# The Rounder we go, the stucker we get.(me again)



## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Note, I posted this article in the other sub-forum about Freud. A od can delete the other thread cuz it's the same aticle. I just wanna post this here cuz this one gets much more traffic. This is the DEFINITE article to make sense out of things, I really suggest this to everyone...it can make you understand what's going on and stop the vicious cycle we call dp. Really, it's a good read, it's deep yet not too scientific and confusing. It is written to HELP. Read to UNDERSTAND.

Note 2, this article is written by doc David Gorman. Here it is:

The Rounder We Go, The Stucker We Get

THIS IS ABOUT THE NATURE OF HABIT?unconstructive habits, particularly that kind of habit known as a vicious circle. That is, a reactive cycle, each step of which brings up something that forces me to react by taking the next step, which in turn forces me to take the next step, and so on, inevitably binding me into repeating the cycle, thereby reinforcing it and making it into a habit.

No one wants to be caught in vicious circles and certainly no one wittingly sets out to trap themselves in such destructive habits. Nonetheless, we do find ourselves caught in them and unless we understand how they work we cannot step outside the cycle that reinforces our existing habits, nor can we become free from creating new ones. If you (or someone you know) are stuck in a habitual and chronic 'problem', which you cannot eradicate in spite of your best efforts, and the most you have managed is to find better and better ways of dealing with it, then you have your own concrete experience to refer to as we go through this.

The key to understanding how we unwittingly create and sustain these kind of habituated cycles is to see how they are built at every step upon an integrated series of delusions which both drive us and seduce us into taking the next step. What we think we are doing to solve the problem seems to make sense within the context of the habit, but from a larger perspective is, in fact, the very way we create the problem and sustain it. These habits are brilliantly constructed in the way they trick us into repeating them in the face of our resolution to change. Even more cleverly, the way out is hidden in the very last place we would ever think of looking for it. Not only that, but in understanding the structure of circular habits, we can begin to make sense of why the habit of 'trying to solve the problem', of trying to be 'right', or 'perfect', or 'ideal', or even to become 'different' has such a powerful hold on us, for we are deeply caught in trying to be in control.

Let us explore how all this works, using, for ease of understanding, the very common example of chronic, uncomfortable 'tension'. Tension is a symptom that shows up in a mostly physiological way (that is, in body feelings as opposed to in an emotional or psychological way), but it will become apparent that these kinds of circular habits manifest in every aspect and territory of our lives. I will start with the nature and mechanics of the habit and how we get caught in it, then show the unexpected and hidden doorway out of it, and finish up with some of the implications of bringing about fundamental change.

1 ? THE NATURE OF THE BEAST ?

I go about my life, doing this and that and not thinking much about how I go about what I am doing?I just do it. Then, in one particular present moment in the middle of whatever I am in the middle of, I am brought to consciousness by a 'symptom'?some feeling of discomfort, of pain, tension or the like. This symptom appears, grabs my attention and I naturally feel it as something wrong, something I do not like, a 'bad thing'. It is also natural for me to feel that this symptom is the problem and, equally obviously, to want to do something about it to make it go away?to make everything better?preferably as quickly as possible. Success, of course, would be to get rid of the symptom and go back to what I was doing, minus the problem.

figure 1.










So, I go about some process or some act to change the moment from an 'it's-not-OK, I'm-feeling-bad' kind of moment to a 'now-it's-OK, I-feel-better' kind of moment. Let us take the example of me drawing a picture. After some indefinite period of working away with great concentration, I am brought to awareness in that present moment by a feeling of soreness and tension around my shoulders which (of course) feels bad to me so I want to do something to relieve the symptoms. Maybe I tighten up my shoulders, pull and scrunch and mulch them about hoping to break up the tension and ease the pain. I might try to release the tension or relax my shoulders. I might massage the sore spots or get someone else to do it for me, or whatever...

It is important to recognize that in terms of the habit it does not really matter what particular process I use (whether I do or undo something). The point is that the unpleasant feelings of the symptom force me to react by trying to get out of this present moment and into the next moment when (hopefully) everything will be better. When I succeed in making the wrong feeling (the tension and pain) into the right feeling (no tension or pain), the not-OK moment into the OK moment, I can merrily get back to my life without having to pay attention to all this stuff any more because at this moment it seems to me that there is no longer a problem.

figure 2.









All of this appears to make perfect sense and would be of little consequence if this was the first and only time these symptoms occurred. I probably would not even think twice about it. However, that is not what happens to most of us. What does happen is that after making everything better I just launch back into my life again, but it does not take long?a few hours, a few days or weeks?before the symptoms are back. I, of course, immediately react to the wrong feeling of the symptom by doing what I have always done before which to is to do something to get rid of it. Which works most of the time to get me back to where I feel OK again. And all would be fine if I stayed there, but, sure enough, the symptom is soon back. Not only that, but over time it's getting worse and what I used to do to change things for the better does not work as well any more.

figure 3.









Naturally enough, I never question the possibility that there may be something funny about my whole approach, I just try to find another 'better' way to make everything OK. So I try this or that method and it works for a while or I try this or that exercise and maybe it 'works' and maybe it does not.

But I keep on trying, and the symptom keeps on recurring until I get so familiar with it that I begin to regard it as "my problem". I find myself starting to think of it as an "it". Me and my problem. There it is again. It hurts me. I have tension. I have a back problem. I would be fine if I didn't have this #%@#!! problem. . .

In fact, what is really going on is that "it" has me. There is an inevitable sequence of events that becomes established: feel wrong react in order to feel right so I can go back to 'normal' life until I feel wrong again and react again to feel right to go back to 'normal' life. . . and so on, over and over, until this sequence itself becomes 'normal life'. Gradually the symptoms get worse and more persistent and I am forced to try different ways to 'solve' the problem, but to no avail. I am well and truly stuck and no matter what I do I cannot seem to change anything more than temporarily. This, of course, is the situation many people find themselves in.

By this time it has begun to dawn on me that this sequence of events is not a linear sequence but a circular one?I had the tension, I did something to get rid of it and everything was OK, then I find myself back here in the symptoms once again. I am caught in a vicious circle which is like a noose gradually tightening around me the more I try to escape it. At this point I might just resign myself to 'having' this problem. "It is my tough luck, I have a weak back" or "we are not evolutionarily designed to do this kind of activity." However, I am still stuck with the recurring symptoms so I am forced to go on searching for better and better ways to get rid of them.

figure 4.









Sooner or later, like F. M. Alexander did with his hoarse throat, I may ask myself why my problem keeps coming back. If I was OK a while ago but now the symptom is back again, perhaps it is because of something I am doing in that large circle of time between the moment I was OK and when the symptom reappeared (the part of the circle below outside the dotted rectangle). That circle is the period when I went back into my 'unconscious' way of being; when I am not really aware of how I do what I do, I just do it. Somewhere in that period of time (which can be anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks) something must have happened to drag me back around into this mess again.

So I proceed to look into those 'unconscious moments' to see if I can find something I am doing to cause the problem. There is a lot for me to find because those 'unconscious' moments encompass just about everything that is going on when I am not busy reacting to the symptom. There are a million interesting and involving details to discover. Maybe I am sitting badly; I am pulling down and compressing my spine; I have a poorly designed keyboard; a bad chair; I am interfering with my breathing, etc. I already have the habitual tendency to see whatever it is as wrong and therefore in need of correcting, so whenever I find something that I think might be causing the problem?perhaps sitting slumped over my drawing with my head forward and my neck tense?I immediately begin to look for the right thing to do to correct it. It does not matter what I find or what I do about it, it's always the same habit?that is, there is something wrong and I need to go through some process to make it OK again. In other words all I have done is to take the same means whereby or process I used on the original 'wrong' symptom and moved it over to use on this new 'wrong problem' to change the next moment into a better one.

figure 5.









