# Toxic Shame and Chronic Stress as a Cause of DP/DR



## Pyrite (Mar 25, 2014)

One of the common causes of DP/DR is chronic stress, though the actual triggering event can be anything that pushes someone over the edge like a panic attack, or something that loosens a persons's grip and lower's their defenses which many drugs can do.

We can only handle so much stress before our body decides it needs to defend it's self, and disassociating is a way it can do that.

Chronic stress has to have a source, and one of them is toxic shame; in general, this is when a person is ashamed of themselves in their entirety, so it can take many forms. Being ashamed of being expressive, being ashamed of ones appearances, being ashamed of failure, all to unhealthy extents of course. If shame is a feeling that comes up often in your life, then you are likely dealing with toxic shame, a major source of chronic stress.

http://www.creativegrowth.com/bradshaw_shame%201.pdf

This is the PDF for a good book about toxic shame.

even if toxic shame isn't your particular issue, reading this can still lead the way for thinking of your self as an emotionally complex being.


----------



## Pyrite (Mar 25, 2014)

I'm still leaving, but that might change depending on the response this thread gets.

If I see a response from someone other than the people I expect then I'll stay and post another.

If not, I'll leave.


----------



## marry1985 (Dec 1, 2013)

You are funny!


----------



## eddy1886 (Oct 11, 2012)

Chronic stress as a result of shame has played a major part in my life as far back as i can remember...Toxic shame is an excellent way to describe it...It is crippling in its worst form and holds potentially great people back from living wonderful lives...I also believe its as result of being mistreated by others..Bullies etc...Bad people can force decent people into believing they are not good enough...In my own case a combination of being bullied in school for being smart along with a father who constantly told me i was wrong or not good enough and a mother who controlled me like a robot led me into a life of total insecurity and being ashamed of everything i did...I learned to take no pride in my achievements as i was always forced into believing they were sub par achievements and not good enough for the bullies on the sports team or the father who couldnt take anything less than perfection or the mother who wanted you to clean your dish as you ate your meal..

Put alcohol and drug abuse into that mix and your left with a broken human..i.e. ME!


----------



## Midnight (Jul 16, 2011)

Can definitely say shame about my appearance is a constant stressor in my life. I just can't accept certain aspects of myself.

Thanks for posting.


----------



## Pyrite (Mar 25, 2014)

Midnight said:


> Can definitely say shame about my appearance is a constant stressor in my life. I just can't accept certain aspects of myself.
> 
> Thanks for posting.


You'll never accept everything about yourself, everybody will always have something about themselves they would change or go back and undo. Sometimes, learning to no be bothered by things you can't accept then trying to force acceptance.


----------



## Pyrite (Mar 25, 2014)

eddy1886 said:


> Chronic stress as a result of shame has played a major part in my life as far back as i can remember...Toxic shame is an excellent way to describe it...It is crippling in its worst form and holds potentially great people back from living wonderful lives...I also believe its as result of being mistreated by others..Bullies etc...Bad people can force decent people into believing they are not good enough...In my own case a combination of being bullied in school for being smart along with a father who constantly told me i was wrong or not good enough and a mother who controlled me like a robot led me into a life of total insecurity and being ashamed of everything i did...I learned to take no pride in my achievements as i was always forced into believing they were sub par achievements and not good enough for the bullies on the sports team or the father who couldnt take anything less than perfection or the mother who wanted you to clean your dish as you ate your meal..
> 
> Put alcohol and drug abuse into that mix and your left with a broken human..i.e. ME!


Recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it. This is a lot, but thinking about it in terms of toxic shame unites many of these issues, which make it much easier to handle then if you did it all separate!


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

ok. Eddy1886, Pyrite and Midnight have also written about shame in here.

And i have it. I've had it all my life. Co-dependency, Narcissistic traits, Shame, Guilt, low self-worth, fake Pride, fake personas, people pleasing, ...fuck i have to go deep into my matrix to unravel this shit


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

heyLow said:


> ok. Eddy1886, Pyrite and Midnight have also written about shame in here.
> 
> And i have it. I've had it all my life. Co-dependency, Narcissistic traits, Shame, Guilt, low self-worth, fake Pride, fake personas, people pleasing, ...fuck i have to go deep into my matrix to unravel this shit


I second this, and firmly believe in this topic in general. There's toxic shame all up and down my dad's side of the family and my sister is basically crippled by it. At 28 and after dealing with a lifetime of DP-DR episodes, anxiety, depression, etc., I've really delved into my past to try and figure out the source of my condition and I repeatedly come back to shame and rejection by my father.

In "Feeling Unreal" Simeon says rejection is at the heart of DP and I could not agree more, at least in my case. Yes, DP is the result of chronic stress and yes DP is to some extent a defense mechanism gone wrong, but I really believe the chronic stress in many cases is a specific type of chronic stress (i.e., being the recipient of rejection, shame, narcissism, lack of love and attention) and that our defense mechanism is a specific reaction to that specific stress (i.e., trying to disappear, hide inside our heads, become someone else or whomever we needed to be in order to appease our guardian who made us feel we weren't going to be loved because of who we were).

I remember hearing an interview last year with a woman who suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder), which falls on the dissociative spectrum, and basically the way she told it her condition was a result of being sexually assaulted by a close family friend for years growing up. Checking out and creating a whole new reality with different personas was her way of coping psychologically with being raped on a regular basis. Unfortunately the combination of trauma and her coping mechanisms left her severely mentally ill moving forward. What was interesting, however, was how healthy she was and conscious she was of her condition years later as an adult after she sought help and worked her way through her childhood trauma. Though she still had DID she was able to live a fairly normal life and have a successful career.

Though people with DP don't necessarily have a strong connection to the level of trauma suffered by the woman above, the principles of our conditions follow the same dissociative guidelines. They are a way of attempting to survive a childhood in which we were abused, neglected and shamed by our caretakers. If you do not feel you are accepted as a child you will find a way to try and remedy this because your survival depends on it. If you do not feel loved you will try and change yourself in order to receive the love all humans require to meet our emotional needs. I'm of the believe DP is a disorder in which our imagination was overly utilized in a particularly stressful manner to try and adapt to a stressful environment as children. I'm no psychologist and I don't know any of this for sure, but given how much time I've put into examining my life, my family, my condition, this is the best I can come up with. Perhaps it's different for others -- in fact, I imagine it is -- but for me, this is what makes sense.


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

i had emotional abuse from friends, acquaintances and society, not from my parents. But parents never taught me how to stand my ground and be myself. I always escaped my parents. because they are too good people and i wanted to be more tough like a criminal or something. My issues are so complicated. but i know after years of external emotional abuse i started to abuse myself. i din't care abut my health anymore. would do anything to feel good. better. weed. alcohol. u name it...also i had a slight sexual abuse by a fitness instructor that is still vague to me a i don't know if he was giving me a massage or rubbing himself to me. whatever! i know the cause of dp for me is quite psychological. years of suffering emotional abuse from the environment, low self worth and bullying made me a narcissist. now i have to put things in perspective again...


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yup completely agree with this. Shame is of course the fear that you weren't good enough or aren't good enough. All negative emotions to me are fear thus anxiety.

The problem we create is that we believe these negative emotions are 'bad' and therefore need to be suppressed or got rid of.. not expressed. To cry or express shame to others is ironically labelled as shameful.. so the shame festers and isn't expressed.

For me, my entire belief system is based on the lie that I am not good enough. That I must suffer to feel relief or joy. And when I do get glimpses of these things, that I am not worthy enough to live with them for any extended period. So suffering is welcomed back in to my life because it is what I know, and the unknown is scary and uncontrollable. I know shame and suffering and have dealt with it most of my life, so the pattern repeats itself. To the point that when 'friends' bully me I accept it because of my lack of self-esteem, and that this is 'normal'. To challenge this is extremely difficult as it leaves us with the unknown which we have no experience of how to tackle.

The ego or character that I am therefor has these core beliefs and through 'free will' tries to replicate the pattern that we know our life to be from past events. But what I have found is that this control of attention only leads to suffering because it is attached to a character (my thoughts, beliefs, memories) that believes that suffering is normality. So I have found myself constantly causing my own suffering. I could remove myself from these 'friends' but I took abuse for years.. it was seemingly a choice. For me recently, dropping free will or control of attention has been extremely beneficial. During meditation I just watch my attention and let it do what it wants, let it wander, and don't activate any movement. Simply put; don't move.

This technique is the basis of mindfulness, although that is a dead word to me. It has been over complicated and people focus on the breath or body which just activates that control or free will to focus on something for relief. ACEM meditation seems to be closer to this, or 'do nothing' meditation by shinzen young (youtube it). When we let the mind wander in this way, it activates the medial temporal cortex which is decreased in size with DPD. This area is involved in processing trauma.. wondering why DP causes it to decrease in size? Because our free will is over active to find the escape, when we really need to let our mind and body express these traumas which it does with time, once we learn to let go of the wheel


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

heyLow said:


> i had emotional abuse from friends, acquaintances and society, not from my parents. But parents never taught me how to stand my ground and be myself. I always escaped my parents. because they are too good people and i wanted to be more tough like a criminal or something. My issues are so complicated. but i know after years of external emotional abuse i started to abuse myself. i din't care abut my health anymore. would do anything to feel good. better. weed. alcohol. u name it...also i had a slight sexual abuse by a fitness instructor that is still vague to me a i don't know if he was giving me a massage or rubbing himself to me. whatever! i know the cause of dp for me is quite psychological. years of suffering emotional abuse from the environment, low self worth and bullying made me a narcissist. now i have to put things in perspective again...


