# Some useful wisdom ive gained from recovering



## Amethysteyes (Jun 9, 2018)

This is a long read but it might be useful to you.

So, ive basically recovered, albiet some residue dpdr feelings that only seem to resurface if im very anxious or depressed, usually at nighttime. Good news is, if you know how to work through it, itll go away faster each time.

I want to touch on the philosophical and existential aspect of dpdr. It was my main problem that caused me the most distress and concern when in the midst of everything. I know that most people on here are plagued by this as well. I read countless, probably hundreds of articles on meaning of life, why the universe exists, religious documents, why god would exist either, etc and asked everyone i know these questions till it was completely exhausted since there was no definitive answer. It only left me feeling life was meaningless and possibly some incomprehensible game/experiment which made life not feel concrete or real at all.

Guys, these questions are literally just a result from depression, wether it was there before or after the dpdr started. The dpdr can accually cause the depression because its so distressful and rips the emotional meaning out of your life by numbing your perspective, hense the existential questioning starts. Most of the time, these questions are only asked if someone is stressed or unsatisfied in life, like depression or if they get high on something like marijuana (cause it temporarily changes brain chemistry)

So basically, you are getting all these questions because the meaning in your life has been completely stripped away because of depression. I noticed this questioning went away if i forced myself to live life and distract myself by TRYING to be happy. When i succeeded, the questioning went away when i was truely enjoying something and that took a while and alot of persiverance to leave my comfort zone despite just how scary and daunting it was. It starts with a single moment of freedom of those thoughts and it slowly improves with time. To recover from this, you have to regain meaning in your life and that may include regaining emotions as well, as lot of us struggle with feeling any emotions at all. Do things that used to strike you with alot of emotion untill you finally feel it again. I started with sadness by watching sad things to make me cry and then worked on other emotions as i went.

Something a person in my life said kinda spoke to me. I asked her why we are even here and she simply replied "why not?"
The truth is guys, we exist because nothingness cannot exist without somethingness.  nothing can exist without its opposite and if you fear death like i do, ive come to a conclusion that you dont truely go away. I only fear death because i want to experiance as much as i can. And if your consciousness does end, you wont even be aware of it because think about it, you were dead for an infinite amount of time before you became alive and you werent aware of it either. Think of it like dreamless sleep. Its just complete peace which is the opposite of life. Life is suppose to be an adventure that IS stressful, wether its good stress or bad stress. Death is just peace. It could be a purely positive experiance, devoid of stress if you believe in religion which could be just as valid as thats also peaceful.

To recover from this, you just need to accept these things and start apprieciating that you are living, and for me, that was getting all the same stuff i had meaning for beforehand back plus some and getting out in public for fun activities can really help. The unreal feelings, perceptual change, memory fog and everything else will pass with this too. The reason theres no magic pill to save you from this is because its something you just have to change your additude toward.
Dpdr is just an extreme perceptual change to your reality, wether its to yourself, or everything around you or both (and i had both, even at the same time) its due to stress which changes brain chemistry. Even if it started out of the blue one day for you, take into account anything you were stressed about before that and wether you handle stress well, or wether you were simply bored with life. Boredom too can cause this.

If you have the desire to recover then that right there is something you have meaning for still, to live normally again. Just build on that.


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## bintuae (Jan 17, 2017)

I guess It's more of not feeling positive emotions because how is it emotional numbness when you can feel depressed or anxious? The most hardest emotion for me to feel is enjoyment and genuine happiness I do agree my dp lessened a lot when I can feel those. My problem is when antidepressant is helping with my other issues but increases the dp/dr sensations. It feel like using those illegal drugs. I feel stuck in this shit


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## Amethysteyes (Jun 9, 2018)

bintuae said:


> I guess It's more of not feeling positive emotions because how is it emotional numbness when you can feel depressed or anxious? The most hardest emotion for me to feel is enjoyment and genuine happiness I do agree my dp lessened a lot when I can feel those. My problem is when antidepressant is helping with my other issues but increases the dp/dr sensations. It feel like using those illegal drugs. I feel stuck in this shit


It depends on the type of depression. Emotional numbness can vary. Theres depression that only lets you feel negative emotions or theres one that numbs everything all together. Ive experianced both at different times.
Feeling happiness and fulfillment are the last and hardest emotions to come back. Not saying im a really happy person now or anything, ive just learned to deal with the issue better. How often do you do fun activities or things you used to enjoy, even if they dont feel fun at the moment? It could help with all those issues. Staying stagenant is what prevented my recovery. I felt stuck cause i felt like nothing was working.
Personally meds never helped me. In fact, they accually triggered my first bout of dpdr three years ago. Even when they helped temporarily with certain issues, i stopped because it didnt accually help me recover. Thats just me though.