The vicious circle is still unbroken and the habit has just become one level deeper and more complex than it was a moment ago. When I look into these 'unconscious' moments there is no end to the number of things I can find on which to practise this fix-it-up-and-make-it-better means. It will probably even seem like I am making progress by finding all these factors which are part of my habit (because they are all undoubtedly part of the circle and all do fit together). It's also easy to see that there certainly is some or other local effect when I fiddle about with them. However, I am kept so busy that it may take me quite a while (if indeed I ever do) to realize that, in spite of all this fixing up, I still have a problem. Granted, with all my fiddling the problem may have shifted somewhat to a different symptom, but, sure enough, there is still something to deal with on a regular basis. The words may change, but the song remains the same.

Is this situation familiar to you? Are you intimately acquainted with the little beast? Of course, all the above would be wonderful if you had actually managed to rid yourself once and for all of the problem and its symptoms. If you have, well, you are one of the lucky ones. For 15 years I have been working with people caught in just these kinds of habits and for most of them nothing they have done and no method they have tried has actually freed them. They may be getting better at 'dealing' with their symptoms and habitual patterns, in the sense of having better tools to make the change from the moment of the symptoms to the moments of relative freedom, but always they find themselves back in some similar sort of problem that needs dealing with. note1

2 ? STEPPING OUT OF THE CIRCLE ?

A number of years ago, as the nature of these circular habits was becoming more clear to me, both from my own experience and that of my pupils, it began to dawn on me that something was missing. Surely it must be possible to truly rid oneself of a habit rather than just get better at managing it? Alexander certainly stated that he had become free of the symptoms which had plagued him from childhood. So I determined to find that elusive way out of the circle. It struck me (in that obvious way that seems so obvious once it is obvious) that I get caught in circular habits because I keep going around the circle. At each moment I somehow manage to take the next step even though I do not want to end up where it leads me. The odd thing is I do not feel as though I am are taking another step around the circle each time, rather, I am desperately trying to take steps out of the circle! I thought, "Somewhere in there must be the clue to the trap. Somehow I am taking the next step in the habit while being seduced into thinking that I am taking a step out of it. But how could this happen? How could I be so fooled?"

I went back and re-examined each step from this new point of view and, sure enough, there it was. My habitual way of perceiving things had completely hidden it from me! Go back to the diagram above. There is one time in that circle that I am 'naturally' brought to present-moment consciousness?the moment of the symptom. In fact, I am brought to consciousness by the symptom, by the feeling of tension or discomfort. And what do I do each time? I do exactly the same thing I have always done before?I try to get out of that moment which I regard as wrong and bad as fast as I can into the next moment when things will be OK and good again. Every single time! No matter what else I change, that part stays constant and I never question it. That one precious moment when I am conscious enough to make a really different choice, I do not change a thing!

At that moment I believe I am taking a step toward the 'solution'. But there it is, plain as day: those steps from the 'problem' to the 'solution' are the same preconceived habitual steps I always try to take and are just as much part of that circle as any other part. For all that I think of it as the 'solution', it is, and has always been, an inextricable part of the habit. It is the warm and lovely seduction which I cannot resist. At that moment, the not-so-nice feelings are driving me from behind and the oh-so-nice future is beckoning me from in front and I simply cannot conceive of any other possibility than getting away from the one and to the other (and I would not be attracted to any other possibility anyway). It is all so beautifully constructed and so cleverly hidden from me!

The habit is laughing (if I personify it for a moment), "What a sucker, he fell for it again! No matter how many times he has been through it before, up comes that wrong feeling and WHAM! before he knows it, he reacts in exactly the same way he always does and then he wonders why he is caught in a repeating cycle. Har-dee-har-har!".

The whole habit is set up so that, whatever I have been up to previously, the moment of coming to consciousness of the symptom is presented to me as NOT GOOD, as WRONG. I feel it that way. And I fall for it every time and react as if it actually is wrong and therefore immediately try to change things. I am totally and utterly convinced that those feelings ARE wrong and I MUST do something about them, thereby inevitably taking the next step in the cycle. In fact, without realizing what I am doing, I positively and desperately want to take that step back into the habit each time. I am begging to take the next step. I am searching for better ways to take that step! What I also do not realize is that, in effect, I am being forced to take that next step because no other alternative is imaginable. That is to say, I am forced to react to my feelings. This is what reaction is: because of this, therefore that. No other possibilities. No choice.

Notice how integratedly the habit works and how much 'of a piece' it is. Reacting to the moment of the symptom and quickly stepping out toward my ideal 'end' of feeling OK puts an 'end' to my presentness and choice, for now I automatically begin to go back to being involved in my 'normal' life. Which, of course, means that I now go back into that narrowed state where I am only conscious of what I am doing, not how I am doing it. That narrowed 'unconsciousness' is as built into the cycle as everything else.

Not only that, but when I look into these narrowed 'unconscious' moments for the cause of how I get bound back to the symptom, what I do with whatever I find is the same as I do when I am naturally brought to consciousness by the symptoms?I immediately try to fix it all up in the preconceived way I think it should be fixed. (And I must stress here again, that it does not matter what my idea is of what should be happening, it is always the same fix-it-up reaction in general and is always as much part of the habit as is the so-called 'problem'.) Each part of the cycle validates and leads to the others and they all fit together like well-oiled gears in a machine?an assembly line for problems.

Because I have been in that narrowed state through much of the time as the habit cycles, I am not able to see how the whole pattern works. At each step I can only see as far as the next step. The consequences of what I am doing are always just over the horizon and therefore invisible to me. As Isaac Dineson (Karin Blixen) wrote in Out of Africa, "The earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road."

When I recognized that I had been deluded into buying into the whole scenario as presented to me by the habit, I did not quite know where to go. Everything seemed to be 'lies'. To paraphrase Alexander, "If anyone was in a rut, it was I". I had gone far enough to know that trying to make things OK was what drove the habit and that searching into those 'unconscious' moments was like examining all the wonderfully involving details of the walls of the rut?fascinating, but I am still in the rut. The real trick would be to simply step out of the rut. But how? That is what I had been trying to do all the time and it did not seem to work.

I had no choice but to go back to examine the whole thing again in the light of my knowledge that nothing was as it seems. I kept being drawn back to the moment of the symptom. After all, it is the occurrence of the symptom that first lets us know we have a 'problem'. It is only because of the symptom that we are looking for the now-I'm-OK-again-all-is-good 'solution'. We never seem to question its reality because it is an actual sensory experience. A moment's thought, however, will show that I feel the way I do at this moment because of what has been going on during all the accumulated moments before. And that what has been going on in all those moments before is that I have been cycling and recycling this habit. And that here I am about to give it another go round. Here I am about to crank it around one more notch. What do I expect to happen when I do the same thing I have always done? Something different this time? How deluded can you get? note2

It was then that I realized with a shock that the answer was right in front of me. The way out of the circle was simply to meet the moment of the symptom which I habitually feel as wrong and not take the next step of reacting to it. To accept that what is going on at this moment is actually going on?whether I like it or not. In other words, to freely and willingly live in that moment no matter how I feel about it, simply because it is there. I saw that this moment is just as valid a moment of reality as any other. What makes me think any particular moment is wrong and should be fixed up? Only my feelings. Very strong feelings, admittedly, but nevertheless feelings which have themselves been created by the cycling of the habit and so are automatically suspect. And who am I, the person who is so thoroughly caught in this habit, to know what is the 'right' thing.

figure 6.









As this startling realization came to me and at the very moment of recognizing this acceptance as a possible option, up rose the total and utter conviction that it would be pointless to try it because to decide to stay in that moment would be to stay in the symptoms (probably forever). No way! But, if I could just get to that next moment when everything is OK again, I would be happy to live there forever, but not here in this mess, thank you very much. This was the habit, of course, like a little devil on my shoulder, trying to convince me that my plan of acceptance could not possibly work?that it was unacceptable.

And I almost bought it until I remembered the profound shock I had experienced when the insight had first come to me. There was something so unexpected about it that I knew it was truly new and that I had never carried this out before. So I did.

What did actually happen when I inhibited my monstrously powerful habitual urge to react to the feelings of the 'symptom' was very, very different than I expected?after a moment of intense awareness of narrowness and restriction (during which I had to choose again not to react), an expansion filled me up and the strain and the tension disappeared! I was in a state of wholeness and oneness with myself and very sharply and vibrantly present in the world around me. I felt good?in fact, better than good?for along with the expansion came a rising delight and intense aliveness. All by doing absolutely nothing but meeting that moment I had always taken to be wrong and refusing to react to it the way I always had before. And lo and behold, it seemed the moment was not wrong after all?it was wonderful!

figure 7.