In my first few therapy sessions I almost quit because my therapist wanted me to dig into the past and analyze my parents, which I thought was totally unnecessary. My parents are both good people, hard workers and always provided for my sister and me. Naturally, I took my therapist's suggestion almost as an insult. I was very protective of both my parents and would never spend an inordinate amount of time disparaging them.

But I was determined to get to the bottom of my condition. Why was I where I was? Why was my sister so messed up? Why did I have to suffer so much? Why have I had anxiety and depression off and on my whole life?

The fact is, DP happens for a reason. Even if your parents look like model citizens from your standpoint that doesn't necessarily mean they are. If you were raised in a dysfunctional family then dysfunction is normal to you, therefore you won't ever suspect your parents of being at fault in you ending up the way you are. It took me years and years of detailed examination to finally figure this stuff out and I never would have if I hadn't gone through my second episode of DP, but it's finally become clear to me that little things matter way more than I ever thought.

I really think a lot of people who end up with addiction problems, DP and other mental illnesses have no clue where they come from and so it's easy to just blame it on genes. But that's only one aspect of the equation and often times it's a small one. Little things like the way your parent looks at you, touches you, ignores you (actions which can seem harmless from afar) really make a difference. My father, by all accounts, is a good man. But he lives inside his own mind, is obsessed with his job and always puts himself before everyone. This sort of behavior can absolutely wreck havoc on an infant.

I guess my point is just that I hope people here take a really good long look at their upbringing and spend lots of time in therapy examining where things went wrong. If you look long enough, you'll often find what you set out to discover.


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Billy D.P. said:


> In my first few therapy sessions I almost quit because my therapist wanted me to dig into the past and analyze my parents, which I thought was totally unnecessary. My parents are both good people, hard workers and always provided for my sister and me. Naturally, I took my therapist's suggestion almost as an insult. I was very protective of both my parents and would never spend an inordinate amount of time disparaging them.
> 
> But I was determined to get to the bottom of my condition. Why was I where I was? Why was my sister so messed up? Why did I have to suffer so much? Why have I had anxiety and depression off and on my whole life?
> 
> ...


i know what you mean. And i have dug for dysfunction. There's not any dysfunction in my family based on what harrington talks about in his program and what i've read online. My parents care about me. They are NOT narcissists. Everybody does like them. They live pretty normal. Don't abuse any drugs. The only thing to mention is that my mother has some anxiety because of the amount of work she has done in her life and is doing now. Also my father has a temper. I mean if you insult him even in an indirect way he would get mad. and that's pretty much everything about them. All the other times they are welcoming and kind and supportive. But they never taught me so many social instructions and rules. And when i ask them why they say "we thought you knew all that, you were so smart"

like how to defend myself. and how to make social connections and how important they are. They might have taught me things but not everything i had to knew.

of course there are so many problems in my family system. But they are not dysfunctions by it's definition. I have to dig deeper though.

In general, not having a secure sense of self which i was never aware of, led to social anxiety (16), low-self worth(17), shame and guilt. Those things led to Narcissism (19) . Narcissism brought on a fake persona. I was living a fake persona to defend myself from all the problems (20) and had a great happy life in my head. Some social incidents made my fake persona shake a little (21) and finally being ashamed in front of "friends" while high on marijuana, made me totally dissociate form parts of myself (8 months ago), and totally broke that fake persona i was carrying for 2-3 years. now i have had dp for 8 months. in other means i don't have a secure sense of self to carry myself through. i just don't have the tools. social and emotional.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

"My parents care about me" - I believed this for years. I didn't fully commit to therapy and always swerved talking about my family. I didn't fully investigate, until through meditation repressed memories came about. Some self reflection has helped, today I am going to start just writing down what I FEEL.. then burn it lol

"They are NOT narcissists" - may well be untrue. Sorry the majority of the human population are narcissists. We are living in a culture of self. And it's growing worse. I believed this about my parents for years but it just isn't true. When I look back, they said they did things for my best interests, when in fact it was in THEIR best interest. Why? Because I felt like shit and they seemed to be doing ok. I think a lot of DPD victims are people pleasers, trying to fit the social norm because they deny their OWN feelings to try to facilitate OTHERS feelings and beliefs. Bullying seems pretty common as a result of this.

My theory of my own DP is that my parents were narcissists through fear, stress and their upbringing. It sounds like I am getting at them here, but they are only recreating the ignorance they have been taught. They then blame my brother for things being bad when we were younger. It gets me angry because a child is ONLY the result of their circumstances. It is so clear to me why he had anger issues as a result of that chaotic house I grew up in, and yet 'ADHD' was blamed.

"They live pretty normal" - how do you know? We live in our own worlds with our own beliefs that creates a biased view of the world. I would define how most of us define 'normal' as what we have experienced in our lives. We can't see outside of our own world into someone elses so we assume we are normal.

"My father has a temper" - snap. My dad has a bad temper now, it was far worse when I was young which was terrifying and unpredictable. My childhood was ruined by it, I was constantly called stupid. My mum would make me sit in my room for hours until my dad returned home to 'think about what I had done'. A lot of the time they were just accidents, dropping things or being clumsy because I was so filled with anxiety.

I hope you don't think I am getting at you. For all I know your descriptions could well be fully accurate and I am putting my own biases over the top of your words. From my experience I had built up all these beliefs that were lies, because the truth was too unbearable. Once I opened my mind to the possibility my parents didn't bring me up 'normally' things started to be remembered. And I realise there is no way it could be described as that. I should have been removed from that house as a child. It damaged me to the point where I am only just making steps towards recovery. People seem to think a narcissist is a bad term that we don't want to describe our parents as. In my eyes, narcissism is self confidence. Sure, over the top sometimes to the point of no empathy for other people. But I believe part of DP is too much empathy for other people, and zero empathy for ourselves. All emotions, thoughts and symptoms are met with harsh criticism. We need to learn to be kind to ourselves, and not change our emotions and beliefs to please other people


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

Interesting that I too have a father with terrible anger problems, making it three for three of us commenting in this thread. Do you think that's just a coincidence? I think not. We're all talking about the same things here: narcissism, people pleasing, identity issues, anxiety, depression, social dysfunction. These are not simply inherited qualities. You do not inherit being a people pleaser, having low self worth, shame and living inside your own head. These are the result of what we were taught and the experiences that followed throughout our lives. It's interesting how similar my family, my coping mechanisms, my life story, everything is to you, heyLow, as well I'm sure as Broken and many others on this site who live with this condition. There are undoubtedly themes that plague DP sufferers and we're hitting on them in this thread: shame, self esteem, anxiety, bullying, and on and on and on. In addition to having a parent who has anger problems I think people should look closely and see if their other parent (often the mother) has codependent qualities. I'm a firm believer it's this binary codependant-narcissist relationship that can be toxic to children and facilitate DP, as happened in my case.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh completely agree. My mum was completely codependent. But I think rather than willfully enabling and allowing his anger, it was more out of fear. Then I or my brother would quickly be demonised and blame would be exaggerated by her, almost to excuse my dad's ridiculous amount of rage.

There are other things about my father that I wouldn't want to discuss here, as the site is going to shit and should information be leaked I don't want to risk being bribed. I have said this before though so I will say it again; he was (and is) a literal psychopath. When I was young my brother asked me to call my mum a cow.. I did it to cheer her up as I was naive. She smacked me round the head and wouldn't stop crying for hours. My dad came home and his way of silencing me was twisting my ear until I stopped. This memory only came back to me recently.. I'm sure there are more hidden delights. From my experience though, suppressed memories are an actual thing. So people need to remain open minded. You could well have built up a view of your upbringing of what you were TOLD to believe rather than the reality. If a lie is repeated to you enough times, it starts to sound true.. but then if it's repeated too much you start to doubt it again? Everytime I see my parents, and I mean EVERYTIME, they will say how awful my brother was when we were younger. This toxic, awful lie hides their shame and blames him. He doesnt have DPD but has drinking issues and sometimes sleepwalks.. both are related. Because he has bought the lie that he was to blame for the way things were when we were young. And it simply isn't true


----------



## davinizi (Mar 9, 2016)

> Little things like the way your parent looks at you, touches you, ignores you (actions which can seem harmless from afar) really make a difference.


----------



## davinizi (Mar 9, 2016)

> i know what you mean. And i have dug for dysfunction. There's not any dysfunction in my family based on what harrington talks about in his program and what i've read online. My parents care about me. They are NOT narcissists. Everybody does like them.


Sorry but when you say 'everybody' likes them, why is that evidence that they are not narcissists? I'm not saying they are, but you also have covert narcissists who project an image of themselves as 'very good' which can make them very likable amongst many people when in reality they have ulterior motives (not necessarily towards everyone).

You might find this video interesting about porous ego boundaries.

The therapist in the video says children need honest, direct communication. If you say your parents are 'too good' type of people they may have had problems with communicating in a clear, direct manner and setting boundaries..the therapist says if parents were not able to communicate that way, they may not have been abusive (as in the sense of throwing cigarettes at you) but that is still abuse towards the child and denying that abuse has occurred, can persevere the issues you have.

Your parents sound like people pleasers, so it makes sense they didn't taught you to set boundaries with other people which led others to abuse you. It's also very traumatizing when parents don't defend you when you need it.

The same therapist from the video above, also made a vid with

*Two Tips For Treating Toxic Shame*


----------



## davinizi (Mar 9, 2016)

davinizi said:


> > Little things like the way your parent looks at you, touches you, ignores you (actions which can seem harmless from afar) really make a difference.


Apparently the majority of my comment wasn't posted the first time I hit the 'post' button, so I try it again.

