.


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## StartingOver

> We don't have to be DP'd or panicked or depressed or whatever if we don't want to be. We are no victim - We have the choice. And if we say we have no choice, we are playing victim again. We do. We are giving our "issues" power - making them more powerful that even ourselves. More powerful even than our belief that we can do anything about them. This is so common, and it's tragic.


Agree on this, this helped me with my recovery.

Love the post and I hope life goes well for you, you really point out good advice here.


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## Haumea

Did you have persistent or episodic DP?


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## Apathy

THANKS SO MUCH GREAT FUCKIN POST! GOOD LUCK! BTW HOW LONG DID U HAVE DP?


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## Guest

Glad you find it helpful  I had persistent DP and episodic, so a bit of a mix. For 6 years.


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## Haumea

> I had persistent DP and episodic, so a bit of a mix.


Can you elaborate, because that's really a confusing explanation.

If you had persistent DP (that is 24/7), how long did it last and how did it end?

If you're saying you had anxiety episodes during the persistent DP, that's not the same thing.


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## Guest

Haumea said:


> Can you elaborate, because that's really a confusing explanation.
> 
> If you had persistent DP (that is 24/7), how long did it last and how did it end?
> 
> If you're saying you had anxiety episodes during the persistent DP, that's not the same thing.


Sure, I had years of DP non stop, from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep, but then I also had a few years where I got it in episodes, either a month long and then a month break, or even one good day and one DP'd day. It could be extremely sporadic, there was no pattern, but if you look at the whole 6 years, you could say it was episodic, with a mix of very long episodes all the way to very short episodes.


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## Guest

yasi said:


> I will miss you but. You're on to better things . Take care you are awesome.


Aww  *hug*


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## Haumea

> Sure, I had years of DP non stop, from the moment I woke to the moment I fell asleep


OK - please elaborate on how this particular stretch ended, in other words how you went from constant DP to episodes of normality. Did you do anything differently to bring about this result?


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## Guest

Haumea said:


> OK - please elaborate on how this particular stretch ended, in other words how you went from constant DP to episodes of normality. Did you do anything differently to bring about this result?


The brief windows of normality at the start were well before I fully recovered, and I had very little stress, in fact i avoided it, so there was little reason for DP to stay. There was no threat, I was taking it easy, but it always returned, because avoiding stress was the opposite to how I finally recovered - facing fear, discomfort, DP - everything I hated to feel, I let myself feel, I let it be there until it wasn't there.

Before recovery, I was just running away, so it wasn't a lasting solution.


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## Haumea

> The brief windows of normality at the start were well before I fully recovered


Did they (the brief windows of normality after the chronic DP) "just happen" or was there anything different that you did to allow them to happen?


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## Guest

Haumea said:


> Did they (the brief windows of normality after the chronic DP) "just happen" or was there anything different that you did to allow them to happen?


I cut down on the stress and responsibilities, which made the episodes of normality happen. But this was the complete wrong thing to do! It isn't revelevant or related to the actual recovery, neither is how you got DP or what "kind" it is. Avoiding things is just a cop-out, and no matter how much I cut down, it returned. FACING the DP is what made me recover. Letting it be, until there was simply no reason for it to be there.

So how DP got there, or what kind it is is neither here nor there - in short, the solution for me was to accept it away.


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## Mar1982

Please don't leave Delicate. I just became a new member and I can use all the help I can get. I only want to speak with those who have recovered.

Please tell me all you did to overcome this.

Thank you


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## Haumea

> I cut down on the stress and responsibilities, which made the episodes
> of normality happen. But this was the complete wrong thing to do!


I'm sorry - I just don't find your explanation very helpful, because you're saying "do what I say, not what I did."

In other words, ignore the fact that doing something allowed normality to happen, do something else. You can understand how someone might think that doesn't make sense, especially if getting to any kind of episodes of normality would be a great achievement.

Given that, not to be offensive, but I'm not interested in your abstract thoughts on the matter, I'm interested in your actual experience. If doing X was some part of the path to getting to a full recovery, don't tell me it was the wrong thing to do, because that's just musings on the matter.


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## Guest

Haumea said:


> I'm sorry - I just don't find your explanation very helpful, because you're saying "do what I say, not what I did."
> 
> In other words, ignore the fact that doing something allowed normality to happen, do something else. You can understand how someone might think that doesn't make sense, especially if getting to any kind of episodes of normality would be a great achievement.
> 
> Given that, not to be offensive, but I'm not interested in your abstract thoughts on the matter, I'm interested in your actual experience. If doing X was some part of the path to getting to a full recovery, don't tell me it was the wrong thing to do, because that's just musings on the matter.


Nono, sorry but I think you misunderstood.