Which makes sense when you think about it. . . The moment I truly accept what is going on for itself and its own sake is the moment I truly give up to it. I am no longer struggling and straining to get to a 'better' moment. There is no longer a split in me with one part of me that feels another part of me as wrong and therefore not OK to be in the moment. There is no longer that one part of me trying to change that other part to what I think it should be (as if that were possible). Thus, I am no longer in a fight with myself at that moment. And, as we all tend to forget, you can never win a fight with yourself?one of you is going to lose and it is always going to be you! It is going to be you simply because you engaged in the fight.

To make the choice to be in the actual moment I am in is also the moment that I give up imposing my deluded version of what should be happening and leave myself open for something new. And that is exactly what happens - something new. Ironically, what happens when I do not try to reach my wonderful goal is that I actually do end up with what I wanted. All the elements I was after are there?wholeness, freedom, openness, alert presentness, no strain or tension?but they are all there in a very different way than I had imagined or experienced before and, of course, I have arrived in this new 'place' by a very different path, or rather, by no path at all.

figure 8.









One experience, of course, does not prove anything. But after many times in many varied situations, when I had managed to meet the force of whatever 'symptoms' or feelings came up without reacting by trying to make things right and instead willingly and freely chose to live just in the moment, no matter what it was; and after roughly the same sort of experiences had resulted each time, I was beginning to believe it. Now, years later, I have helped hundreds of others learn how to make this choice too and their experiences are always similar?at the moment of truly giving up the reaction and end-gaining, a wonderful peaceful easing quickly spreads and expands throughout them and they open up as whole, breathing, supported beings to the world around them, present and ready to respond, all over, all at once.

In my own experience and in that of working with pupils, the biggest challenge for everyone is to meet that moment of feeling and not react by trying to change things. In fact, this is the biggest change it is possible to make?no change at all?since habitually we always meet that moment and try to change things. Though it sounds like a very simple choice to make, if you have not done it you cannot imagine just what a huge challenge it is to actually carry out in the face of the immediate and overwhelmingly 'real' feelings, thoughts and emotions of that existential moment. It takes every bit of courage and clarity to stick with this means whereby when your entire experience is screaming at you, "WRONG! WRONG! GET THE HELL OUT OF THERE AS FAST AS POSSIBLE!" The fact that such all-encompassing changes take place almost immediately when we do manage to inhibit reacting shows how big a change it is to willingly accept what we feel is wrong and to freely live in the given 'here and now'.

? WHAT IS NEW IS NOT WHAT IS OLD ?

These experiences showed me that it is indeed possible to step out of the vicious circle. But to do so does not mean finding a better thing to do; it does not mean changing the symptoms; it does not mean end- gaining for the right solution; and it does not mean that anything is wrong. All is as it should be simply because it is as it is.

To step out of the habit does mean actually accepting the moment as it is (which means having faith that reality is not broken and does not need fixing); it also means giving up my fixed ideas of what should be happening (which means discovering what is really going on in the present); and it means allowing myself to experience the feelings I really have instead of trying to get to the ones I want to have (which means realizing in actual experience that if I do not react, there is nothing wrong with me)!

What then were the symptoms all about and why had they come to feel so wrong? Was the negative feeling just my habitual perception of the moment or was something truly unconstructive happening but I was just misinterpreting it. This seemed the next big question to tackle?mostly because it was there and would not go away?a situation that I was starting to realize meant that something important was going on.

I began to recognize how much I was learning by being able to see with fresh eyes the simple and simultaneous facts of what is, rather than the acts of what I could do about it. So I went back to my experience to look again at the facts. Go back to the diagram of the circular habit (click to see it again). In this cycle I spend the majority of my time in a state of narrowed awareness. I am not conscious of how I do what I do, I just do it until I become aware that I feel very tense and tight which, of course, physiologically is a state of muscular constriction and contraction. If indeed I am a complete unity then how can my attentional contraction be in any way separable from my muscular contraction? I become a completely integrated whole-system narrowedness. note3 If, every time I am awakened from these substantial periods of being so narrowed, I discover that I have become cramped and tight then how can I interpret it otherwise? I narrow, I get narrowed. What I am feeling is not muscles contracting, not some bad sitting, nor any of a million little details. All of these details are undoubtedly happening, but they are not causes, they are effects. What I am feeling is what it feels like to have been so narrowed for so long.

Conversely, experience also shows that when I allow myself to exist in any moment as it is without reaction?in other words, to open more fully to the experience and events of the present no matter whether I like it or not?these tensions and contractions disappear and I become free and whole. How can I interpret that except that as I open, I open?in every way? More than that, I become more open and expanded all the way into that fresh alert awareness of the world around me than I was before I made my choice to accept the narrowed 'symptoms'.

The implications flooded in on me. If the only thing that I changed was to NOT allow myself to react as if the feelings were wrong, and consequently the symptoms disappeared, how could I interpret that except that I am OK and always have been OK?I just did not know it. I was deluded into thinking that something was wrong in the present and needed to be changed so that all would be OK in the future! It is important to recognize that the delusion is not the feelings of wrongness. There really is something 'unconstructive' going on, but it is not the feelings of tension or pain, it is my narrowed, reactive, end-gaining state. There is NOTHING whatsoever wrong with the feelings. They are very real and valid feelings giving me very important information, namely, that it is a very constricting and painful thing to narrow off for so long into my drawing.

That I come to wholeness when I stop reacting shows me that I am already intrinsically whole and integrated since that is what I am when I am just being me in the present?I am and always have been a 'psycho-physical unity'. As I stop being divided by making one part of me wrong and trying to change it, I become whole. I do not have a mind. I do not have a body. I am me?the sum-total of my memory and my moment-to-moment experience?one indivisible whole. I was just too deluded to know it and hence was constantly engaged in precisely the kind of habitual reaction that was guaranteed to make me feel as if I was made up of a number of parts which needed some co-ordinating on my part in order to become whole in the future.

The experience of all-over release and ease is simply that it is easy to be myself as I am in the present, since that is what I actually am when I am not straining to be what I am not. For what is on-going tension but an on-going conflict, a continual trying that cannot achieve its goal. It not only takes effort and energy to try to get into the next moment ahead of myself, it is downright impossible (though, habitually, this did not stop me from trying). How many of us have not yet learned or are quite unwilling to accept that we CANNOT be any different than we are, and there is no more frustrated trying than trying to be. I feel free because I have freed myself from the slavery of having to react to my feelings and the tyranny of my idea of what I should be.

By the same token, the expansion and openness that accompany my choice to allow myself into this moment shows me how narrowed I had been to what I was concentrating on in those moments before and how closed off I was to everything else that was happening. The profound sense of aliveness and presence in and of the space around me is the experience (beyond any theory) that I am not only not separate in any way from myself, I am in no way separate from the universe around me!

This brings me to an important point implicit in the above but perhaps worth making explicit. The circular habit is so all-pervasive that it even colours our deepest metaphysical and spiritual 'precepts' (and what is a precept but a 'pre-conception'). We all love the idea that we could escape from our split and conflicted prisons and become whole, integrated and part of the larger universe, but we still project that goal into the future. "I am not there yet, I am still in this mess, but I want to be there and with some exploration and learning maybe one day I will be free and where I want to be". On a larger scale we tend to see our human lives and cultures as caught in destructive patterns of behaviour and less than desirable moral and ethical interactions. We project a better state or a more perfect plane to aspire to and then devote our energies to trying to achieve them. Do you see the parallels? All these parallel tracks?these let's-aim-to-get-better-for-the-next-moment / life / after-life tracks?are heading in the same direction, and the express train of our lives has wheels on all of them simultaneously. In other words, our fundamental mode of operating in this habit is 'end-gaining' and every thought, feeling, emotion, and connection to the world around us will be interpreted and subsumed into this habitual pattern of reaction.