I wanted to confirm what you said here, because I just copy/pasted some interesting stuff from a psychology article in another thread that talks about the freeze response and how it's related to dissociating and how it can happen quickly, especially with children who for example receive a certain look from their parent which may be enough to dissociate:

Under such unnerving circumstances, *"freezing up"* or *"numbing out"*-in a word, *dissociating* from the here and now-is about the only and (in various instances), best thing you can do. Being physically, mentally, and *emotionally immobilized* by your consternation permits you not to feel the harrowing enormity of what's happening to you, which in your hyperaroused state might threaten your very sanity. In such instances some of the chemicals (i.e., endorphins) you thereby secrete function as an analgesic, so the pain of any injury (to your body or psyche) is experienced with far less intensity.

Additionally, if you're not putting up a fight, the person or animal aggressing against you just might lose interest in continuing their attack. But whatever the provocation, if you can't make the assailant disappear, you're much better off *"disappearing" yourself*, by blocking out what's much too scary to take in. So, in its own way, the freeze response to trauma is-if only at the time-quite as adaptive as the fight/flight response.

Keep in mind that if you're a small child, your developmental capacity to protect yourself is markedly limited. So, rationally or not, you're likely to experience a whole host of situations as threatening to your survival. *Merely a look of rejection or scorn in the eyes of a disapproving parent, for instance, can make you feel so uncared for, so unloved and abandoned, that you may feel compelled to numb yourself out*. And this is why the freeze response occurs far more commonly in children than in adults.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201507/trauma-and-the-freeze-response-good-bad-or-both


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> "My parents care about me" - I believed this for years. I didn't fully commit to therapy and always swerved talking about my family. I didn't fully investigate, until through meditation repressed memories came about. Some self reflection has helped, today I am going to start just writing down what I FEEL.. then burn it lol
> 
> "They are NOT narcissists" - may well be untrue. Sorry the majority of the human population are narcissists. We are living in a culture of self. And it's growing worse. I believed this about my parents for years but it just isn't true. When I look back, they said they did things for my best interests, when in fact it was in THEIR best interest. Why? Because I felt like shit and they seemed to be doing ok. I think a lot of DPD victims are people pleasers, trying to fit the social norm because they deny their OWN feelings to try to facilitate OTHERS feelings and beliefs. Bullying seems pretty common as a result of this.
> 
> ...


seems that u had a tough upbringing.reminding you and your brother about things of the past doesn't seem to be a healthy thing to do. there are so many issues to discuss regarding my family system. And what i firmly believe is that characteristics, behaviors, and functions of it (NOT ALL of those) are considered healthy psychologically. There are so many biased views regarding the way to live that my parents hold. But they let me choose my own life and my own behavior ultimately. Shame; this is what i've experienced from my early childhood. As anyone could. It's an emotion. But the way people internalize and view the emotion, is different. Being shamed, ashamed, humiliated,... led to a low self worth for me over time. I lost m coolness. I had a flow when i was younger. So chill and so happy. but in time, that turned into me and was suppressed by negative self beliefs. I was never aware of my pain. I would smoke weed and go over my past and resolve y issues and it was then that i saw images, memories, feelings, hidden ones that had led to my anxiety. So weed was changing the way i was looking at myself and the world. and my self-perception changed dramatically in a course of 1 year.

look friends, i'm 99% sure that therapy and psychological work is the answer for me.

SGB, sure is a way to go. still need more evidence for it.

but ive recently found a trans girl who has made it to the other side and snapped out of dpdr after 26 years of having it. She had had it from 3-4 to like 29. And she is back to herself, back to reality after a lot of hard work she had done for herself. and what she talks about the most? Shame. self-perception. world-perception.

Anyway. Dpdr started for me right after i was humiliated ,shamed , and ignored by my "friends" while i was high. Then the second time that it was made chronic, i was high, i was feeling really down then i saw myself in a rally creepy shape and i was ashamed of who i was. deep down. beneath everything. i was not ok. i was dark. filled with sorrow. ashamed of the things i was doing in my life. and 2 seconds later BAM!! Chronic dp.

Is it just bs that we are all talking about family trauma/ problems/ ignorance/... ? No. though i'm sure they will come and see this and say: " stupid they are"

well just check over the recovery stories. there are plenty of the ones who have just adopted to it. It's not impossible to live with dp. I AM living my life. but not "recovered". i'm just a shell walking in a dreamland. Those people never talk or think about symptoms they simply get over the OCD thought loop part of dp and claim they are recovered.

There's a lot of stories that does include "i feel in my body again". "i feel like myself again", "i'm feeling 100% real again" ,... Those are the ones that have "recovered". As recovery is not word for dp. It's more of a fight. It's not a brain damage. It's totally about Self-perception and World-perception.

based on what i've read on dpselfhelp, reddit,.. , Getting out of dpdr is hard hard work. Not just visiting a psych once a week/month/... to discuss stuff. I believe it's a combo. of a lot of factors all together working for us to become whole again. and for that to happen must accept all aspects of ourselves. which a lot of us can't, or won't.

Billy d.p , i'm not surprised to hear that. so many of us share the same qualities, and yet they say dp is not psychological. A great majority suffering from dp that had dealt with shame, anxiety, low self worth, narcissism, ocd, adhd,... are among us. i haven't seen anyone who claims he has had no emotional trauma/ problem, family issues ,... in here.

My father is an open-minded fellow. He talks and decides by logic. not on pure emotions.There are some fixed ideas he carry about the world and the right healthy way to live.but most of the time he's a caring man who helps people out in difficult situations, makes a lot of effort for our family to be happy and great. So overall he doesn't meet the criteria for NPD. he might have some narcissistic traits though. my mother is too caring that she forgets herself sometimes and just tries to be there for us and help us out in every situation. she is not solely dependent on my father or anyone else. but she loves me too much that sometimes i feel guilty. she's too caring that i feel like i've done nothing for her. did i have to do anything? well now with dp i have a lot of questions.

i don't want to say now there is no cause out there in their behavior for my dp. but it is not ALL. those things my be contributing to the birth of a monster i was creating of myself in my head.

sometimes ignorance and abuse is not done by saying or doing things. The way people look at you is so important. when i was trying my best to transfer inner meanings to people they sometimes acted like "ok i'm listening" but there was "you are dumb and talking shit" look their eyes. i would know if they did care about what i was saying or not. One major problem for me is that i feel like some people (among friends, professors, family members..) don't take me seriously. That is a fucking big barrier for me. If i don't stand my ground and take responsibility talk loud and use body language, they won't listen to what i'm even saying. In university i would give my deep understandings of matters and the professor would take it like a joke and everyone would laugh. shit is too long sorry. i write stuff to see if you could still relate.


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

davinizi said:


> Sorry but when you say 'everybody' likes them, why is that evidence that they are not narcissists? I'm not saying they are, but you also have covert narcissists who project an image of themselves as 'very good' which can make them very likable amongst many people when in reality they have ulterior motives (not necessarily towards everyone).
> 
> You might find this video interesting about porous ego boundaries.
> 
> ...


they are for sure "not people pleasers".

what i meant by that sentence is that no one is offended or insulted or made unhappy, uncomfortable by their behavior. everyone likes to spend time with them. Yes. my mother i believe, has a tendency to please people. that she is too emphatic and sensitive. sometimes i look back and see my mother has always done good even to the people who treated her wrong. and that is one thing i don't want to do [anymore]. did u see what i did there? i'm becoming aware of all the wrong beliefs and reflexes of me. and believe me. my parents are not overt or covert narcissists. My confidence was decreasing each day because i was losing boundaries and my confidence was turning into narcissism. in fact i had a lot of self deprecating habits that i'm just becoming aware of.

thanks for the vids btw davizi


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

You said a lot there but a couple of things struck me. You said something like 'dp is a fight'. I would disagree. There is a Buddhist saying "when you walk, the foot feels the foot".. so the pressure of the ground squeezes the flesh of the foot that triggers nerves.. light hits our rods and cones in our eye so we only 'see' the affect on the eyes surface.. hearing is hairs in the ear trembling by sound. Emotion and thought is internal. So we think we interact with the world, but we only ever see self. Why is this relevant? Because dp affects ALL stimuli (at least to me) and the reason is the self is completely traumatised. This is caused by the fff response. So we have internally found something to conquer, destroy or remove. And that is where we fail. We need to show whatever issues we have compassion and kindness. We need proper rest not fighting and more struggling and suffering. I wrestled with symptoms for years.. it doesn't work! Only recently have they improved by being lazy.. that sounds weird right? I mean surely I need to make an effort, get all my weapons out to fight this thing, do do do, strive strive strive? Nope. It's exhausting you amd you need a break. I meditate and let my attention be lazy and wonder where it wants, let thoughts come and say what they want.. or no thoughts. Or emotions or numbness. I literally say 'Fuck it' to everything. I don't label good and bad experiences because then there's a struggle again. I have to maintain the good and get rid of the bad. NOBODY LIVES LIKE THIS. Nobody mentally/emotionally healthy anyway. Amd thay is because it is an impossible game to play. We cannot choose what emotional or mental or physical feelings are being felt. Your fucked. So just let yourself be fucked. I could be wrong here, but I have been making progress with it. Just sit with your attention and say to yourself "once I KNOW 100% which way to go, what to do, and how to do it, I will go at it full force. But until I have that certainty I am going to rest".


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

davinizi said:


> Apparently the majority of my comment wasn't posted the first time I hit the 'post' button, so I try it again.
> 
> I wanted to confirm what you said here, because I just copy/pasted some interesting stuff from a psychology article in another thread that talks about the freeze response and how it's related to dissociating and how it can happen quickly, especially with children who for example receive a certain look from their parent which may be enough to dissociate:
> 
> ...


This was a great read. Thank you for posting.

