# What causes DP/DR and how to break out of it



## allowthelight (Jun 22, 2016)

(This thread is a duplicate of my #54389 thread. I made some changes and decided this title was much more appropriate.)

In this thread I will explain my revelation of what I strongly believe causes DR/DP (a vicious cycle-driven conditioned fear of mental dissociation), what exactly is going on during an "episode", and how to break out of the cycle. This thread will also teach wisdom on much better controlling your emotions (specifically: fear) which are the foundation that allows DR/DP to affect you so harshly.

When did you last feel really happy? It feels so damn good, doesn't it? If you didn't connect with that last sentence, then, plain and simply, you've forgotten how it really feels. Not through happenstance, but through your bad habits of experiencing life. Happiness is a submissive emotion. It is a form of awe; a surrender and acceptance to the beauty of life, which, like all emotions, operates outside the realm of rational thought (seeing the grand canyon for the first time is popular at eliciting this emotion). Pure happiness is an experience in which you're not out to get something, because in that moment, you already have all you need. That means you're not questioning what's going on, nor looking elsewhere to get anything materially, physically or emotionally. In essence, you are complete.

Let's break it down:

Happiness

*- The greatest emotion you can experience* (by definition; it is not debatable, since the intuition (namely, emotions) is knowable outside of rational thought only)

*- Pleasant*

*- Beautiful*

*- Orderly*

*- Submissive*

*- Acceptance*

So what is fear? Fear is the opposite of happiness. Fear is a dominant emotion. It is a form of survival; an ignorance towards the beauty of life in the quest to keep you safe (or what you perceive as safe). Here's the breakdown:

Fear

*- The worst emotion you can experience* (by definition; same as above)

*- Unpleasant*

*- Ugly*

*- Disorderly*

*- Dominant*

*- Denial*

One important thing you need to understand and incorporate into your daily life as a value is that you project your emotions onto the world, not the other way round. When you feel bad, the world appears to be bad. When you feel good, so seemingly does the world. I believe that DR/DP is initially a creation of the conditioning of one attaching fear to a highly fear-based perception of reality (which incorporates mental dissociation, a survival mechanism) - caused by, say, a trauma - and then trying to understand the experience of that as a whole. But emotions and the overall perception of reality cannot be understood. Both emotions and consciousness (perception of reality) operate outside of all thought, even if it was a thought that gave rise to an emotion. I absolutely do not deny that DR/DP can be* a terrifying shift in the perception of reality. But, emotions are also shifts in the perception of reality, and that, plus a conditioned fear of a certain perception of reality, is essentially what DR/DP is, but you try to analyse it with your ego when the change in consciousness accompanying mental dissociation is in fact merely a survival mechanism, and your non-beneficial subconsciously conditioned fear of mental dissociation activates and emotionally distorts this mechanism when the mechanism isn't needed in that particular moment (later explained below).

Expanding on the fact that emotions mould your entire perception of reality, you must also understand and incorporate into your daily life as a value the notion that your emotions serve you far greater than your rational ego does. If you're starting to fall into an "episode" of DR/DP, understand that your intention to remove the fear is often a means to control the situation; perhaps in this case an ego-driven attempt to "retain your sanity", which, is of course important, but if you prioritise it over wanting to feel happy, you further disconnect yourself from happiness, thus pushing yourself further away from escaping the "episode". Your ultimate goal in life should always be to obtain happiness for yourself, and always whenever possible, happiness for others (of course neither at anyone else's expense). It is of course always terrifying when you fall deep into DR/DP, but, you must remember to carry this lesson with you into your next "episode", should it occur, since you will know it to be true in this non-overbearing-fear mindset, yet falling in the "episode" without remembering it, you risk temporarily forgetting it as you get caught up in the fear. Pay massive attention to your feelings throughout your entire life, but carry such wisdom with you to battle the fear.

Going back to fear then; fear can attach itself to anything. You can be afraid of spiders, bats, needles, certain people, etc. For a moment, really imagine that you were afraid of spiders (or you can pick some material thing you genuinely are afraid of). As with most fears, you wouldn't be around the fear-trigger 24/7; you would maybe see a spider once every few months, and so the fear wouldn't dominate your life.