We conveniently 'forget' what we all kind of, sort of, really know and that is that there is only the present moment. All past moments are already gone and no changes can be made to anything that has already happened (much as I would like to). Any future moment has yet to come and will be whatever it is because of events and forces far beyond me and my control. The only ability I have to affect my future depends solely on what I do at each present moment. But in our sophistry and our fear we also forget that, in the most real and practical sense, the future does not exist. We actually are alive and able to make choices only in a endless succession of present moments. Each of these 'presents' is what it is because of all the simultaneous events and forces (including my own choices, perceptions and actions) in that moment and in the previous moments. Since we cannot affect the past moments, the only thing left is to make a different choice in the present.

Thus, to be able to make a different choice in any present moment (indeed any choice at all) means that you must be conscious enough to remember to do so.

However, once you realize that in most of your present moments you are not actually 'present'?that is, there is no 'you' there conscious enough to make any kind of choice (you are simply immersed like a baby in the womb in the content of what you are doing); once you understand that when you are brought to awareness by a symptom (which is in effect a messenger telling you that the way you have been going about things is unconstructive and that your present experience is what it feels like to be operating that way) you tend to react against the messenger that woke you up rather than get the message; once you admit that the way you react is to shoot the messenger as soon as it shows up so you can get right back to your narrowed and 'unconscious' involvement in the details of your life; once you really get a sense of the totality of this pattern and its relentless mechanical cycling and recycling of your life, you will see that the first step must be to have command of what will allow you to be more conscious in these on-going present moments so that you can have the possibility of making a choice. Without this you are as bound and trapped as ever and will forever rebound from one manifestation of the habit to another, never being any the wiser.

So, what allows you to become more conscious? Let us sneak up on how consciousness works from its blind side, from how habitual ways of operating restrict and narrow consciousness.

It is my habit to feel that I cannot accomplish the job at hand unless I 'concentrate', which for most of us means that we narrow our attention to cut out 'distractions'. Distractions are, of course, just other parts of this simultaneous moment. I do not realize that the reason I am distracted by what is actually happening around me is already because of my habit, but it does not take much to see how I collude with the habit in eliminating these 'outside' aspects of my awareness. In fact, I am the habit. note4 Daily, I am practicing and improving my ability to maintain a narrowed form of consciousness, and as Barbara Conable is fond of saying, "practice does not make perfect?practice makes permanent".

Because of this relative unconsciousness, when the habit cycles to the moment of the symptoms, I tend to respond as if there were no moments before, only moments ahead in which I can do something about them. The negative aspect of the feeling so dominates me that I am aware of almost nothing but the symptom and what I can do to get rid of it. These feelings then form another level of distraction, especially when they become chronic, which I work hard to ignore by further trying to narrow my awareness.

The same is true in the last part of the circle?that 'end' I try to gain so all will be OK. As I flee from the symptom I am happy to aim all my attention to that projected future moment. As a consequence of that habitual striving and trying for the pre-conceived 'good' solution (which has never really worked for me before), I am oblivious to all else that is in the moment?all the other unknown opportunities, all the possibilities inherent in my system just clamouring to express themselves. In other words, every part of the circle fosters narrowedness and favours the known. This is why I end up being so 'unconscious'. But I am not really 'unconscious'. Rather, I am severely restricted in the extent of my awareness, which is to say, the extent of my being. This is what I feel as the symptom?my restricted narrowness of being.

Notice all the effort it takes to be so narrowed and unaware. Each step demands a massive input of energy to maintain. I try hard to concentrate on my job. There is a huge amount of muscular work we call tension that goes on while I am that narrowed. I expend an immense amount of physical and emotional energy trying to escape from the feeling of my narrowedness and I strain mightily to try to reach my ideal but impossible goal of being other than I am. I am deluded into thinking I am spending that energy to get somewhere, not realizing that it takes this much energy just to keep me out of the present, to keep me constricted, and to keep me in the tightly wound spiral of the habit. Day after day I am feeling the difficulty, the strain, the work and the cost, unaware that it is me supplying the energy that keeps it all running. I am supplying that energy sometimes willingly and sometimes unwittingly. One thing is for sure, there is no one else doing it for me and there is no one else doing it to me.

When we return to our question of what allows us to be more conscious, you can see that it is not a matter of how we can expand our consciousness, it is how can we stop constantly restricting and narrowing it. We are creatures that already have a wide-open and infinitely interconnected consciousness built into us. That is why your awareness and presentness expands to its innate openness in an instant when you stop the end-gaining interference. In this circle when is the only moment you are 'naturally' brought to awareness? The moment of the very symptoms you love to hate. This is the moment when your wonderful highly- evolved-over-millions-of-years system has sent you a message to wake you up from your narrowedness.

There is no possibility of changing anything or making any choices when we are 'unconscious' in narrowedness. You may as well forget about that. The job is not to try to get consciousness into the areas where you are 'unconscious', the job is to use constructively the moment when you already have consciousness and, fortunately for us, there will be plenty of times your system will wake you up if you are operating unconstructively.

If you can then meet the full force and reality of those moments and make the different choice to allow yourself to fully live these moments without reaction or judgement, you will find yourself more open and more conscious and present and hence more able to make these choices. Over time and with practice this will become your way of being?in other words, a constructive circle that reinforces itself.

When I can manage this simplest of simple choices, there is really no other choice needed from me. As I come more and more consistently into living in the present there are less and less 'problems' that need any choices made about them. Most of what needs to happen in the moment is already occurring as a natural response when I am no longer reacting. These responses are not pre-determined or pre-conceived by me, or my habit, or my culture. As I allow myself to open up I come into direct interaction with the events, situations and people around me. I am no longer working against the universe, I am inseparably part of everything that is. There is nowhere to get to any more. I have reached my end.

I am home.


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## Guest (Jan 30, 2006)

Good post, i think were all stuck in some sort of revolving circle, we all have a major problem with life and try to treat the symptoms instead of the disease itself. The hardest part is realizing what needs to be changed and how to change it. I myself always write down my essential problem and how to deal with it. My major problem is the world i cant stand it, i dont want to be apart of it, i feel like a fucking alien, i have developed several of those coping techniques that are described so well in the illustrations. Its true it truely is a ferris wheel full of uncomfortable feelings that feed off of each other that give off a delusion that life is pointless. Kill me now.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

This is one of the best post I have seen on hear. Thank you so much for posting this. It all makes complete sense totaly!

j_utah, you and I have something in commen about how we both feel about the world around us. I have given a lot of my thought over to evil. I wonder all the time about the wars and killings and child molestations that are happining all over the world. I think about this stuff so much that it makes me sick. Then I start to think who cares about anything, everything sucks, everything is crap and therefore I might as well just start killing some people to put as many as I can out of there misory. I realize now that there are answers to the questions about why this world is so messed up. The problem with us is that we have a problem with foresight and we can't see the world from the perspective of God no matter how hard we try. I think it is a good thing that we find fault with the world because the world is evil and if we felt good about this world I think that would mean that we were somewhat evil ourselves. I have been telling myself lately to stop thinking about all the horrible things going on around me and just put trust and faith in God that everything that is happining now is what has to happen in order to have the perfict future promised in the bible. It is all nessacry, this evil must happen because it proves that humans can not rule themselves. We are ruleing ourselves now and that is why everything sucks so bad. I don't know what to tell you if you don't believe in God. I don't know if you could ever find answers or ever feel good about this world without God. Even though I believe in God, it has taken me many years in order to put my full faith in him because I am such a sceptic but what I realize now is that all the evil in this world is comming from this world. Just like how our DP/DR comes from inside us and is just caused from our mind trying to control itself and reality, the worlds evil comes from the world and from the men that are ruleing it. You have to accept this world for what it is just the same way that you have to accept yourself for who you are. The world is evil that is why you don't like it. But just because the world is evil today, that does not mean that it will be evil in the future! I am sorry to bring up religion but if I did not believe in God I am sure my DR would never go away and I wouldn't even want it to.