As the article mentions, dissociating can be directly attributed to childhood trauma -- specifically the coping mechanisms developed to deal with your environment. The author talks about fight or flight and how when those options aren't available you freeze. If you think about it (and this has been my theory for a while), there's various circumstances where you'll feel trapped (which is the precursor for freezing), but the most obvious outside of being overpowered physically is simply being in a body or at an age where fighting or fleeing aren't options (i.e., when you're still an infant or very young child). At the age or two kids can walk fairly fast and even run, but up until then it's basically impossible to move if you ever feel threatened, and so it would make sense that under stress children of such a young age retreat into their heads and use their imaginations to pretend like they're disappearing.

I had colic as a child and it was supposedly this event that led to my parents' marriage nearly unraveling and my father's anger problems being exacerbated to the point of being physically threatening. My parents have always told me stories about how my dad would put his hand over my face and smother me when he was at the breaking point of trying to deal with my screaming, but they of course both just laugh and play like it was no big deal. I don't know if you've spent a lot of time around an infant, but they're essentially the most sensitive, emotionally fragile creatures on the planet. Even the slightest sense of feeling physically endangered, especially by a parent, can wreck havoc on a child for a lifetime.

The funny thing about all this is that if not for my most recent DP episode I'm not sure I'd ever have figured all this stuff out. My family has a culture wherein mental illness is shunned and all problems are brushed under the rug. It basically took a catastrophic, life-threatening mental illness for me to demand the truth, but despite all my pain (which has been otherworldly), I'm in a way glad it happened just so that I can finally understand what happened to me and why I have DP to begin with.


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

heyLow said:


> I would smoke weed and go over my past and resolve y issues and it was then that i saw images, memories, feelings, hidden ones that had led to my anxiety. So weed was changing the way i was looking at myself and the world. and my self-perception changed dramatically in a course of 1 year.


Again, it's crazy how much I can relate. I thought I was the only one who did this -- the only one in the world! Then again, that's what I thought of my entire life until I found DP and realized there was a name and condition for what I've always experienced.

I started doing drugs at about age 13, smoking weed regularly by 14, and when I was 15 I got a concussion and after that my entire life changed. My perceptions started to slowly feel different, I immediately lost my self esteem, dumped my girlfriend, retreated into my head, became frightened of what others thought of me and essentially have battled DP off and on ever since. But I remember in those early days I'd get really, really high and get really really uncomfortable in my own body, everything seemed surreal and I'd literally have conversations inside my own head and try and talk about my problems with a fictitious psychiatrist. It sounds nuts, but my brain was totally incapable of handling weed and as is the case with many people here I became fully depersonalized from that point onward.

Unfortunately due to my family system wherein we don't talk about our problems, especially mental illnesses, I attempted to bury this part of my life which resulted in what could only be described as PTSD. But, I was essentially healed of DP until a few years back when I took a hit of acid and got DP 100 times worse than before. It was only then was I forced to examine my life more closely, and thank god for that. I imagine I'll have DP for a few more years but I've come a long way and am on the path toward recovery. Once I get there I'm never going back, never ever ever ever again.


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> There is a Buddhist saying "when you walk, the foot feels the foot".. so the pressure of the ground squeezes the flesh of the foot that triggers nerves.. light hits our rods and cones in our eye so we only 'see' the affect on the eyes surface.. hearing is hairs in the ear trembling by sound. Emotion and thought is internal. So we think we interact with the world, but we only ever see self. Why is this relevant? Because dp affects ALL stimuli (at least to me) and the reason is the self is completely traumatised.


Buddhists also cause and trigger dissociation for so many people. i agree that thoughts are internal though but We ARE interacting with the world. Just breathing here lying on the ground, i'm taking in oxygen and giving out co2. We see the world and based on what we understand/ our needs and emotions, we take steps to communicate with the surrounding stimuli. And again yes trauma both constant stress or sudden shock, or the combination of both, could lead to shutting down parts of cognition and processing.



Broken said:


> We need proper rest not fighting and more struggling and suffering. I wrestled with symptoms for years.. it doesn't work! Only recently have they improved by being lazy.. that sounds weird right? I mean surely I need to make an effort, get all my weapons out to fight this thing, do do do, strive strive strive? Nope. It's exhausting you amd you need a break. I meditate and let my attention be lazy and wonder where it wants, let thoughts come and say what they want.. or no thoughts. Or emotions or numbness. I literally say 'Fuck it' to everything. I don't label good and bad experiences because then there's a struggle again. I have to maintain the good and get rid of the bad. NOBODY LIVES LIKE THIS. Nobody mentally/emotionally healthy anyway. Amd thay is because it is an impossible game to play. We cannot choose what emotional or mental or physical feelings are being felt. Your fucked. So just let yourself be fucked. I could be wrong here, but I have been making progress with it. Just sit with your attention and say to yourself "once I KNOW 100% which way to go, what to do, and how to do it, I will go at it full force. But until I have that certainty I am going to rest".


I'm not fighting with "symptoms". when i say it's a fight. I mean that i have to analyze my inner habits. the way i think, i act, i do, i talk and see how does my mind regulates my behavior. To simply become aware of the unconscious habits that lead to regret, shame, sadness and self-hatred. Dp is a fight. I have to fight for all disowned parts of my self to become whole again. I'm not fighting symptoms i'm fighting the habits. The processing system. Internalizing shit that people tell me is a great contributor. I don't have boundaries. In fact i never had healthy boundaries and healthy relationships. I always wanted to be popular because i lacked confidence. And resting is not gonna make a fucking change. Sure, i have to be calm and focused along the way but not giving fuck about anything is the exact result and objective of dp. Not caring. Showing NO emotion. Being lazy and fatigued. You're diving deep in it and i don't know what will be the outcome but i've just been figuring out my life lately as a result of dissociation and i'm not gonna stop fighting my unhealthy habits and wrong core beliefs until i see improvement.I used the word " i " here to simply imply that this is MY WAY. and yours may be different.



Broken said:


> We cannot choose what emotional or mental or physical feelings are being felt. Your fucked. So just let yourself be fucked. I could be wrong here, but I have been making progress with it. Just sit with your attention and say to yourself "once I KNOW 100% which way to go, what to do, and how to do it, I will go at it full force. But until I have that certainty I am going to rest".


Yes we can. We can choose what we believe, what we want and what we get. It's our decision and responsibility. By choosing the right lifestyle habits, setting goals that define us, achieving goals, making healthy relationships, healthy boundaries, working on all aspects of our psyche and integrating them and by simply allowing ourselves to see through the shadows of our soul it is definitely possible to experience a brighter, deeper and meaningful lifetime of happiness. With or Without DPDR. I'm not fucked. if you want to believe that for yourself is totally fine. I have a psychosomatic/ dissociative illness caused by wrong habits and wrong core beliefs about my identity and the world triggered by schock. That's all.



Billy D.P. said:


> The funny thing about all this is that if not for my most recent DP episode I'm not sure I'd ever have figured all this stuff out. My family has a culture wherein mental illness is shunned and all problems are brushed under the rug. It basically took a catastrophic, life-threatening mental illness for me to demand the truth, but despite all my pain (which has been otherworldly), I'm in a way glad it happened just so that I can finally understand what happened to me and why I have DP to begin with.


that is how i see this thing. if it never happened to me. i would go on pleasing people while putting on a fake happy confident persona of a narcissist who wants vengeance from everybody.

This disorder had made me think about my past deeply. And i am just coming to the terms with years of suffering low self worth. Thinking/feeling like no matter what i do is never enough. The over achiever syndrome. Perfectionism. there are so many other stuff to uncover for me.



Billy D.P. said:


> I started doing drugs at about age 13, smoking weed regularly by 14, and when I was 15 I got a concussion and after that my entire life changed. My perceptions started to slowly feel different, I immediately lost my self esteem, dumped my girlfriend, retreated into my head, became frightened of what others thought of me and essentially have battled DP off and on ever since. But I remember in those early days I'd get really, really high and get really really uncomfortable in my own body, everything seemed surreal and I'd literally have conversations inside my own head and try and talk about my problems with a fictitious psychiatrist. It sounds nuts, but my brain was totally incapable of handling weed and as is the case with many people here I became fully depersonalized from that point onward.


Smoking weed showed me how most of my negative self beliefs were just illusions. Showed me how low self worth was contributing to my shitty social life. and while high i would think deeply about my problems and suddenly EUREA! i would find and solve it. i would solve my issues one by one. and they happened on their own. randomly. But smoking weed had it's own cons. and ultimately caused shame for me in front of my "friends"



Billy D.P. said:


> Unfortunately due to my family system wherein we don't talk about our problems, especially mental illnesses, I attempted to bury this part of my life which resulted in what could only be described as PTSD. But, I was essentially healed of DP until a few years back when I took a hit of acid and got DP 100 times worse than before. It was only then was I forced to examine my life more closely, and thank god for that. I imagine I'll have DP for a few more years but I've come a long way and am on the path toward recovery. Once I get there I'm never going back, never ever ever ever again.


we don't talk about it either. Not that we resist it. i just don't discuss it with my family. they don't have psychiatrist or therapist's knowledge to begin with and i don't want to end up wasting my time describing symptoms.

i'm glad that your walking toward freedom. it may take months not years if you make it your number 1 priority.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Heylow - good to see you aren't being nasty despite us clearly having opposite views on these topics. I am being genuine NOT sarcastic just to clarify :mrgreen: our intention is so often lost in black and white, because we plaster our own bias on top of it. And it's good to see we can exchange our ideas without arguing or banging our own drum to try and convince the other.

