# relapse



## HopeNYC (Oct 8, 2007)

hey everyone,

i've been viewing this board for almost 2 years now...i found this site after moving back home after college and suffering a horrible breakdown with symptoms of dr/dp. after 2 months of listening to my parents saying "just get over it", i finally put myself in therapy...no help or support from them. it broke my bank, but i did it. i was able to, with his help, pull myself out of the gutter and stabilize myself to be able to be happy again, make it through my first year of law school and secure a job at a big law firm. all the while i made some major breakthroughs and changes in therapy that have changed my life for the better.

after months of feeling great, i am now in my second year of law school and i seem to have relapsed...and am feeling dr/dp again for almost a week now. it's really frustrating and scary, and i was wondering if anyone else is going through some sort of relapse at this point, and how you're coping with it.

best of luck everyone, i know this thing is a b*tch.

A


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## DreamLife (Sep 16, 2007)

Hi Hope. It seems to kind of come in waves for me, but usually it's the worst when I change environments. I've moved about five times in the last five years, and everytime that I move the DP comes on stronger for a while. Maybe it has to do with being uncomfortable with my surroundings (sounds like it).

Anyway, I've never been fully "cured," so I don't know anything about relapsing. Are you still seeing a therapist or taking any sort of medication?


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## HopeNYC (Oct 8, 2007)

Hey, thanks for the reply. I appreciate it  Moving is a huge change, I'm not surprised you feel dp because of it. How long have you had these symptoms, and what are you doing to try to conquer them?

I'm still seeing my therapist. We've discussed the possibility of medication early on, but we both decided that it wasn't necessary for me at the time, and if either of us thought it might be then we'd discuss it. For me, I know that dr/dp comes on during certain types of situations that I encounter; I feel that addressing those issues fully will be more helpful for me in the long run.

I've suffered from dr/dp on and off since I was about 11 years old...i recovered for about 5 years...4 years of which I was away from home and at college. I did nothing but move out of my house and found a life of my own. Quick fix...a telling sign of maybe what some of my issues were and the direction i needed to go in in order to get better, but I didn't address anything. It was sort of like "wow, all those years were so weird, and crazy...i'm glad i dont feel like that anymore" and I tried my best to forget the hard times in my life that I suffered alone.

My parents ignored me as a kid when I said I was feeling funny, and so I was left to myself to figure it out. Two years ago, after coming home, I relapsed severely. I was 22... and I decided to take matters into my own hands. I really feel that if they had just paid some sort of real attention to me when I was a kid and put me in therapy, I could've been further along in the recovery process...it makes me angry that I was the one to put myself in therapy, 11 years after I first told them I felt weird.

At one point when I was 16 my dad offered to take me to a therapist...but he made it sound so negative like "dont tell anyone, etc etc", and my mom was angry at me for saying i felt weird...like it was MY fault. So when i had moments of clarity, i just told them to forget it, i felt fine. Obviously I was freaked out by my experience, and then more freaked out by all of their warnings, and so I found any excuse not to go (feeling better for a day or two)...what did i know? and they let it go, didn't ask me again how i was feeling. that pisses me off. how can your kid say something along the lines of "i feel like im goin crazy" and you never address it ever again? obviously a kid looks up to their parents, and i thought wow this is all my fault...even my parents wont help me. I was really scared, and they made me feel like i had a huge unaddressable problem that if i started to address, my life would be over.

A


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## DreamLife (Sep 16, 2007)

I had kind of the opposite experience growing up. I'm sure my parents would have been more than happy to help me out if they had known how I felt. But I could never bring myself to tell anyone that I felt different. Like if I ever said the words out loud, it would make them too real.

I don't know how long I've had DP, which leads me to believe I've always had it (I'm 23). It got really, really bad when I was 19, but has since improved.

I feel really bad for you that your parents brushed it off like that. I honestly can't imagine how you dealt with that, and to take the action to put yourself in therapy really shows the kind of person you must be!

I don't know if you're a spiritual person at all, but the number one thing that has helped me has been my relationship with God, which I didn't have when my DP was at its worst. That's just what has helped me. I have found that no material thing (not even eating right or exercising) has helped.

I'm not cured by any stretch of the imagination, and I know that I probably need to be in therapy (which I'm not). I have a feeling that there are a lot of repressed feelings and memories that I have never dealt with that only a professional could help me sort out.

But I do know one thing: if it wasn't for my relationship with a Higher Power, I would most likely have killed myself a long time ago, because that's how bad it was for me. Today, it is more "manageable," if nothing else. I can function (i.e. go to work, school, and appear to the outside world like I have it together).

Has therapy helped you a lot?


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## HopeNYC (Oct 8, 2007)

When I was younger it was my spiritual relationship that helped me through it. I'll admit that once I felt better in college I kind of fell off on the spiritual thing, but I do believe in it. I definitely understand the feeling of not wanting to say it out loud...it makes it real, thats partly why I kept my mouth shut when I was younger too.

Therapy has been extremely helpful for me. I am a very emotional, inquisitive, intuitive person...I'm very in touch with how I feel about things, and am very good at expressing that. I was also ready and willing to go into therapy...I think those two things have made therapy "easy" because the kind of talk, etc. that we do is something natural for me and its something i want to do. I've changed a lot of things about myself while in therapy.. things that were negative and feeding my dr/dp.

Even though I feel crappy, and have felt crappy in the past, it was always a positive thing for me to have someone to talk to about it, and to know generally why I was having feelings of dr/dp. I feel like I am actively doing something about it, taking responsibility, and that alone enables me to relax a bit and live my life. At this point it's all about figuring myself out, and healing.

If you think you should be in therapy, what has stopped you from starting it?


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## DreamLife (Sep 16, 2007)

Good question. I think maybe I've been reluctant to confront the situation because I'm still afraid that I've made the whole thing up, that maybe there's nothing really wrong with me and that this is something I have created in my mind that could never be real. And I have all these goals of working in psychology as a career, and who wants a mentally defective counselor? If I don't confront the issue, then it's not so real.

I know this is all ridiculous, because for me to get better, I am going to have to open up about it. My own husband doesn't even know that I have DP, nor does anyone else except my sister, who has it also.

I have a lot of pride, which means that it's hard for me to admit vulnerability. I envy people like you who can so easily express their emotions and be so in tune with how they feel. That has never come easy to me. I want to get better so badly, but I am going to have to step out of my comfort zone big time for that to happen.


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## HopeNYC (Oct 8, 2007)

I've found that a lot of good therapists have been through some serious things in their lives also. To even be a psychoanalyst, you need to have gone through analysis as well.

My therapist (he is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist) is very familiar with dr/dp because at one point he suffered from it too...in a way it is good to talk to someone who can relate to your experience. I don't think you'd be a defective counselor per se, not if you work on yourself anyway 

The only people that know about my dr/dp specifically are my sister (who supports me fully), my parents (who still ignore it), my boyfriend (however he still doesn't REALLY get it, i feel like he tries to avoid it also...its been easy because ive felt so much better for the past year or so).

I highly recommend therapy...try it out, you have nothing else to lose at this point and everything to gain. I think you'd feel ALOT better getting it out.


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