By the way life is not pointless. Life is a wonderful thing but we are blind to that fact. This world's condition is temporary and so is our DP/DR. Continue to search for answers and they will come to you. Just don't ever tell yourself that you know for sure that life is pointless because you would be telling yourself a lie and furthering your own blindness.


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## Guest (Jan 30, 2006)

LOSTONE said:


> This is one of the best post I have seen on hear. Thank you so much for posting this. It all makes complete sense totaly!
> 
> j_utah, you and I have something in commen about how we both feel about the world around us. I have given a lot of my thought over to evil. I wonder all the time about the wars and killings and child molestations that are happining all over the world. I think about this stuff so much that it makes me sick. Then I start to think who cares about anything, everything sucks, everything is crap and therefore I might as well just start killing some people to put as many as I can out of there misory. I realize now that there are answers to the questions about why this world is so messed up. The problem with us is that we have a problem with foresight and we can't see the world from the perspective of God no matter how hard we try. I think it is a good thing that we find fault with the world because the world is evil and if we felt good about this world I think that would mean that we were somewhat evil ourselves. I have been telling myself lately to stop thinking about all the horrible things going on around me and just put trust and faith in God that everything that is happining now is what has to happen in order to have the perfict future promised in the bible. It is all nessacry, this evil must happen because it proves that humans can not rule themselves. We are ruleing ourselves now and that is why everything sucks so bad. I don't know what to tell you if you don't believe in God. I don't know if you could ever find answers or ever feel good about this world without God. Even though I believe in God, it has taken me many years in order to put my full faith in him because I am such a sceptic but what I realize now is that all the evil in this world is comming from this world. Just like how our DP/DR comes from inside us and is just caused from our mind trying to control itself and reality, the worlds evil comes from the world and from the men that are ruleing it. You have to accept this world for what it is just the same way that you have to accept yourself for who you are. The world is evil that is why you don't like it. But just because the world is evil today, that does not mean that it will be evil in the future! I am sorry to bring up religion but if I did not believe in God I am sure my DR would never go away and I wouldn't even want it to.
> 
> By the way life is not pointless. Life is a wonderful thing but we are blind to that fact. This world's condition is temporary and so is our DP/DR. Continue to search for answers and they will come to you. Just don't ever tell yourself that you know for sure that life is pointless because you would be telling yourself a lie and furthering your own blindness.


LOSTONE i can relate to every single thing you just posted and i have been going through these thoughts all the time, its like i have been born in the wrong era or something. I now am learning what is making me so damn depressed. Its my own negativity of my surroundings. I have to learn to accept the world and work through it instead of just analyzing the evils of the world and how i hate everything about society and the media. I have to make my own little heaven out of this world... or else im just gonna waste away. What really helps me is writing down all my thoughts so i could see them in a different perspective. I am realizing that the path i am heading towards is completely the opposite of what i want to be heading in. I will never make society or the world better by being negative,depressed and suicidal. I need to decide right here right now, do i live or do i die no inbetweens. I have chosen to live, my spirit is growing by the minute and this is no exaggeration im actually feeling better about everything.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Dude after reading this post and haveing some revelations of my own, I went out for a walk as the sun was riseing AND I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT. I could not believe it, just all of a sudden my DP/DR vanished completly and that has not happened to me once in 8 years!! My DP/DR has went up and down before but never vanished. I wanted to cry and then I ACTUALLY STARTED TO CRY. Oh my God thank you (am I cured?) I don't know, wait ---- I was never sick to start with!!!!!! I can not believe that the sulution was and is actually this simple. I am afraid that my DP/DR will come back any moment but I don't think I will let it anymore. My mom just woke up and started screaming at me about her own mess that I did not cleen up, usually I just sit and get real DPed when my mom screams at me and I just black it out but not this time. For the first time since I was 16 I actually put her in her place. Dam that felt so good, telling my mom off and telling her how mean she is to scream at me about her own mess.. I am not going to let myself get upset over evil people anymore, I am not even going to give them one thought in my mind. I made up my mind my focus is not on the bad things or the bad people anymore or ever again. I am only focusing on God and what he has to teach me about life. I think I am cured          !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

P.S. It is funny that feeling normal is actually more amazing then the feeling you get from drugs!!! I would rather feel normal then feel high, it is that amazing to me now!!

Thank you God!

j_utah

I will send you a PM soon.

ComplicatedFool
Thank you again for this thread, it has really helped me to see what my problem has been. This thread rules!


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

LostOne, now te trick is not having to hold the presentness you feel, but instead....stop holding the dp itself.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

LOSTONE said:


> I am afraid that my DP/DR will come back any moment


Congrats! It feels incredible, doesn't it? I isolated one of your quotes above. Don't be afraid that DP/DR will come back. Fearing its return gives it power to return.

Jeff


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

> Congrats! It feels incredible, doesn't it? I isolated one of your quotes above. Don't be afraid that DP/DR will come back. Fearing its return gives it power to return.





> LostOne, now te trick is not having to hold the presentness you feel, but instead....stop holding the dp itself.


I was just thinking about that and I realize that you are completly right!

I never believed anyone on hear that said they once had DP/DR and it just went away one day. I wanted to believe but I truely thought you were all lieing or maybe that I just had some other form of illness. But now I am a believer!! I am cured and I will never try to fix a mental problem that I don't have ever again! I just keep thinking how amazing it is that I lived the way I did for 8 years of my life and there was absolutly nothing wrong with me except that I was trying to do the impossible with my mind. I don't have psychic powers and I am not going to try and force the univerce to be what I want it to be anymore. I am just going to live my life.

Thank you everyone, if I would not have found dpselfhelp I would still be lost and miserable.

DP/DR is the worst illness on the planet, but gladly it is also the most cureable illness on the planet.

We need to get the word out NOW! 
Everyone start writeing letters!!!

I am so happy           
Even though my life is still messed up, I am sure I can fix it now


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## Kelson12 (Aug 10, 2004)

LOSTONE said:


> Dude after reading this post and haveing some revelations of my own, I went out for a walk as the sun was riseing AND I ACTUALLY ENJOYED IT. I could not believe it, just all of a sudden my DP/DR vanished completly and that has not happened to me once in 8 years!! My DP/DR has went up and down before but never vanished. I wanted to cry and then I ACTUALLY STARTED TO CRY. Oh my God thank you (am I cured?) I don't know, wait ---- I was never sick to start with!!!!!! I can not believe that the sulution was and is actually this simple. I am afraid that my DP/DR will come back any moment but I don't think I will let it anymore. My mom just woke up and started screaming at me about her own mess that I did not cleen up, usually I just sit and get real DPed when my mom screams at me and I just black it out but not this time. For the first time since I was 16 I actually put her in her place. Dam that felt so good, telling my mom off and telling her how mean she is to scream at me about her own mess.. I am not going to let myself get upset over evil people anymore, I am not even going to give them one thought in my mind. I made up my mind my focus is not on the bad things or the bad people anymore or ever again. I am only focusing on God and what he has to teach me about life. I think I am cured          !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> P.S. It is funny that feeling normal is actually more amazing then the feeling you get from drugs!!! I would rather feel normal then feel high, it is that amazing to me now!!
> 
> ...


Glad you started feeling better! Sounds pretty nice. Hope it keeps up for ya!

Kelson


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

> Glad you started feeling better! Sounds pretty nice. Hope it keeps up for ya!


I am sure that bad times will come once again in my life but I am not going to let DP/DR take over ever again. Now that I know how to stop it, I will never let it rull my life again. I don't want to be dead, I wan't to live and therefore that is exacly what I am going to start doing.

LIVE!


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

Excellent read. Is there a Clift Notes version? 