Your path has lead you to the point where you feel like you need to fight and that's ok. In my perspective I never won the fight despite years of it.. however, for all I know the fighting was completely necessary and needed to be burnt up and got out of my system. Or I may actually be winning now as a result of my fighting.. who really knows. Cause and affect is so impossible, and the human mind always wants to see things in binary terms to compare this factor with that and build a correlation. But life and the world is so much more muddy, grey and nuanced than that.. it's impossible to say for sure what the hell is going on, or why my DP is improving



> I'm not fighting with "symptoms". when i say it's a fight. I mean that i have to analyze my inner habits. the way i think, i act, i do, i talk and see how does my mind regulates my behavior. To simply become aware of the unconscious habits that lead to regret, shame, sadness and self-hatred. Dp is a fight. I have to fight for all disowned parts of my self to become whole again. I'm not fighting symptoms i'm fighting the habits.


I agree with you when you say we need to analyse inner habits. Self reflection has actually been vital for me the last few weeks. Where I would be inclined to disagree is to fight habits. Because I tried that and never won, and the cliche 'what you resist, persits' makes more sense to me than ever. If we relax and stop the fight we can almost zoom out to see the whole picture. Not to try and change it, change in the form of habits is most often natural and can't be forced. I used to believe 'I need to stop thinking. I think too much'. Whilst it is true, this then enforced the belief 'okay.. now I need to find a way to stop thinking'. Not only is it impossible, it lead to stress and even MORE thinking to stop thinking! It was literal madness. If you do what you always done, you get what you always got. Now my attitude towards thoughts is 'fuck it'. My attitude towards my symptoms is 'fuck it'. My attitude towards my utter exhaustion is 'fuck it'.

Apathy and indifference SEEM to be extremely helpful to me at the moment. My mind and body can rest, and I'm not giving myself limitations or boundaries or directions or effort to be applied or to find a solution, or to google everything, or to meditate, or to jog, or to eat well, or to try that medication, or to try that diet, or to try that new supplement, or to try that new therapy, or to try that new treatment, or to try yoga, or to sleep longer, or to sleep less, or to relax more, or to exercise more, or to think less, or to feel more, or to force myself to 'live life as I did before', or to read that new book that seems to offer hope, or to watch that youtube video where that guy recovered and guarantees the cure, or to try that new dodgy internet program where they have a 100% cure rate for DPD but its $500 so should I risk it..... (sorry for that list, but that used to literally be my life)



> Yes we can. We can choose what we believe, what we want and what we get. It's our decision and responsibility. By choosing the right lifestyle habits, setting goals that define us, achieving goals, making healthy relationships, healthy boundaries, working on all aspects of our psyche and integrating them and by simply allowing ourselves to see through the shadows of our soul it is definitely possible to experience a brighter, deeper and meaningful lifetime of happiness. With or Without DPDR. I'm not fucked. if you want to believe that for yourself is totally fine. I have a psychosomatic/ dissociative illness caused by wrong habits and wrong core beliefs about my identity and the world triggered by schock. That's all.


I have never chosen what I believed. When I am honest, belief just arises in me. I seemingly chose to believe that I wanted that Big mac meal.. but when I revisit what happened belief just spontaneously arose in me and I used that to make 'my choice'.. but even that is a pre determined belief. I didn't choose to believe the 'I want a big mac' thought, belief in the thought just happened. This is part of the cruelty of the modern world. People choose to overeat and become obese- I see it that they are suffering and food brings them relief. They didn't choose to suffer and they didn't choose to make food bring them relief. Just like an alcoholic doesn't, or a heroin addict or a gambler.. they get relief from their suffering. The bigger that suffering is the bigger the hit needs to be.

I'm not saying that I am not choosing a 'brighter, deeper and meaningful lifetime of happiness'. All I am saying is the struggle to stay within all the boundaries I created for myself WAS SUFFERING. I can't eat that food, I MUST meditate more, I should sleep better, I should do this or that and make more effort despite being exhausted all the time.

Okay I thought the "you're fucked" might be misinterpreted. Sorry for that. I AM fucked. The problem with this illness is there is relief and hope of recovery. If we were in a wheelchair with no chance of walking again we may come to conclusion quicker that I believe we need to. Which is to stop trying so god damn hard. If I was in a wheelchair and was told I couldn't walk again, sure I would keep trying to stand. For weeks or months.. but eventually would have to give up hope and resign myself to my circumstances... now. This is not me saying 'you have dp for life so deal with it'.. this is me saying the struggle and fight and energy spent on finding the answer is wasted time and effort and exhausting. DPD is exhaustion. I think our body is caught primarily because of denial of our symptoms. And of course that happens because they are awful. But I think the symptoms are a warning signal shouting at us to stop, change HOW we do things and rest. We are simply giving too much effort to things. That is my belief.

I don't expect a reply if you don't want to engage with this again, as you said all you had to. I am happy to agree to disagree. I'm not trying to win an argument (well I am if I am honest  ). I am just talking about MY experience and what I have found helpful. I am open minded to hearing what you have found gave you some relief from DP/DR and see if there is any common ground to help us both move forward towards recovery :mrgreen:


----------



## RedSky (Jan 11, 2017)

Billy D.P. said:


> Again, it's crazy how much I can relate. I thought I was the only one who did this -- the only one in the world! Then again, that's what I thought of my entire life until I found DP and realized there was a name and condition for what I've always experienced.
> 
> I started doing drugs at about age 13, smoking weed regularly by 14, and when I was 15 I got a concussion and after that my entire life changed. My perceptions started to slowly feel different, I immediately lost my self esteem, dumped my girlfriend, retreated into my head, became frightened of what others thought of me and essentially have battled DP off and on ever since. But I remember in those early days I'd get really, really high and get really really uncomfortable in my own body, everything seemed surreal and I'd literally have conversations inside my own head and try and talk about my problems with a fictitious psychiatrist. It sounds nuts, but my brain was totally incapable of handling weed and as is the case with many people here I became fully depersonalized from that point onward.
> 
> Unfortunately due to my family system wherein we don't talk about our problems, especially mental illnesses, I attempted to bury this part of my life which resulted in what could only be described as PTSD. But, I was essentially healed of DP until a few years back when I took a hit of acid and got DP 100 times worse than before. It was only then was I forced to examine my life more closely, and thank god for that. I imagine I'll have DP for a few more years but I've come a long way and am on the path toward recovery. Once I get there I'm never going back, never ever ever ever again.


Dude... this is me 100%

Minus the acid


----------



## Hedgehog fuzz (Dec 12, 2016)

im very similar as well


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> Heylow - good to see you aren't being nasty despite us clearly having opposite views on these topics. I am being genuine NOT sarcastic just to clarify :mrgreen: our intention is so often lost in black and white, because we plaster our own bias on top of it. And it's good to see we can exchange our ideas without arguing or banging our own drum to try and convince the other.
> 
> Your path has lead you to the point where you feel like you need to fight and that's ok. In my perspective I never won the fight despite years of it.. however, for all I know the fighting was completely necessary and needed to be burnt up and got out of my system. Or I may actually be winning now as a result of my fighting.. who really knows. Cause and affect is so impossible, and the human mind always wants to see things in binary terms to compare this factor with that and build a correlation. But life and the world is so much more muddy, grey and nuanced than that.. it's impossible to say for sure what the hell is going on, or why my DP is improving
> 
> ...


i'm pretty much open in my arguments and try my best to look carefully at the topic not to begin a fight. although we have contrasting views regarding this, I really appreciate your perspective.

So, when i say setting boundaries, i'm not talking about food or sex or exercise. I'm talking about my rights as a PERSON. So after 8 months of this "shit" i came to the conclusion that i was misusing myself. I never set healthy boundaries as a person and anybody could insult me, directly or indirectly. I was deriving myself of healthy human guards. I was open to discuss and open to insult. because i never made my boundaries clear.

Right now, i'm aware of what i say in conversations. i look at my words with most care. and now i see that i guide conversation either to criticism, self-deprecation, absurdity or tension. Sometimes a combination of all of them or some. Generally the way we guide a conversation with a human being, is affected by the way we perceive the other speaker and the topic. also the place and setting are also important factors. But i keep doing the same wrong things again and again. Humiliating myself. Not valuing my human right and principles. guiding the ("possible to enjoy ) conversation to a deep sad place. i used to hate people. and now i know why i was turning into a sad narcissist.

And this was just an example of all too many dysfunctions in my day to day behavior. Jealousy, self-hatred, shame, ... Anxiety stays for reasons. Trauma stays for reasons. I believe the cause of dpdr at least for me follows this consequences: being raised without vital instructions and warnings from parents =>> not accepting myself as a "PERSON" because of low social and emotional skills =>> using weed to cope with dysfunctional relationships and to tune to the environment =>> re-experiencing intense emotions of sadness and shame => being ejected from the body (of emotions and stability) which i never valued or "DEPERSONALIZATION"


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

That's good to know. Yeh we have different ways of seeing and doing this, but ultimately we both have the same goal

I like that term 'misusing myself'. I would 100% agree with that. To the point where I allow other people to take advantage and use me.. but it's the same thing essentially as you say. Snap, I never made my boundaries clear through fear of confrontation. That has been something I have wanted to avoid at all costs, but people abuse that because the majority of people are narcissists.. we all only do things that make us feel good, whether that's sadistic bullying or caring for other people. Your past circumstances set which way you choose to treat others. I saw confrontation as almost a bad thing to express, but people can be arseholes. Utter utter arseholes who don't respect you or the people you love. And when that happens, no questions asked you have to cut them out. Because its just not healthy for you or your self esteem.