Before recovery, I would avoid ANY situation that would trigger the fight/flight response. This gave me brief periods of normality but what I did to achieve that was not work, not socialise, not even walk into different rooms if I could help it because it would trigger DP. Moving my body triggered DP. EVERYTHING was a stress so sure, sitting on my sofa doing nothing all day meant brief periods of normality, but in no way was it was the path to recovery. It was the path to destruction. This happened well before recovery, when I was in the depths of avoidance. The brief periods of normality were all caused by reducing my life down to the smallest, most ridiculously insignificant size it was to avoid the DP. Sure I was safe of my sofa, in my little bubble of normality. But all hell broke loose if I dared get up off it. It was not the DOING, that caused normality in this case, but the NOT doing. That was not recovery, it was barely living.

What I was saying, was that avoiding stress was not the way to the cure. Even if it caused me to feel normal again for a little bit, you see how LIMITED my life was and you see how that is not recovery. At all.

Recovery, for me, was everything I mentioned in the original post. Accepting DP whilst going about your daily life eventually shows your sympathetic nervous system that there is no threat, no reason for DP to be there, so it disappears. You get periods of normality until suddenly, normality is the only state your mind is in, even in those circumstances where you used to get DP. And that's what happened to me. That was how I got cured.

So I've described myself to you at my worst (avoidance) and at my best (facing and acceptance - recovery). I experienced normality at my worst, but i'm not saying that THAT was recovery, or had anything to do with it - because you see that horribly restrictive life I led. Even with brief periods of normality I would have never called it recovery, and rightfully so. It was hell on earth and it nearly made me kill myself.

I'm saying "do as I did" as far as my recovery (original post) went. You don't even have to do it, obviously, it's a free world! lol. But if you wanted things clarified even more, I hope I have done so. I would never give out advice if it had not worked for myself. It was all based on experience and there was nothing "abstract" about it. I apologise if I explained things so badly to you that this was how you perceived what I said to be. I'm not always very articulate.

I can't expand on this further if you still don't understand, I really don't know what else I can say. I hope it made sense to you this time.


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## broken3309

Delicate said:


> Nono, sorry but I think you misunderstood.
> 
> Before recovery, I would avoid ANY situation that would trigger the fight/flight response. This gave me brief periods of normality but what I did to achieve that was not work, not socialise, not even walk into different rooms if I could help it because it would trigger DP. Moving my body triggered DP. EVERYTHING was a stress so sure, sitting on my sofa doing nothing all day meant brief periods of normality, but in no way was it was the path to recovery. It was the path to destruction.
> 
> What I was saying that avoiding stress was not the way to the cure. Even if it caused me to feel normal again for a little bit, you see how LIMITED my life was and you see how that is not recovery. At all.
> 
> Recovery, for me, was everything I mentioned in the original post. Accepting DP whilst going about your daily life eventually shows your sympathetic nervous system that there is no threat, no reason for DP to be there, so it disappears. You get periods of normality until suddenly, normality is the only state your mind is in, even in those circumstances where you used to get DP. And that's what happened to me. That was how I got cured.
> I also told you what didn't work for me, which was avoiding stresses. This was well before recovery, when I was in the depths of avoidance. The brief periods of normality were all caused by reducing my life down to the smallest, most ridiculously insignificant size it was to avoid the DP. Sure I was safe of my sofa, in my little bubble of normality. But all hell broke loose if I dared get up off it. That was not recovery, it was barely living.
> 
> So I've described you at my worst (avoidance) and at my best (facing and acceptance - recovery). I experienced normality at my worst, but i'm not saying that THAT was recovery, or had anything to do with it - because you I described the life I led. Anyone would be mad to think that that had anything to do with recovery.
> 
> I'm saying "do as I did" as far as my recovery went. You don't even have to do it,obviously, it's a free world lol! But if you wanted things clarified even more, I hope I have done so.
> 
> I can't expand on that further if you don't understand, I really don't know what else I can say. I hope that is finally the answer you looking for.


Delicate, you are so well written. Haha, sorry, english is my favorite subject and I appreicate when people write well.

Anyway, I also loveeeee this thread. Its so positive. This morning I really didn't want to get out of bed but did anyway because I have a lot to get done before moving tomorrow. And I feel pretty good! Better than I would if I were sulking at home all day. I also love what you said about sitting on your sofa all day because that's what I do. Haha.


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## Guest

Mar1982 said:


> Please don't leave Delicate. I just became a new member and I can use all the help I can get. I only want to speak with those who have recovered.
> 
> Please tell me all you did to overcome this.
> 
> Thank you


I hope the original post and the links that helped me are helpful enough to you, but I sent you a pm with more explanations too


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## JackDanielß

Sorry, but how can you say you still have irrational fears but you have still gotten over DP?

It's like saying you won a lottery of $1,000,000 but can't afford to buy a car.


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## broken3309

Haa wow everyone is always so negative. She might have won money from the lottery but then decided to use it to pay off loans and bills and forgone a car.