Key paragraphs:

*"The way out of the circle was simply to meet the moment of the symptom which I habitually feel as wrong and not take the next step of reacting to it. To accept that what is going on at this moment is actually going on?whether I like it or not. In other words, to freely and willingly live in that moment no matter how I feel about it, simply because it is there. I saw that this moment is just as valid a moment of reality as any other. What makes me think any particular moment is wrong and should be fixed up? Only my feelings. Very strong feelings, admittedly, but nevertheless feelings which have themselves been created by the cycling of the habit."*

*"The biggest challenge for everyone is to meet that moment of feeling and not react by trying to change things. In fact, this is the biggest change it is possible to make?no change at all?since habitually we always meet that moment and try to change things."*

*"I have arrived in this new 'place' by a very different path, or rather, by no path at all. "*

*"Accept that what is going on at this moment is actually going on?whether I like it or not."*


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## livinginhell333 (Feb 19, 2005)

how did it happen lostone, what did you do to make it feel better or was it just gone just like that? neways thats awesome that you felt the dp gone all at once, whatever your doing right keep doing it and yea tell us how to do it.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

livinginhell333 said:


> how did it happen lostone, what did you do to make it feel better or was it just gone just like that? neways thats awesome that you felt the dp gone all at once, whatever your doing right keep doing it and yea tell us how to do it.


Hi LIH,

Yeah, it's too bad there isn't a Clift Notes version of that piece. Lots of good information but a really long read, especially if you're DP'd at the time.

Essentially, you win over DP by allowing whatever you're feeling to exist, in the present moment. You don't try to change anything. It's kind of paradoxical, but this is part of why I believe I'm doing better as well.

The recovery method is deceptively simple in application and truly simple, conceptually.

Jeff


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## livinginhell333 (Feb 19, 2005)

but what about the physical parts i get. the jerks spasms twitching off the body and some weird sensations i get in my brain sometimes. like rattling. its weird. there's nothing i can do about those things or trying to feel some like things in my hand or the ground under feet, because i think that is somewhat physical.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

Yes! Yes! This twitching is your body shaking off or finishing a trauma response, LIH. As I've been feeling better, my head has literally been twitching a lot more than usual. Also, lots of shaking and tremors in my hands and legs. When I'm feeling better and less DP'd, though, these tremors and the shaking goes away 100%.

"The very structure of trauma, including hyper-arousal, dissociation and freezing, is based on the evolution of the predator/prey survival behaviors. The symptoms of trauma are the result of a highly activated incomplete biological response to threat, frozen in time. By enabling this frozen response to thaw, then complete, trauma can be healed.

Traumatic symptoms are not caused by the dangerous event itself. They arise when residual energy from the event is not discharged from the body. This energy remains trapped in the nervous system where it can wreak havoc on our bodies and minds. Wild animals have the ability to ?shake off? (the author means "shake off" as in physical twitching) this excess energy. The key for humans in dispelling traumatic symptoms lies in our being able to mirror wild animals in this way. Dr. Levine has developed a safe, gradual way to help trauma survivors develop their own natural ability to resolve the excess energy caused by overwhelming events."

More info:

http://www.traumahealing.com/intro.html


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

livinginhell333 said:


> but what about the physical parts i get. the jerks spasms twitching off the body and some weird sensations i get in my brain sometimes. like rattling. its weird. there's nothing i can do about those things or trying to feel some like things in my hand or the ground under feet, because i think that is somewhat physical.


Let those physical twitchings happen. Feel them fully. Do not be alarmed by them. You will not crack. You will not hurt your body by just allowing it to do whatever it wants.

Allow the weirdest, strangest, most bizarre feelings and physical sensations to happen and then this huge fog of DP will lift from you, maybe within 5 or 10 minutes, if not sooner. If the weirdness comes back, feel yourself fully letting those strange sensations happen, giving them permission to exist. And again, you will find relief from DP.

It takes some time to fully adjust, reset.

Jeff


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## livinginhell333 (Feb 19, 2005)

yea i think in december of 2004 i had a huge panic attack and i felt like i wasn't breathing and wen't to the er for some reason i thought the drugs were still in me, i guess i was still in freak out panic mode and i wen't to the hospital like 3 times in a week. this was during x-mas too. i don't remember this happening really but it did. i think this was a trauma for me, going through that made me shut down mentally emotionally which also leads to physical shutdown. i mean i felt weird after i smoked in november in 04 and it never really wen't away so i was getting scared i guess and was pretty stressed and then it all turned in to a huge panic attack where i thought i died and was totally freaking out. i guess some sort of mini psychotic episode which ruined me totally. so yea it was pot that induced panic and anxiety which lead to panic attacks and then the trauma in my mind at least and then complete shutdown and feeling nothing and being gone and not in reality. i can't believe this is happening. like why me? i had a lot of things going for me. i was opening up a lot more, starting to look for a girl in college and loving life and having fun. now look where the hell i am.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

livinginhell333 I just stop trying to fix a problem that did not exist.

I just went to the store and I got reel bad anxiety and started shaking and feeling sick then my DP started in but as soon as I felt that I just thought of this thread and told myself that the anxiety is normal. Anxiety is a normal part of human life and I am not going to freak out because I am experiencing anxiety. I get many physical symptoms but most of them are just symptoms of anxiety (nothing to freak out about!)

Just sit in your chair now and realize that you are normal and that reality is normal and what you are feeling is normal and your DP/DR will go away. You have to put faith in it though, you have to realize that the problem is that you don't realize there is no problem except that you are trying to fix a problem that does not exist!

I am really surprised at how this feels, I did not think it would be like this at all. It is very strange but very good, I feel like crap still but I am not DP/DR because of that. I still have no friends and no Job, I still have no life but my DP/DR is GONE! Now I will start faceing my fears and building a life for myself. My mind is free now.


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## livinginhell333 (Feb 19, 2005)

i wonder what its like to feel in your body and not have to worry about things that much. i wonder what its like to feel life again and enjoy everything. why is this so hard. this is harder than anything i've been through.


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## livinginhell333 (Feb 19, 2005)

congrats lostone keep us posted and updated. also i try telling myself i am here things are real and i try to believe in it, but faith is hard to come by because it doesn't work.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

I am not totaly happy, it's not like my life just all of a sudden became what I wanted it to be, but rather all of a sudden I just accepted what I was feeling and who I am. I just accepted the fact that my mind will never fix anything unless I stop trying to fix everything. JUST LIVE. Experience what you feel and stop telling yourself that what you feel is wrong or not right somehow.

Hell dude faith does work you just don't have any that is part of the problem.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

livinginhell333 said:


> yea i think in december of 2004 i had a huge panic attack and i felt like i wasn't breathing and wen't to the er for some reason i thought the drugs were still in me, i guess i was still in freak out panic mode and i wen't to the hospital like 3 times in a week. this was during x-mas too. i don't remember this happening really but it did. i think this was a trauma for me, going through that made me shut down mentally emotionally which also leads to physical shutdown. i mean i felt weird after i smoked in november in 04 and it never really wen't away so i was getting scared i guess and was pretty stressed and then it all turned in to a huge panic attack where i thought i died and was totally freaking out. i guess some sort of mini psychotic episode which ruined me totally. so yea it was pot that induced panic and anxiety which lead to panic attacks and then the trauma in my mind at least and then complete shutdown and feeling nothing and being gone and not in reality.


My DP started after a panic attack too.

My body responded as if it were a trauma. And it probably is a trauma to most people.

You don't need faith to feel better. You used that word "faith" but it's not about that at all. It's just about acknowledging the symptoms and not trying to feel any differently because of the symptoms, no matter how weird, strange, frightening they are. Try not to recoil or withdraw from the bizarre sensations. Your head will not explode. In fact, you will feel better later. But don't think you need faith or anything. It's just about accepting those weird feelings, and not trying to change how you feel, no matter how strange your body or head feels.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

What I ment about faith is that you must realize that it is a *fact* that you are not insain and that you are normal. As soon as you realize that *fact* and stop trying to force yourself to stop feeling what you are feeling then your DP/DR will go away.

At least thats what happened to me.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

"The way out of the circle was simply to meet the moment of the symptom which I habitually feel as wrong and not take the next step of reacting to it."

This "next step" or "reaction" is what Claire Weekes defined as "second fear," in her pioneering work "Hope and Help For Your Nerves" (1969). There's first fear and second fear. Habitually adding second fear causes much distress.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

What is the second fear? The fear of the first fear?


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

LOSTONE said:


> What is the second fear? The fear of the first fear?


Yeah.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Yep, LostOne got it right. We are literally fixing NOTHING.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Yep, LostOne got it right. We are literally fixing NOTHING.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Yep, LostOne got it right. We are literally fixing NOTHING.