When you say you keep doing the same things I completely recognise that. It happened to me for years and still does. Trying to be funny to impress others, while taking offensive shit from my 'friends'. To the point where I am so tense I want to punch one of them in the face but just do nothing. It is so unhealthy. That energy gets trapped and festers and fucks you up. Can't say I guide conversations to a sad place, but have noticed my pessimistic attitude coming across. Moaning or seeing the bad and corruption in the world. There is a lot of good going on too.. but even when talking about that I have something negative to say

Agree with your last paragraph. What are you doing to deal with your negative emotions? Whilst logically going through memories and self reflecting is positive, learning to express and feel the emotions is actually quite important. The way I see it, I would literally tense the stomach and lock down these emotions of sadness, shame and fear. So recently I have been feeling any emotion that I currently have a soften any physical tension around it. And also giving a lazy attention. Lazy in terms of no effort to change or get rid of what is there. The response to tense and get rid of ANY emotion is now so strong that it is difficult to do. But having a 'lazy heart' as I like to call it is helping


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

first of all, i have to say that the reason i'm writing in this thread is just to know if anyone could relate. And i've seen great contribution.

then i have to say that, you're just describing me.



Broken said:


> the majority of people are narcissists.. we all only do things that make us feel good, whether that's sadistic bullying or caring for other people. Your past circumstances set which way you choose to treat others. I saw confrontation as almost a bad thing to express,


This is what i'm talking about. 1_ The majority of people ARE FOR THEMSELVES .they are not narcissists, that is totally wrong. A great majority of people around me care about themselves. That is their priority. Hey what do we have to care about more ? That guy who has cancer and lives by our door? Self-confidence is NOT pride. Self-love is not pride. that is something i've seen among many dp sufferers. empathy is good. being respectful is good. gentle is good. but we have to be for ourselves all the time everywhere.

there is this lovely trans girl who has snapped out of dp land recently (after 26 years of chronic dp) and she has given me unbelievable stuff. one of her sayings is "humans are for themselves" and that simply means as humans with certain "personalities" we are responsible to take care of what we hold within our self as "mine". those are all that define us. and when we are not nurturing ourselves in a healthy way, subconscious brain takes control of our system. of course that is my belief and you can reject it.

and 2_ Confrontation is so fucking huge. i can't tell you how important it is to express your emotions spontaneously as they arise. Yes you keep quite. that is totally me. People abuse you and me and we stand there thinking "shut the fuck up motherfucker" in our head, feeling rage in our chest bust simply look at them and say nothing. This is exactly what make us weak emotionally. Not nurturing our feelings and emotions in a healthy way until they wreck havoc on our soul. Confrontation is healthy. It is 100% the right of you and me as a person. why would we shut up and say nothing ? that 's for us to explore. to learn the habits that made us never take full control of ourselves, our emotions and our beliefs.



Broken said:


> Trying to be funny to impress others, while taking offensive shit from my 'friends'. To the point where I am so tense I want to punch one of them in the face but just do nothing. It is so unhealthy. That energy gets trapped and festers and fucks you up. Can't say I guide conversations to a sad place, but have noticed my pessimistic attitude coming across. Moaning or seeing the bad and corruption in the world. There is a lot of good going on too.. but even when talking about that I have something negative to say


WOW! Shit can't get more real than this. i had the exact same behavior. I can't tell you how many times i hated myself for being the funny guy and not be taken seriously. People then start to think you're just a clown. You're there to make them laugh and outside that context, you don't exist. you're simply pleasing others for the sake of yourself to be taken serious. to be respected. and to be treated with love and care. but we never get those. because we are cracking jokes all the time. we're just funny. and i showed no weakness but inside i was filled with negative emotions. i would even believe it that i was happy. but i was cracking SARCASTIC jokes all the time.

i had dealt with this for too long that i lost the will to fight it back then. and i started hating people. i became a narcissist proud piece of shit. But now i know it happened because i hated MY OWN FUCKIN SELF deep inside. i would make people (in high school and university) laugh at my jokes and i was just a little depressed fuck inside who needed people to take him seriously. And i was unaware of the pain that this was causing me. So instead of taking steps to communicate realistically, i became a narcissist.

When people treated me badly, i never expressed myself at the moment. I would rather suppress my emotions of anger and sadness and give them a confused look. Then i would start hating them. fuck i was so weak. and ridiculous.

i had the exact same response in conversations. i don't know how similar to you it is though. i will find a way to criticize someone, to crush them down. Even in happy friendly talks i find it hard to rely on happy facts about my life. like i think mankind is going to fuck itself and all the happiness is illusion. that's some type of deep existential depression. And for me it is tied to the movies and series i watched with depressive notions about the world and what i read in books of depressed writers. that also screwed my world-perception a little, and finally reading about psychedelics, new age movements , zen and ... really put me in a hopeless bubble. shit i hate these fucking animals who say everything is illusion. well let me kick you in your fucking balls idiot to see if your body is just "carrying" you. sorry i was too angry. watched some youtube videos of these pricks today. made my dissociation 100x worse with their BS.



Broken said:


> Agree with your last paragraph. What are you doing to deal with your negative emotions? Whilst logically going through memories and self reflecting is positive, learning to express and feel the emotions is actually quite important. The way I see it, I would literally tense the stomach and lock down these emotions of sadness, shame and fear. So recently I have been feeling any emotion that I currently have a soften any physical tension around it. And also giving a lazy attention. Lazy in terms of no effort to change or get rid of what is there. The response to tense and get rid of ANY emotion is now so strong that it is difficult to do. But having a 'lazy heart' as I like to call it is helping


well, i'm still finding dysfunctional and unhealthy habits everyday. I would look back even at my life during dp. i still have all of those dangerous attitudes to fuck myself up. and slowly am realizing how to express myself effectively when it is needed. the next step is to write an expressive history of my life in the chronological order. i may start therapy soon. i'm so determined to get my self back. even the creepy parts of me.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh I misused the word narcissist there.. but you are right in the way you expressed it. They are for themselves. Who else could we be for. Even when I analyse others and be a people pleaser, it is still about ME. Because I am trying to figure out other peoples feelings and motives to protect MYSELF. Even though I prioritise their feelings and beliefs over my own, the aim is still to protect myself from attack. And that is an aim because I want to avoid confrontation. And I want to avoid confrontation because I learnt as a small child that I was not strong or powerful enough to fight back (freeze response previously mentioned). So now I freeze as a reaction instead of being powerful or strong.. because it is very conditioned. It isn't true. We are all capable of confronting others and standing up for ourselves and our beliefs. However, we just don't believe that. Yet

I criticised EVERYONE, but behind their backs because of fear of confrontation. I had to express it somehow as I didn't in the moment with them there. We all do this to some extent, it's why people love gossip. But if you never confront others and freeze, and then blow up afterwards about it, you aren't going to increase your sense of self esteem because there is a falseness about that. What I would also say about this criticism of others. We build up this belief system by criticising that it is 'bad' to do what that other person did. The hypocrisy is we are all sinners and guilty of all these things in large or subtle ways. So we trip up and make a mistake (that's life) and we have these preset thoughts that come raining down on us from when we destroyed someone else. We have to learn to be kind to others and ourselves. It's one and the same, and I believe that when we treat others like shit, that conditioned response comes back to haunt us. Karma if you will

Don't get me started on spiritual teachers. They talk poetically about how wonderful life is. The majority of them just stumbled across this 'enlightened state' and didn't know how it happened. They then try to reproduce it in others. They seem to forget that most people that listen to them are truly deeply suffering and want relief. They never talk about dark thoughts or life events or emotional pain. Just 'the miracle of your diaphragm' and other BS. I personally am taking a somewhat spiritual approach towards my DP recently. In that, as I said before 'the foot feels the foot'. What I meant by that is that I only see, hear, touch, feel, taste self. It is true but sounds woo woo which I dont like.. But I never experience A SINGLE THING beyond the boundaries of this body. Escapism from ANYTHING in this body IS DISSOCIATION. So I have been lazy and kind to everything that comes recently. Lazy because effort or doing implies there is somewhere better to go and there are parts of myself I need to avoid. All the senses carry a message that needs to be listened to, not destroyed or removed. Because what a terrible attitude to have towards yourself? Just be lazy in effort and attention for a while. Also, I try to show kindness to everything. Every thought or sound. Every feeling. Give it kindness as again, any anger or fear towards yourself only creates more stress within the body.

I truly used to hate myself. And have done for a long time. Only through bringing this rest and kindness towards myself have I experienced any relief. And with that more insights come into how I have acted wrongly and how that has badly affected me and my life. It wasn't through actively thinking about stuff. But in rest. Eureka moments if you like.. remember Newton under the apple tree? He wasn't at a table rummaging through notes. He was reflecting, and that is NOT an active process. It can be, in the form of a diary. Both have benefit. But be open minded to trying both, and not boxing yourself into one approach


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

sure, as i said, i'm giving myself enough rest and relaxation. but dp for me is made up of so many wrong habits. and of hating/ fearing certain pats of myself. i did't SHOW the world the TRUE ME. i played different personas to avoid something. and that something i didn't knew what it was, was me. i was afraid that people won't like the true me. and they did liked for sure. but i always played a role that was cooler than me. so basically i was not being myself for a long long time. and that was dangerous for me without me even realizing i was losing touch with my OWN original emotions.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh agreed, that makes sense. One thing I have weirdly noticed recently and have a long time ago, is that I imitate people.. I mirror their physical actions and sometimes words or how they speak.. really odd and something I am sure I'm overthinking. This is unconscious and then after a little while I realise what I was doing. Also get a bit paranoid about it. Something that is natural socially but not to the extent I do it. First noticed it many years ago when I was heavily bullied and was copying the person that bullied me.. was paranoid and on weed but it definitely happened. Just like a robot copying others. Pretty scary really. But I have a heavy fear around other people and just cannot contain all that is going on around me... it is like losing my sense of self in a different way. And all this fear around how I move, or talk, or walk or behave or what I say. Because the bullying went to the extreme I doubt and analyse every little thing that I do. I was already so lacking in self confidence that it left me open to the bullying. Hard to say if it was that experience that gave me DP or my childhood.. most probably a mixture of the two, and due to my childhood, a crisis and DPD was inevitable as life always throws shit at you