So now, really imagine you just came across a spider (or your equivalent):

*A SPIDER! OH GOD! GET AWAY FROM ME!!!*

Breakdown:

*1. A SPIDER! *(realisation of fear-trigger, created by the subconscious belief that spiders are a threat)

*2. OH GOD! *(expression of fear)

*3. GET AWAY FROM ME!!! [You try to get away from it]* (reaction to fear)

DR/DP breakdown:

*1. NOTHING'S REAL! *(realisation of fear-trigger, created by the subconscious belief that nothing seeming real is a threat)**

*2. OH GOD! *(expression of thought-derived fear)

*3. WHAT DO I DO?! [You don't know how to get away from it]* (reaction to fear)

** Note that you are the one that's conditioned yourself to associate "nothing seeming real" (mental dissociation) as being a threat. I believe this mostly happens through one being in a situation whereby they are unable to escape a highly traumatic experience, and thus they observe their surroundings, trying to work out how they can escape the terrifying situation, all whilst both fearing and subconsciously superimposing the fear onto the dissociated experience of reality around them (which was never designed to be experienced and feared directly, but only to serve quick survival-based action). Since visual reality can't effectively be escaped, one then looks for a solution in the external world, thus forcing themselves to stare fear in the face; and since fear can take any form, in this case it takes the form of everything. Hence, it can be understood why the fear of the mental dissociation is exactly what feeds the mental dissociation - which really, is all "DR/DP" is for a normal person not yet conditioned to fear it - in a vicious cycle: increasing fear of the mental dissociation directly increases mental dissociation since it is a byproduct of fear - both part of a survival mechanism.

All of the process above happens so quickly and irrationally as if it's all one thing, because fear is a survival mechanism. So how does DR/DP relate to "normal" fear?

Imagine transitioning the fear of the spider into fear of DR/DP. So, you see the spider (the fear-trigger) (step 1 above). Now imagine yourself looking up, taking in the whole mentally-dissociated atmosphere, as if the spider (the fear-trigger) has merged with the whole world. The spider is now DR/DP (the fear-trigger). Can you see what's happening? When the fear-trigger is DR/DP, you can't escape the "threat" because the "threat" is the experience, and it is being fed entirely by the thoughts arising from the fact that you still haven't managed to get away from the "spider" ("Oh god I can't escape it, is it gonna kill me? Why is it doing this to me? What went wrong? Do I deserve this?") (step 3 above).

So, based on the above, what is DR/DP? It is essentially the act of staring fear in the face. You're perceiving the "spider" as your mentally-dissociated experience of the whole world and you're trying to simultaneously analyse the "spider" (threat) because you failed to "run away" from it, and you're mistaking it for something else - like the idea that something's gone wrong in your brain - because you're used to the common belief that emotions are "just feelings", when they actually radically alter your perception of the world.

"But reality is different with DR/DP, it's more than fear!", you might think. Reality does change through DR/DP, there's no denying that. But look back to the breakdown of happiness and fear above. You project those feelings onto everything when you experience them. With happiness, you gain a greater understanding of the world. With fear, you lose your default understanding of the world. And because DR/DP (or, fear-based reality) is being fed almost endlessly by some of you, it feels like it's all you know. Like you've "realised" that everything you knew about life was wrong. This isn't true. Isn't it ironic how we think DR/DP is "real" reality when in that moment we're unable to remember what life felt like before it, yet in "real" reality we can always remember what the DR/DP perception of reality was like? Perhaps they call it derealisation because you de-realise the default understanding of reality: that aside from a few "fear-hiccups", life is ultimately beautiful, meaningful and feels good.