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## Guest

JackDanielß said:


> Sorry, but how can you say you still have irrational fears but you have still gotten over DP?
> It's like saying you won a lottery of $1,000,000 but can't afford to buy a car.[/size]


Recovery doesn't work in the exact same way for everyone, and for me, depersonalisation was the first thing to go upon working on the things I mentioned in the original thread. Then anxiety lessened. But this thread was for those wanting to know what might help them recover from depersonalisation. It is what worked for me, for DP/DR, and that's all I'm saying  others have succeeded in ridding themselves of anxiety with Claire Weekes' method, and it had improved mine substantially, but I'm not recovered from anxiety yet and I don't claim to be. I still have some fears. Much less than before. I wouldn't say i'm agoraphobic anymore. I still get anxious occasionally - in the right amounts, in the right circumstances - because there will always be a healthy and appropriate level of anxiety that someone will experience - death of a loved one, kid's first day at school, difficulties in labour, the list goes on and on.

But I can say, that I recovered 100% from DP/DR, and the original post explained how I did.


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## Guest

broken3309 said:


> Haa wow everyone is always so negative. She might have won money from the lottery but then decided to use it to pay off loans and bills and forgone a car.


No worries, there are only a few people who are a bit negative, but that's okay and I am happy to answer any questions people may have.

A little debate is all good and well, if people don't understand me, that's okay, I will try and explain until I can explain no further. Or until I get tired and focus back to offline things xD


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## Haumea

> lol @ JackDanielß,Haumea fearless cult club, why do you guys always
> attack people, and dont say "oh were just asking questions" your both
> going back and forth extremely negatively when ever she responds about
> something.


First of all, in the same sentence that you ask why we always "attack" people, you attack me for being in a cult.

Now, I was particularly frustrated with delicate precisely because I felt she had something enlightening to offer and this is the second time I've spoken to someone who claims they've recovered and trying to get a straight answer about their condition seems like beating one's head against the wall.

Here's what I'm trying to figure out:

*Did this person genuinely have chronic DPD?*

If so, how in the hell did she manage to get episodes of normality *just by avoiding stress*? I haven't been able do that, and I'd be extremely happy if I would have been able to do that.

There was another person with whom I have spoken (who claims to have recovered) and again, trying to achieve clarity was impossible.


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## Guest

Haumea said:


> First of all, in the same sentence that you ask why we always "attack" people, you attack me for being in a cult.
> 
> Now, I was particularly frustrated with delicate precisely because I felt she had something enlightening to offer and this is the second time I've spoken to someone who claims they've recovered and trying to get a straight answer about their condition seems like beating one's head against the wall.
> 
> Here's what I'm trying to figure out:
> 
> *Did this person genuinely have chronic DPD?*
> 
> If so, how in the hell did she manage to get episodes of normality *just by avoiding stress*? I haven't been able do that, and I'd be extremely happy if I would have been able to do that.
> 
> There was another person with whom I have spoken (who claims to have recovered) and again, trying to achieve clarity was impossible.


I'm sorry that you have felt like my answer wasn't clear enough for you - I have replied to you many times, ensuring that you knew my situation in elaborate detail, so if you are still unsatisfied, then there really isn't much I can say to please you. You are obviously looking for something specific and all I can tell you is what truthfully worked (and didn't work) for me.

If episodes of normality didn't come to you by avoiding stress then all I can say is that we are different, and that, as I said, is not how I recovered, so I don't see your concern or desire to want to recover that way specifically. You seem to be ignoring the facing and accepting, the things that I actually did to put me in recovery, and you are focusing on the part of my experience with DP that was not connected to recovery at all, so I too, find responding to you like banging my head against a brick wall.

I accept that the way I recovered will not please everyone, especially those not willing to put the work in and push for results. All that I wanted to do was put what worked for me out there, and I have accomplished that. If not everyone likes what I say, that's okay. The recovery is not my own method anyway, it is a culmination of knowledge that I learned, used, succeeded with and described in a thread on here, so really, I'm just glad that a few people thought it valuable, and I hope that they too can end up posting a recovery thread like this one day.


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## Haumea

> You are obviously looking for something specific and all I can tell you is what truthfully worked (and didn't work) for me.


Of course I'm looking for something specific. But first I'm trying to figure out whether your situation is even a model to follow. If the detail you've provided indicates that it isn't, then the solution is inapplicable. Now, there are several possibilities here:

1) You didn't really have chronic DP, but something like anxiety with co-morbid DP.

2) You had some kind of chronic DP but much less severe (?)

3) You had the same thing I do.

If it's (3), then why were you able to achieve episodes of normality just by avoiding stress?


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## Haumea

> simple, people have diferent degrees of "DP", like in borderline personality disorder, DP is usually not chronic.