...and by fixing nothing we complicate our system and end up in such mess.


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2006)

Im genuinely trying to follow, ......but this is all so *abstract* to me.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

Eros said:


> Im genuinely trying to follow, ......but this is all so *abstract* to me.


Just don't do anything. Don't react to the symptoms. Don't get frustrated or upset or down or try to change the way you feel. A lot of times when we're DP'd (almost always) we try to fight the way we're feeling or complain or get upset.

People who aren't as sensitive as us might get the same weird symptoms as the ones which caused our DP/anxiety to persist, but they wouldn't react in a fearful way. So in their case(es) the symptoms would die rather quickly, because they're not making a big deal out of the way they're feeling. They're not being bluffed by a harmless physical feeling, that is.


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## HopeFloats (Dec 22, 2005)

lostone i am soooo happy for you!!!!


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

My thanks go out to all of you. Everyone on dpselfhelp has helped me to realize my problem and I thank all of you for your information. 
ComplicatedFool this thread is a revelation to me, it has truely opened my eyes. I feel as if an angle just dropped out of heaven and answered all of my prayers, but the only thing that happened is that I finaly found the information that I needed to answer my prayers for myself.

The only thing that scares me is if I will have the strength to face my fears and not try to avoid them anymore. I think I will be able to because I realize that running from my fears is the same as running from my feelings and running from reality. I must face the facts in life and accept what I can not change as being REAL.

Anyone on hear that did not read or did not understand ComplicatedFool's post should go back and read it. Read it slowly and know that this thread has in it all the information that you need. ComplicatedFool I never read long post's like yours but something told me to read yours and not to just skim through it. I am very glad I did because it all makes complete sense to me now, thank you very much  .


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## Methusala (Dec 22, 2005)

Hearty Congratulations LostOne on your wonderful experience.

I feel very inspired. The other day I slipped down to almost zero DP for a few minutes. It happened when I walked into a store. Like magic, a counter person that usually doesn't react a huge amount to me walked right up and started chatting. I was doing and feelings things without thinking about them, just like is often discussed here.

Thanks for a thought provoking article ComplicatedFool

M


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## Guest (Jan 31, 2006)

Great post, it described me, or at least, how I've been feeling, to a T. What I meant by'flashbacks' was very well explained.

Thankyou for posting this.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Oh yeah fellas no need to thank me.

Someone should select the most important parts and drop some cliff notes.


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## Mollusk (Nov 12, 2005)

That was a great article. It really rings true to the obsessive need to fix something that comes with dp. It really makes sense that we must accept life; the good and the bad. If you run from every discomfort or seek to fix it and make it comfortable you will be constantly stressed out your whole life. We must accept and feel it all. There really is no good without the bad to compare it to anyway. That is probably part of the reason many of us have no feelings. Its because we refuse to feel the bad feelings.

Its hard to actually bring this into practice though. I'm not really sure how to just accept it all. I acknowledge the dp feelings and probably dwell on them. How do i just accept?


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

> There really is no good without the bad to compare it to anyway. That is probably part of the reason many of us have no feelings. Its because we refuse to feel the bad feelings.


Very good point Urbn, this is what I have been thinking a lot about lately.



> Its hard to actually bring this into practice though. I'm not really sure how to just accept it all. I acknowledge the dp feelings and probably dwell on them. How do i just accept?


For me it did not really require any thinking at all, and that is the key.
Once you realize that this is who you are and this is how you feel, then you will realize that there is nothing to think about.

It just happens! Just be who you are and feel the way you feel. It might suck but it is real so stop trying to change it in your mind. Stop thinking about it and just sit there and realize that you feel the way you do because this is how you feel.

We just keep overcomplicating things in our mind and that is what drives us to DP/DR. Simplify and just exist for who you are.


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2006)

LOSTONE said:


> > There really is no good without the bad to compare it to anyway. That is probably part of the reason many of us have no feelings. Its because we refuse to feel the bad feelings.
> 
> 
> Very good point Urbn, this is what I have been thinking a lot about lately.
> ...


hmm this gives me a few more ideas


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## lies (Nov 14, 2005)

LOSTONE said:


> > For me it did not really require any thinking at all, and that is the key.
> > Once you realize that this is who you are and this is how you feel, then you will realize that there is nothing to think about.
> >
> > It just happens! Just be who you are and feel the way you feel. It might suck but it is real so stop trying to change it in your mind. Stop thinking about it and just sit there and realize that you feel the way you do because this is how you feel.
> > ...


wow, so nicely said
makes good sense, and i've been thinking about it
is it like, just realizing that you actually are here at this moment and space?
hard to do though

xxx


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

lies

Yes, but it's not about something you DO, it is about something that you don't do, wich is THINK ABOUT EVERYTHING LIKE IT REALLY MATTERED AT ALL. Klt123, and all the caps lock post around lately have made me realize even more about what our problem is. WE NEED TO TURN DOWN OUR THOUGHTS. So what if things seem strange or out of place, do you think that eveyone on earth walks around wondering if the universe is operating correctly? Reality is not messed up, there is no glitch in the fabric of the universe and there is also no glitch in your mind except the glitch that is telling you there is a glitch, except the glitch that is telling you there is a glitch. There is no glitch except that you are looking for some kind of glitch. Even if there is a glitch, WHO CARES!!! We are alive right? We are in control of ourselves right? So why keep trying to fix a glitch that probably does not even exist? Accept this world for what it is and accept yourself for who you are even if you have millions of glitches don't let it bother you and then you can concentrate on more important issues!


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## Kelson12 (Aug 10, 2004)

LOSTONE said:


> lies
> 
> Yes, but it's not about something you DO, it is about something that you don't do, wich is THINK ABOUT EVERYTHING LIKE IT REALLY MATTERED AT ALL. Klt123, and all the caps lock post around lately have made me realize even more about what our problem is. WE NEED TO TURN DOWN OUR THOUGHTS. So what if things seem strange or out of place, do you think that eveyone on earth walks around wondering if the universe is operating correctly? Reality is not messed up, there is no glitch in the fabric of the universe and there is also no glitch in your mind except the glitch that is telling you there is a glitch, except the glitch that is telling you there is a glitch. There is no glitch except that you are looking for some kind of glitch. Even if there is a glitch, WHO CARES!!! We are alive right? We are in control of ourselves right? So why keep trying to fix a glitch that probably does not even exist? Accept this world for what it is and accept yourself for who you are even if you have millions of glitches don't let it bother you and then you can concentrate on more important issues!


Buuuuuut, when the glitches feel alot worse than they used too, or that they have made you really depressed and not able to think right, it's hard. I know you know how hard it can be, but it's really hard man. Like when things that used to make you happy, don't anymore or when everyday you feel like just internally dead, it's damn hard to break out of.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

urbn said:


> Its hard to actually bring this into practice though. I'm not really sure how to just accept it all. I acknowledge the dp feelings and probably dwell on them. How do i just accept?


For starters, if you're dwelling on the symptoms, you're not accepting them. I thought I was accepting the symptoms from 1999-2005. It took me 6 years to realize I wasn't really accepting them.

Try to be as patient as possible with the acceptance approach. It takes some time to alleviate (especially) severe DP.

Jeff


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## Guest (Feb 1, 2006)

its sort of like when you have the stomach flu or food poisoning and you just know your gonna have to throw up at some point in order to feel better later but you dont want to so you suffer their feeling nauseous throughout the day but eventually you throw up and feel better. Its kind of like that except the answer isn't so easy as throwing up.


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## Kelson12 (Aug 10, 2004)

1A said:


> urbn said:
> 
> 
> > Its hard to actually bring this into practice though. I'm not really sure how to just accept it all. I acknowledge the dp feelings and probably dwell on them. How do i just accept?
> ...