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

again i have to say that i pick things up from people who i communicate with. I used to have my own words, phrases, moves, mimics and behavior some years before dp but as i started to fake who i was i started also losing those qualities. Now it happens frequently that i say or do something then immediately i know i'm just copying someone else's behavior. It feels like i'm not connected to any source of wit that is mine.I feel fake. There's no originality in my behavior and even when i do something that is totally me, i still feel disconnected. Because of being bullied in secondary school, i picked up the same routine in high school to bully others to defend myself from bullying and i got addicted to it and would sometimes bother people who loved me. basically i stated NOT CARING about any fucking thing about me or others some years before dp. i was numbing myself and it did showed other people some cool tough guy. but i was fake. my emotions were manipulated and i was hurt, because i didn't know how to defend myself, so i started to numb myself completely and that gave me some slight depression and was later mixed with narcissistic traits that made me a monster for myself. and one night i just lost all of it.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh I don't think it's a coincidence that we have a hell of a lot of similar personality traits and life experience. And I think even though we have a slightly different approach, I think it is the correct one. I've chased the supplements and medications.. when I did do therapy I didn't fully commit. I've spoken more honestly in this thread than I ever did to a therapist. And it's something I'm in a waiting list to go into again. Might be a while. At the moment my self reflection and meditation is helping. Being really lazy with my attention and letting it sink back.. it's not the full antidote, but it helps. And I think I will also continue to speak openly about things here. It seems to bring some relief just fleshing it out and discussing it with other people. Hope you had a good one heyLow.. for me it's slightly better than yesterday. And slightly worse than tomorrow


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> when I did do therapy I didn't fully commit. I've spoken more honestly in this thread than I ever did to a therapist.


that's one of the reasons i commented on these threads. Almost everyone denies shame, depression, anxiety, family system problems, low self-worth, shitty confidence, ...

dpdr needs deep effective therapy. let me quote something:

*"Repressed means that you have blocked it out so competently you cannot remember it.*

*Suppressed, is when you know it's there but actively try to push it down, out of the way.*

*Finding fully repressed experiences can really be like digging into the earth searching for buried treasure.*

*I was always aware that I was fucked up. But I couldn't tell you why. It took nine months of active searching for me to realize that I am transsexual. I so fully blocked this truth from myself. Despite now being able to recognize I knew since I was three years old."*

a recovered person is talking about memories. a lot of people on here can never find those memories though. There are 3 elements important in therapy:

1_doing it with an experienced therapist which you feel connected and safe around him/her.

2_will to make changes if needed. changes in behavior, appearance, thought patterns...

3_full commitment to the process.

and i know a lot of people never had these 3 qualities to benefit from therapy.

i haven't used any drug so far. but there are so many dpdr sufferers out there that think they will die if you take medication away from them. if you try therapy and it did not help at all (after 5 sessions at least) you can stop and change your doctor. but self-investigation is important too. listing all the positive and negative habits of behavior and self reflections, if not cure dpdr, at least will make you a better dissociated human being. and writing the history of your life, the story of how you grew up will help immensely find the roots of the problems (not for all of the cases) and reconnect with aspects of your personality you have forgotten for long, also helps regulating electrical activity in the brain as you visit different/distant memories. at the end i feature this great post here from our recovered fella :

http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/53605-90-cured-after-twenty-years-of-chronic-dpd/page-1

btw i came up with the great name for my life movie: "The People Pleaser"

then there should be more to it like to make it a trilogy: "People pleaser II:midst of hell" and "Unpleasant: the vengeance".


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh makes a lot of sense. I have had supressed and repressed memories. Suppression of some things and an unwillingness to think about them in any depth, allowed the repressed memories to remain as they were. Sometimes I think you can only go through them when you are a ready. And a good therapist will allow you to in your own time. A bad one may force you.. but there needs to a balance of the two. Going where you are uncomfortable to talk about but at a slow pace. 
In terms of drugs I am very open minded to LSD and magic mushroom microdosing.. studies show it activates an incredible amount of the brain that you otherwise wouldn't be able to. It's the same principle with my meditation. Relaxing the focus until you gain more awareness of the whole picture. I did remember repressed things with this technique. There was a study where a shrink sat with patients taking psylocybin (magic mushrooms) and they were through their trauma incredibly well and saw a whole new way of looking at things. The effect lasted a month or 2 and then depression returned. If it comes out as an option and I am still suffering I will defo consider micro dosing... or even if I can find some in the UK, they grow fairly commonly! Think they grow in autumn though.. Amd at the moment I am making good progress. How are things for you heyLow?


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

well i just changed my display name. it's the first step for me.

and for micro-dosing mushrooms, well i have to say that iboga does something similar to mushrooms. There's also mescalin. That's a way to go Broken. But be cautious with these especially LSD which is the most intense and the less natural. There are a couple of users here who've posted about their experiences with all of these which you can find their stuff easily. i believe the most powerful trip could happen on Ayahuasca though. But it has it's own dangers and has to be done with an experienced shaman. Ayahuasca is totally different from LSD,MESCALIN or mushrooms. It could be too intense the user loses everything or could be so positive that changes one's life in the most positive way.and while micro dosing keep in mind that building tolerance is the objective. never over dose your limits even if you feel unaffected by the drug, wait and see what happens.

Meditation also needs a lot of practice. No one could benefit greatly from after some sessions. Done in a safe environment with focus, it can gradually show one his own repressed memories. But i have not given it enough time and effort.

and this is the source :

http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/52066-overcoming-dp-after-9-years/


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

I remember reading this actually! This is when I started seriously considering meditation again. He said 'it is as it is' and talked about acceptance. None of us accept our dp. This is why I keep saying 'the foot feels the foot'. We see NOTHING but ourselves, and yet we want to change ourselves. I understand your take Xbrave where you want to know your ignorances and bad habits and beliefs. Self reflection can be helpful. And I found it helpful to a point. Now I see it as all I SEE are the results.. we have this thing the wrong way round. We are delivered the RESULTS of our habits NOW and we deny them. I say, fuck the results. Can I make peace with what is happening now? As all I see is myself can I be kind to what comes? Can I open the door to this, even though I want to slam it shut? Can I show love to what I hate? It's difficult and impossible at times because of conditioning. But meditation is about showing everything compassion and kindNess. Because denying this, any of this, is denying myself. Which is suffering. Can I let my guard down to whatever comes? Sure sometimes the guard reflexively shoots back up, but can I drop it again? It's almost as if the system that is our bodies can go one of two ways. Guard and deny. Or love and be kind. The more we learn to respond with kindness and a laziness not to remove what is happening, the better my dp gets


----------



## Billy D.P. (Apr 12, 2016)

XBrave said:


> well i just changed my display name. it's the first step for me.
> 
> and for micro-dosing mushrooms, well i have to say that iboga does something similar to mushrooms. There's also mescalin. That's a way to go Broken. But be cautious with these especially LSD which is the most intense and the less natural. There are a couple of users here who've posted about their experiences with all of these which you can find their stuff easily. i believe the most powerful trip could happen on Ayahuasca though. But it has it's own dangers and has to be done with an experienced shaman. Ayahuasca is totally different from LSD,MESCALIN or mushrooms. It could be too intense the user loses everything or could be so positive that changes one's life in the most positive way.and while micro dosing keep in mind that building tolerance is the objective. never over dose your limits even if you feel unaffected by the drug, wait and see what happens.
> 
> ...


Guys, let's try and be a bit cautious here. If there's one thing nearly everyone on this board can agree with it's that drugs and DP-DR don't mix. I don't know the exact percentage of people on this site who've had their DP worsened by drugs but I imagine it's high based on what's posted regularly. Drugs are part of the reason we're all here in the first place. The idea you're going to just get a quick fix by popping a pill and solving your problems is not coherent. That's not how progress is made -- a magical concoction of psychoactive substances that can permanently damage your central nervous system. If you want to heal you need to enroll in therapy, attend support groups, connect with the world through social means, eat healthy, exercise and do all the other little things that take a lot of work but are scientifically proven to benefit mind, body and spirit. There's no shortcuts to good health. Nothing great in life comes easy. It takes work and time and lots of struggle. But if you're willing to try your hardest and never give up you'll one day get to that point.


