# The next step...



## Praise the Dawning (Nov 10, 2014)

Hello guys,

I have finally gotten an account! A year of depersonalisation, I feel that I owe it to myself and others to share my experience and my recovery journey. I feel that this is my next step.

Here is my story.

I have always been a fairly happy person. I have always been creative and "spacey", and everybody describes me as having my "head in the clouds", despite the fact that I am an extrovert. I remember moments of spacing out slightly during my childhood, and only recently have I recognised these as the prelude to my experience with depersonalisation.

Last year, I was experiencing a really difficult time, with pressure at school and quite a few problems with a particularly difficult social group. I also had a really sad experience with a girl, which I handled really badly at the time, and I blame my depersonalisation largely on my interpretation of this experience. After a holiday of rumination, I went to school and smoked weed right away. Not much mind you, just one large puff of very strong marijuana, but it was enough to make me pretty stoned for a good hour and a half. The experience was actually entirely pleasant, despite some slight anxiety and a fast heart rate.

24 hours later I completely spaced out, and I felt as though I was leaving my body. I decided that I was going mad, and got incredibly anxious. After that, I had several of these depersonalisation episodes, but I can't remember exactly how this escalated to full blown chronic depersonalisation and derealisation. I recognised it as clouding of the mind, and I decided to become very healthy in order to substitute for my compromised mental state. Unfortunately, for me, a healthy body can never surpass a positive attitude. I began to obsess over this state, which is understandable since I thought that I was experiencing the onset of schizophrenia. When this year began, I was gradually becoming more depersonalised, obsessing over internet forums frantically trying to decipher my symptoms. I began to grow extremely tired and lethargic, and a strange mixture of hyper-emotional and hypo-emotional. I also developed blurred vision, which has turned out to be a helpful tool in monitoring my recovery. I was convinced that since marijuana was involved in my onset, what I was experiencing was schizophrenia. I was obsessed with this idea. I believe that had I known about depersonalisation and the level of control that I can gain over it, I would not have reached the point of despair and depression that I hit.

I hit rock bottom about 4 months ago, and I fell under a serious depression. I developed slight agoraphobia and felt as though everything was worthless. I hated sunlight and felt irritated by everything. But most of all, my depersonalisation had reached a new low. The glass wall between the world and I had thickened, tainted by the depression that I had fallen victim to. Thinking about my future was like staring into a dark black void. I could barely look into the mirror. Though I knew that I had depersonalisation, I was convinced at this point that I was going insane, because I didn't have any insight into how I could possibly escape this feeling. How can something so extreme be impermanent?

I made many attempts at recovery, but until very recently, I have been unrealistic. Every time I felt a little worse, I would think "obviously I'm not recovering, otherwise, I would not be feeling like this". This is the greatest hindrance to recovery. Recovery is not a smooth, uphill slope, it is a rocky labyrinth with twists and turns. Sometimes you hit a dead end. Sometimes you get lost. But the end of the labyrinth is always there for those who have enough will power to search.

Now I am on the road to recovery. Positivity is the miracle pill that most depersonalisation sufferers search for, and one that some feel that they cannot afford. I look forward to the next day, and when I feel a little worse, I tell myself "just wait until tomorrow, you are getting better every day". And it's true. Every day brings something great for me now, because I am surrounding myself with the positivity that I was afraid to ruin by my depersonalised state.

Some people think that depersonalisation is incurable, and it is easy to see why. It envelops you in negativity and then feeds off it. But in the end, we all have some capacity to control it. Whether you are searching to control or cure your depersonalisation, the first step is to recognise that.


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