That's the conclusion I'm drawing from the facts she's provided. It wasn't chronic DP.



> So really when you throw all of that away, *you are simply a person, who
> gets the fight/flight dissociative response too often and in the wrong
> situations.* So already you're problem has been bitten down to size - a
> good, manageable size!


(I went back and re-read her post. This is the key quote.)

So it wasn't chronic DP. Now those of us who have persistent DP do not have the problem bitten down to *good manageable size*.

That's something "specific" I was looking for. Except it unfortunately doesn't apply.


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## tnasty2

emotional abuse is definitely the cause of dp, but my problem is I feel the result of this (dp) far outweighs the emotional abuse people have suffered. My parents were good parents may have neglected somewhat and did a lot for me but all with good intentions. I would say they were above average parents. I did suffer neglect and such through grade school, treated differently than others but never in a mean way, but it definitely made me feel different. But seriously who hasn't gone through some challenging things in life. I feel like if I got dp from marijuana, like do you have to have had a perfect life to smoke weed? Why I'd dp not more common. Why did it take 2 years of smoking to finally induce the panic attack. A lot of questions which will be left unanswered.


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## JackDanielß

Dude, why do you think like 0.001% of marijuana smokers get DP?


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## DP boy

nahh i would say like 5 percent get it 0.001 percent is a better figure of the percentage of people who dnt recover from dp


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## tnasty2

I know people who are very much more emotionally unstable than me with horrible backgrounds smoke weed all the time. Has no idea what dp is. I smoked weed for years had no idea what dp was. Why randomly now am I having this dissociative reaction? If emotional abuse and dysfunctional families cause I would say the majority of people using hallucinogenic drugs come from these backgrounds.. yet dp is not common. Dp is essentially the result of poor parenting, shouldn't it be much more common?


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## tnasty2

5 percent of people get dp from marijuana? That's idiotic. I've never met anyone no matter how bad there background of having chronic dp from marijuana, nothing close to mine.


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## DP boy

alot of people have it and dont know they have it and urs is no worse then anyone elses dp is dp


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## tnasty2

Lol if you have dp but dont know anything is wrong with you that's ridiculous. I cannot function in normal everyday life because of this. Very few people develop symptoms of dp so severe triggered by mj that they cannot function. I smoked marijuana for a long time without any symptoms of dp. I assume that this is how mj is for almost everyone. Dp is not common at all. Yes symptoms of dp are possibly common, chronic unrelenting dp after one panic attack is not that common among marinuana users.


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## DP boy

i dnt think dp is only a result of parental related family trama it may be the most common i personally think i have more bad realtionship trauma then faimly trauma tho some family trauma is there . There have been many reprots of dp triggered in warzones or in concentration camps or in stravation scenerios. It pretty much any thing your subcounsious thinks you cannot handle can trigger it panic attack is the most common way and is what did it for me im much better now but ive fallen into a hole since my 1 year annversary of dp hit a few days ago


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## tnasty2

yeahh he's right in that respect. Even though it seems you didn't have control over the dp coming about its your past decisions to not resolve your trauma or problems that is causing the dp. Therefore it's yor decisions an behaviors that are resulting in the dp, the problem is its hard enough to resolve your trauma, but then having these massive symptoms make it that much harder and they deter you from the problem.


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## timzie

it amazes me that people keep talking about resolving issues about poor parenting etc...i got my dp through too much alcohol and something got fucked in my brain...when something is wrong in your brain it does not repair itself...if you are lucky it shifts back in place...i don t hear so many recovery stories so i don t think there s a lot of hope...if you have it because of anxiety then it s another ballgame control the fear and dp will go...mine doesn t...


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## tnasty2

something got fucked in your brain? Humans are so advanced through evolution, yet you're going to say alcohol caused something in your brain to "fuck up". There's obviously much more to it dude. It's just hard to understand or make sense of when you have dp and strong symptoms of it. Everything gets confusing.


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## tnasty2

another hard part for me is the fact the resolving these issue doesn't directly correlate to the symptoms meaning, no matter how much shit I do today to recover my symptoms aren't going Togo away today. It takes a long time for the symptoms to actually go away which I don't understand at all.


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## peanut butter

boohoo im a victim pls respond


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## chelsy010

Thanks Delicate for your post. I am in my last part of recovery and all i did was pretty tried my best to move on with my life and leave dP alone and it does work. It was deathly hard in the beginning but it was worth it because I feel more real and normal than ever before. Each day I feel better and better. I hope people on here really take your advice so that they can start feeling better.


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## sb87

great thread


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## Guest

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## Dyna

Delicate, thanks for your post. May I ask how did you get DP. From weed?


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## Guest

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## Guest

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## BMTH

Thanks Delicate

I've been really struggling recently and your post(s) helped me a lot today.

Hopefully more than just today but right now today is better than nothing.

Thanks again


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