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Billy D.P. said:


> Guys, let's try and be a bit cautious here. If there's one thing nearly everyone on this board can agree with it's that drugs and DP-DR don't mix. I don't know the exact percentage of people on this site who've had their DP worsened by drugs but I imagine it's high based on what's posted regularly. Drugs are part of the reason we're all here in the first place. The idea you're going to just get a quick fix by popping a pill and solving your problems is not coherent. That's not how progress is made -- a magical concoction of psychoactive substances that can permanently damage your central nervous system. If you want to heal you need to enroll in therapy, attend support groups, connect with the world through social means, eat healthy, exercise and do all the other little things that take a lot of work but are scientifically proven to benefit mind, body and spirit. There's no shortcuts to good health. Nothing great in life comes easy. It takes work and time and lots of struggle. But if you're willing to try your hardest and never give up you'll one day get to that point.


i agree with all that you said. but if someone decides to do something i offer all i can. Drugs could either make the situation better or worse. They could add HPPD, visual snow, seizures, ... to DPDR. But Broken's talking about micro-dosing which is a totally different subject as you build tolerance to the drug's psycho active effects so you will proceed to the next steps. and i'm pretty sure Broken is not going to abuse the drug to escape from this state. but to slowly make way to the unprocessed memories. I know this is not a healthy way and is dangerous and i'm not advertising it.

and let me add that, WEED didn't give me DPDR it just triggered it. It had grown in me for a long time.

before using weed i had some lingering anxiety (bad temper/mood), depression(from a breakup) and low self confidence and what did weed do? it masked my problems. i started seeing only the positive in my life. that was awesome. but i stopped using it and my temper was returning so i used it again in a very bad setting and it activated my dpdr.

now there are a lot of people who smoke weed among dpdr sufferers without any problem. DRUGS are not the problem. They COULD worsen this situation but are not the cause as you know better than me.there are also micro dosers. who use mushrooms, ketamine...

and as you know a lot of people also got dpdr from SSRI's, Tranquiler, Mood Stabilizers,... and except for having allergy to a certain drug, causing inflammation and autonomic system dysfunction or causing seizures, Drugs are NOT the direct cause of DPDR. If i never used marijuana, i could activate this later in my life after a panic attack, bad night sleep, binge drinking, watching virtual reality videos, or like some people out of no where.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh sorry it did sound like I was advocating psychodelics... I most probably wouldn't go hunting for them. And if offered MAYBE would take a small amount. But that could be a huge mistake. My current technique is bringing very slow but steady progress. When I had my panic attack on DP there was this strange sense that I remembered something very bad.. Amd then I just thought of another bad memory to redirect my attention and blame the feelings on something more manageable. The fact is weed/lsd/psylocybin/whatever has the possibility to relax the mind.. with that relaxation 99% of the time it's great, hence people get addicted. But sometimes it seems to open a gateway to something you just weren't ready or capable to process. Then the whole system shuts down.
Just to clarify, if MICRO dosing lsd or (more likely as it's natural) psylocybin are scientifically proven to help with these matters I will be all for it.. as XBrave said they aren't the direct cause. I believe they open our mind up to something we can't handle. But micro dosing makes sense as we slowly would build tolerance, not 'blow our top' or whatever the Fuck too much does to our brain. I am open minded to it being the future of mental health.. but I would need better evidence before I went down that path. Amd as I say, now progress seems to be happening with meditation. Slowly, too slow maybe. But non the less, it's in the right direction... Amd I cant say that I've ever been moving in the right direction since this started


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> When I had my panic attack on DP there was this strange sense that I remembered something very bad.. Amd then I just thought of another bad memory to redirect my attention and blame the feelings on something more manageable.


if what you mean by DP there is weed, or any other drug, that's the same thing i experienced. one bad feeling (just a bad tiny tiny negative notion) led to another related memory and other feelings and my mind started racing. i can't remember any stuff from that night but i remember i saw something more than i could handle or something normal that i would have been able to solve without being high (marijuana magnifies what is under the surface/ feelings/ emotions/ etc) . i can't recall now, what i saw or thought about during those few seconds/minutes but i know and feel that it was not something pleasant. and i dissociated immediately after it happened.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yup. 100% the same experience. But I'm sure it's just a coincidence and taking magnesium supplements will cure us right?  shouldn't joke really, it's a sad and desperate waste of time I spent many years chasing.. the answer for SOME of us, maybe quite a large sum, is in getting to these repressed memories. There are many ways to do this.. drugs whether psychodelics or pharmaceutical are an option but come with their risks. Therapy is long and quite often inefficient, and impossible if you don't commit fully. Which, seeing as you run your own biases, happens rather often. Nobody WANTS to believe they were abused or suffered something horrific. So from the outset your on the back foot against yourself. Because you don't open your mind to those possibilities. Because why would you want to? I have faith that one day the general consensus and public view will change.. but at the moment even people that were abused are viewed almost as badly as the abusers. They are accused of 'playing the victim', see themselves as 'dirty', or that they are viewed as high risk of being abusers themselves. Meditation seems to help access those memories for me.. and I'm not saying specifically what my memories are here. But just that they were pretty horrific to the point where you have two choices. You block them out and lose a part of your humanity and dissociate (dp).. or you become a psychopath because the memories torture you to the point you have to come to some logical conclusion for them. Although my situation is horrific and horrible.. I would probably rather it than psychopathy. Because I still empathise with others and don't gain any joy from making others unhappy. Being a psychopath denies that part of my humanity I still have some access to. Although I have lost the fullness of my emotions, I still have those. I guess psycho's are robots as well.. just evil robots lol


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

and that's why there needs to be a safe place for approaching these emotions. and even medication might be needed through therapy. because once these emotions are released we don't f*kin know how to handle them. dissociation happened for the same reason, So it's playing with fire. In order to put it out we gotta be cautious not to burn more. an experienced therapist could really help bring those thoughts, emotions and beliefs into awareness. Always keep in mind that we have to be pretty open minded to be able to get in touch with these. When we ignore certain warnings from our subconscious, it will lead to an even bigger denying, that is dissociation. Psychoactive drugs also can magnify that ignorance. Help us ignore those certain parts.

DPDR is a complex disorder. More frustrating and tangled than types of depression and anxiety. we can not compare it to schizophrenia though. Somehow similar to Identity disorders and even bipolar. What makes it hard for us to find the root causes is that some of them are completely inaccessible for us which rarely happens for people with depression or anxiety.

DPDR is a form of numbing that our body itself produces. A kind of alcoholism without the alcohol. Drug abuse without the drugs.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh although we hate the numbness, it protects us from running around with a feeling of complete and utter dread. It is a feeling I would liken to being backed into a corner, overpowered with no hope of escape. Complete dread and freezing up.

Agreed these emotions need to be approached calmly and slowly. It is near impossible to find a decent therapist. I don't doubt they are out there, but this is the EXACT type of thing where you need life experience. Being academic or semantic about it will never touch the misery and despair you feel with this. I have lived with this every day for 13 years and am only just beginning to see how I need to approach this. It's almost wandering and calming myself. Let my mind and attention wander wherever it wants, as how can I hunt for something that I don't know what it is? When it is invisible to me? And then, whatever arises show kindness and try to calm your reaction to it. As you are only looking at yourself.

Any denial or aggression towards anything that comes is dissociation as it encourages the fear you cannot escape and tries to remove 'you' from the situation. Which is all dissociation. I still try to escape my experience of DP everyday. But when that happens I just let my mind wander and try to calm... a LOT of fear/anxiety has been returning in my gut the last 2 days. People may see that as negative but I see it as 100% necessary to recover. I need to feel it ALL good and bad to recover from this. The most important point is calming and soothing yourself.. it is possible. It is why babies are left to cry to 'self-soothe' and is something we need to rediscover and relearn.. perhaps we never learnt this or only did it last when we were very young.

It is heavily implied throughout society that we have to apply effort for 'success' and earn love.. neither of these things are true. They are just an ignorance taught to enslave humans to work, earn money and suffer without these things. You really can show yourself compassion and love without having to 'earn it'. You deserve it, and it is the only way out of this. Allowing and trusting all parts of yourself and rather than believing the escape reflex try to calm down and sit with what is here. Because any form of denial is denying life, love and recovery


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

But i need the dread. we need it. You're beginning to feel it deep down. I never had anxiety in my life as people describe it. i'm just starting to feel it. with dpdr. i'm starting to feel fear, anxiety, stress after a lifetime of pure relaxation. this is really odd for me because i was not familiar with these emotions. dpdr is also weird in the sense that nothing makes sense. even our image in the mirror.


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh agreed, dread is allowed and necessary. It is an emotion. Deny any emotion and that is pretty much denying a part of yourself which is... dissociation. I had anxiety big time, but never thought it was that. Had a sense of dread before socializing and would run around all possibilities. Would they not turn up? What if they give me shit? How will I protect myself? What will I say? Have I anything funny to say?.. This isn't being, this is worrying. But when I was young mental health was hugely ignorant. I thought anxiety was sweating, shaking, going red, stuttering... I did none of these so I cant have anxiety right? It is very complicated, but that feeling of just a burning stomach like I may vomit any minute.. that is anxiety. And actually that feeling is returning more strongly recently. And as I said before that is both bad and good.

Yup nothing makes sense. But in a way we never fully understand anything. We want understanding because we want predictability because we want control. DP is anything but control. I say give up the belief that we need to understand this. I still don't understand this at all and letting go of that seems to bring relief as well. Losing that mind focused necessity to understand all this. Thoughts can't answer anything. They are by their nature dualistic and have to take a side. Don't take sides and fuck the results. We think we need to plan our way our of this and draw a map, understand it all. But that requires that focused mind that I don't think helps. What I find helps is letting my mind wander and just calming it all down. The mind wants results FAST and to speed this shit up to get there. And to me I have done that a long time and it doesnt help. Just my experience, I could be wrong


----------



## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

Broken said:


> But when I was young mental health was hugely ignorant. I thought anxiety was sweating, shaking, going red, stuttering... I did none of these so I cant have anxiety right? It is very complicated, but that feeling of just a burning stomach like I may vomit any minute.. that is anxiety.


i can totally relate to this (not to the point of vomiting_ and it used to happen mostly before socializing). I wasn't easy at all. yet i forced relaxation on my brain. now i know that i had slight anxiety. and that grew under the waves of relaxation, to a monster, and i never cared about my weaknesses. i never paid any negativity any attention. so basically yes i had anxiety but never really had those shaky hands or ...


----------



## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Yeh exactly, that is anxiety. It took me a long time to realise that. It's a shame for us, had we not been taught that misinformation, who knows we may have developed better coping techniques to deal with our anxiety. All I do is just feel what emotions come and try to calm them. Slow them down, and be there with it like an upset child.. the conditioned response is still there to escape or block it off, but every time I can stay with it a little longer. Socialised today with my family. Was as difficult as always... actually a little better. But towards the end my ability to stay with that anxious feeling improved, and so did my concentration and awareness of what was going on around me.. baby steps, but it's all in the right direction


----------