It is commonly believed that reality for those with good mental health is "stable", yet this is not the right way to interpret it. Mind-altering drugs are commonly thought to "take you away from 'real' reality", when the truth is that there is no singular "real" reality: it's all real. Alcohol, stimulants, narcotics, psychedelics: they all change your perception of reality (consciousness), for the better or for the worse (very largely dictated by your emotional reaction). Whether you're spiritual or not, reality is spiritual by definition. If you remove the misleading negative connotation of the word "drug" - life is a drug, and "drugs" (with emotions also being one of the core ones) have the effect of "turning the radio dial" of our consciousness to a different frequency/station. There is no "fake" reality, even dreams are real reality, whether it's hallucinations or another plane of existence, it's still an experience of consciousness which sits outside of belief systems; sticking with the radio station analogy, we can call it something like "101.3 - Dreaming FM", and being awake as "108.9 - Awake FM", both equally real, but different radio stations. The problem arises then, when we fall into a fear-based mindset such as DR/DP and go along with the belief that we "discovered the truth", when the truth is actually that we discovered another form of reality - or, radio station - that, like a fuzzy indistinct radio station, serves no purpose to be consciously experienced - or, "tuned into" - and serves no purpose to be feared (of which it absolutely does not have to be). Why would you try to "discover the meaning" of your subconsciously conditioned fear of the fear-reliant "108.9.0 Dissociation FM" - which is like trying to "discover the meaning" of the noise of a purely static radio station - when there's "108.9.9 Happiness FM", a station which you don't analyse but simply indulge in because - like your favourite most relaxing song - it's absolutely beautiful. The emotion you experience from a primarily-physical-reality- based "radio station's" frequency (e.g. mental dissociation, as opposed to just a primarily-mental-reality- based one, e.g. feeling regret from a situation) - which is largely subjective from person to person - moulds and largely creates the meaning of the experience - or, radio station - which resides within intuition (non-logic); and thus it is fruitless and even physically damaging to live in and try to analyse a "fear-reliant station" such as mental dissociation (note: it gave me some pretty serious adrenal fatigue, since chronic fear is unnatural and extremely taxing on the body), and doing so serves nothing beyond fuelling stagnant levels of curiosity.

Fear is not a cognitive puzzle to solve. You cannot solve emotions. Emotions are a symptom of something that gave rise to them; and just like disease, removing the symptoms without addressing the root cause won't solve the issue, although it can act as a temporary relief in times of desperation, which can be done by intervening in-between step 2 and step 3 through realising that the whole thing is created by your fear-based thoughts that have arisen from a disorderly survival-based subconscious belief.

* I believe every person has experienced DR/DP, such as in times of great embarrassment or real danger whereby your body temporarily "disconnects" you from the situation to help you "survive". Most likely it is done in order to focus all energy into escaping a threat; similar to the sudden pump of adrenaline. It just happens so quick and seamlessly that you're not really aware of what's going on. And neither should you be, for it serves zero purpose beyond fuelling stagnant curiosity. Only recently did I realise that I used to experience it infrequently as a child, but it never bothered me much because I hadn't yet built it up to have a subconsciously conditioned direct relationship with fear; not to mention that adult ego's feel they need to know what's going on at all times, unlike child ego's.

So, using this information you can create a fantastic coping mechanism whereby DR/DP no longer takes over your life. It certainly works absolute wonders for me. But to address the root cause, I believe we need to work on something called subconscious impressions. There are books on this that allow you to dismantle subconscious beliefs that work against you. One that I've looked into is called "Matrix Reimprinting using EFT" which has been highly rated on amazon, but I'm not endorsing that book in particular since I haven't yet read it all, but the idea behind it sounds very promising.

Your body actually loves you, and it always wants you to be back to that good place you're meant to be in. You were not born to live in fear. I send my love to you and wish you the best of luck.


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## Luna_ (Dec 2, 2015)

Thank you for writing this!!! I strongly agree. Sometimes we have to look deeper into the meaning of WHY rather than immediately trying to escape or cure it.


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## EmmaBo (Aug 31, 2016)

My gosh - this is wonderfully expressed and beyond helpful. Thank you!


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## tiggerthegreeb (Sep 14, 2016)

This is amazing. It hugely supports the same realisations I've come to myself about DP/DR.Ive struggled for around 10 years now with primarily DP and a large amount of DR. I came to the conclusion now matter how unreal or not me I felt I'm still in the world that creates this experience in my head so surely of I started believing it was all real instead of wondering why it wasn't (the fear based adult ego at work from what you said) then surely I would ignore what continues the experience. I've also been a big believer that it's the emotional triggers that would have caused these experiences. Something I've spent years trying to get to the bottom of but you write it just as I believe it but in a much better written form. We are emotional beings and that's how we experience life so it makes sense that our emotions create our reality. Thankyou for making that so concise even though I knew this. I'm aware from my experience of depression and anxiety how quickly the world can change around me. Thankyou once again!


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## mind.divided (Jul 2, 2015)

Thank you! This is the most helpful post on this website 100%


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