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## songflower (Aug 2, 2018)

Hi! Thank you for posting and congratulations on recovery. 
I agree that doing fun things that you like make feelings of unreality fade, but it's impossible to have fun all day, especially when you have family obligations. So, as I understood, the cure includes accepting death, accepting life, distraction and moving on? 
Just wanted to ask some questions on process of recovery. Was it slow and gradual for you? I think I am starting to have less anxiety while thinking about death and ecperiencing DR... also it became easier to have fun, and I think some emotions are coming back (a very low degree, but at least there are some). Are these a sign of recovery? Because DR is still there 24/7, but I think there are some glimpses of hope...


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## Amethysteyes (Jun 9, 2018)

songflower said:


> Hi! Thank you for posting and congratulations on recovery.
> I agree that doing fun things that you like make feelings of unreality fade, but it's impossible to have fun all day, especially when you have family obligations. So, as I understood, the cure includes accepting death, accepting life, distraction and moving on?
> Just wanted to ask some questions on process of recovery. Was it slow and gradual for you? I think I am starting to have less anxiety while thinking about death and ecperiencing DR... also it became easier to have fun, and I think some emotions are coming back (a very low degree, but at least there are some). Are these a sign of recovery? Because DR is still there 24/7, but I think there are some glimpses of hope...


Yeah, recovery is slow and gradual. I think you are on the right track. The general feeling of dpdr was there 24/7 even while seeing improvements in my own experiance but it was when i got over the main issues i had that the dpdr feeling itself really started going away. My main issue was accepting death and life for what it really is and that nothing is really any different than how its always been. It started with brief moments of no dpdr but the feeling would come back cause i would think about it vividly and wonder when it would return. Basically, thinking about it as a whole, panicking when it returned and letting it be the only thing to occupy my thoughts was preventing recovery. Its hard cause you want to figure it out and analyze the way you feel but that only results in overanalyzing everything you experiance which works the mind even further and creates confusion, memory issues, more perceptual issues etc...


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## bintuae (Jan 17, 2017)

Amethysteyes said:


> It depends on the type of depression. Emotional numbness can vary. Theres depression that only lets you feel negative emotions or theres one that numbs everything all together. Ive experianced both at different times.
> Feeling happiness and fulfillment are the last and hardest emotions to come back. Not saying im a really happy person now or anything, ive just learned to deal with the issue better. How often do you do fun activities or things you used to enjoy, even if they dont feel fun at the moment? It could help with all those issues. Staying stagenant is what prevented my recovery. I felt stuck cause i felt like nothing was working.
> Personally meds never helped me. In fact, they accually triggered my first bout of dpdr three years ago. Even when they helped temporarily with certain issues, i stopped because it didnt accually help me recover. Thats just me though.


Yeah, I've also experienced these 2 types of depression. Now, I'm in complete emotional numbness that I don't give a damn about anything, but the pdocs tell me my dp/dr is from anxiety?? I was prescribed anti anxiety meds which hardly ever touched my dp. I'm so confused


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## Amethysteyes (Jun 9, 2018)

bintuae said:


> Yeah, I've also experienced these 2 types of depression. Now, I'm in complete emotional numbness that I don't give a damn about anything, but the pdocs tell me my dp/dr is from anxiety?? I was prescribed anti anxiety meds which hardly ever touched my dp. I'm so confused


Dpdr is something you have to work through and is a product of stress from what ive gathered. Even if its just low grade stress that the person doesnt think affected them too much, sometimes for some sufferers, it seems to just come out of the blue one day and thats because at some point, the brain just went "nope, cant deal, im going into hiding" the meds may have not helped cause the dpdr could be caused by depression which is a different stress which again needs to be worked through.
Dont worry too much about the total numbness, ive been there, multiple times even but its just temporary. Basically just an emotional vacation. Try to live your life as best you can while in this state. I remember a day while at the peak of that where i was hanging with friends, completely lost, hazy and feeling no connection or emotion toward them or anything and even tho that day didnt seem like improvement at the end of the day, it helped in the long run and the more i did it, the more things started coming back.


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