Honestly, I really don't see myself ever being able to accept this. Since there is severe depression and some anxiety involved, it's hard for me to accept. Now if it was just straight DP and things just looked or felt weird, I'd be able to accept it, but the fact that my mind is so depressed and drained and it almost feels physical, it's very hard to accept.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

kelson12 said:


> Honestly, I really don't see myself ever being able to accept this. Since there is severe depression and some anxiety involved, it's hard for me to accept. Now if it was just straight DP and things just looked or felt weird, I'd be able to accept it, but the fact that my mind is so depressed and drained and it almost feels physical, it's very hard to accept.


I said the very same thing. I was agoraphobic for 11 years. No girlfriends, stayed inside almost all the time, etc. Pure hell. Then in late 2005, something happened.

I was thinking about all that acceptance "crap." I understand why you're skeptical. I was the same for so long. It's like no one would say accept cancer or AIDS, but this is different. Those are degenerative diseases, which almost always become progressively worse, when not treated. Panic and anxiety, however, are limited in what they can do. For example, once you get that adrenelin working overtime, it can cause flashes of panic, but the symptoms are always the same. You've already experienced the worst.

Throw yourself onto your bed (face down) with your arms and legs spread out and say silently to yourself (with conviction) something like this: "OK, let me have all the symptoms as hard and frightening as possible. More symptoms now. Give it to me." The key is that you have to really mean it. If you really mean it, your symptoms might get worse for a few minutes, but then they'll peak, and you'll feel relief.

This is how I did it -- how I got better. It does take time, though, especially if you've had this for years and years. It takes time because your nerves are highly sensitized and the path to panic/DP is well-oiled. It's so well-oiled that it's so very easy to "trip" the trigger.

As you go through acceptance, and allowing yourself to feel these weird sensations, you're taking away some of that oil I talked about. So the path to DP and panic isn't so easily attainable. This might take several weeks to several months to accomplish.

Jeff


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

It only took me 5 min of reading!

I have read many threads on hear about acceptance and I thought I understood what that ment once before but I was wrong. Now I totaly understand perfictly. Yes this DP/DR can suck worse than anything that ever existed. I used to literaly think that I was Satan the Devil and this is my punishment from God. Really I considered DP/DR to be the worst possable experience for any living consciousness in existence. The fact is that my very strong feelings about DP/DR is what made it so very bad to begin with. 
You have to accept the terrible feelings and accept the DP/DR don't try to force it away but rather just try to experience it as fully as possible. Feel everything as much as you can no matter how much it hurts and then when you stop thinking (OH MY GOSH I JUST CANT TAKE IT, I JUST CANT, THIS SUCKS) then as soon as you stop thinking that way you will start to feel real. You might still fill like dung because of your ego and self esteam but you will FEEL and be REAL for the first time since DP/DR started!

My DP/DR just vanished 3 days ago and now that I know what it really is, I am sure I know how to deal with it.

kelson12 quit useing the word buuuuuuut and start liveing the experience of life. If you cant feel then just sit there and feel that you can't feel, don't be afraid of the feeling just acknowledge it and let it take its course, it won't hurt you, only you will hurt you (do you understand yet?).


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## lies (Nov 14, 2005)

wow, nice to hear these tips
must try these things too
acceptance, just also accept the dp feelings and stuff
what 1A is saying sounds scary, but i might give it a try
nothing to lose
thnxxxx

xxx


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

LOSTONE said:


> I considered DP/DR to be the worst possable experience for any living consciousness in existence. The fact is that my very strong feelings about DP/DR is what made it so very bad to begin with.


Yep, you nailed it. I feel the same way. I'm only feeling better because I'm not feeding it anymore.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Thats why I feel so very good today.

I stoped feeding it and each day I feel better and better!


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

A quick way to resume this article is say we are holding time itself. We want something and we want it forever. We hold it as if we could freeze time.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

ComplicatedFool

Just as you were posting this, I was posting a frozen clock on klt123's thread about time :lol: .

Ironic!


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## Methusala (Dec 22, 2005)

Wow, that was deep Complicatedfool, about wanting to hold onto something and freeze time, I really relate to that.

Lostone: If you cant feel then just sit there and feel that you can't feel, don't be afraid of the feeling just acknowledge it and let it take its course, it won't hurt you, only you will hurt you

Just wanted to mention, one of the 'rational mind' reasons for staying DP I mentioned in the other post, was that DP helps deal with childhood trauma feelings and symptoms. I think I find that the above line is a pretty good answer for this for me. Namely that even acknoweldging that one is afraid or concerned about getting to much into ones feelings can help a lot to lessen DP. I can feel the difference in lowered DP with that idea in mind right now.

This has also helped me to realize, just now, that a large part of my DP process is: (suppresed chaotic jumble of childhood trauma, neglect and resulting symptoms) ->threatens to come to surface->DP is used to both avoid that and stay functional.

I relate to the posts on this thread and other recent ones about additional problems interfering with DP recovery. I think the answer to that is to 1. work on everything simultaneously, 2. reduce the core trauma problems by 'mourning the loss of the parents ot help one never had.'

Cognitive-behavioral therapy has reliable simple ways of reducing and handling anxiety, depression and self esteem, outlined in '10 days to self esteem.' Hibernation, 1A, ComplicatedFool and Lostone have recently described a great breakthrough approach and viewpoint in lowering DP specificly. So these methods can all be done to lower all 4 of those common major symptoms. I think that rossinst.com has shown that reducing core trauma through a mourning process is the way to reduce the issues that set up and drove those symptoms in the first place. Mourning is often pushed to a secondary status by life circumstances. A person often needs to reach a certain stability and functionality level before a mourning process can reasonably take place. The symptom reduction methods mentioned above allow that to happen. I also think that 
new social-emotional learning, symptom reduction and mourning aren't strictly divided recovery stages or factors.

I feel really excellent to say the least about the threads this week. The seemingly impossible, impossible for so long for so many, now looks astoundingly possible.

M


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

Methusala said:


> The seemingly impossible, impossible for so long for so many, now looks astoundingly possible.


Yeah, exactly. It's not really a complicated maze to get out of, as it appears.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

It's not complicated at all. In fact, it's incredibly ridiculously obvious how the way out is in. In fact, the way out is not a "way out" at all. But the total opposite.


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## Mollusk (Nov 12, 2005)

I beleive i have just started the acceptance process about an hour ago. I went about it in a slightly different way though. I started with the theory that i am detached and depersonalized because i do not want to be me. I do not want to accept that it is me who is living this sad life. I do not want to accept that it is me who has f*cked my life up so much. I am so afraid to deal with life and my anxious and depressed feelings that my consciousness barricaded itself off.

The times i have felt dp the most is when i think about how this is me doing whatever it is i am doing at the time. It freaks me out. So with all my mental might i told myself that i am me. I am myself. This is my life. Over and over. I refused to give in and tried to convince myself with every bit of my being that this me sitting alone in my dorm room.

Then i wrote down everything in my life that i've done that i hate myself for. I wrote "It was me who..." over and over. I didn't stop. I went through my whole life and wrote down what made me so depressed about myself. I filled like 16 pages... My writing did start to get large and scrawled as i became aggravated about all this sh*t. I didn't stop until i was dry though. Then i went back through each one and visually pictured the incedent and then played it in my head any voice associated to each one. I tried to accept it all as much as i could.

Then i went through and wrote down everything i have done in my life i have been happy about or proud of. That was only about 4 pages. Much like how i felt angst, aggravation and sadness about the bad ones, i felt satisfied and happy about the good ones.

This helped a lot. I feel more like a person. I feel more like myself. After that i took your guys advice and told dp to do its worst. I don't care. It won't run my life and i won't dwell on how crappy it makes me feel.



lostone said:


> The fact is that my very strong feelings about DP/DR is what made it so very bad to begin with.


That is so true. When you sit there and say that you don't care what dp does to you it seems to lose intensity. Just teach yourself to not care. I tried to say in my mind that i just didn't give a f*ck about dp. If you don't dwell on how horrible dp is, you feel much more at peace with yourself. Its like dp feeds on fear and anxiety.

I don't think i am cured, but i think i am much closer. All the advice you guys posted has helped a lot. Thanks.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

> Its like dp feeds on fear and anxiety.


It does but that don't mean it is a symptom only because the fear and anxiety comes from DP/DR, it is more of a cycle then one being a cause and one being a symptom.

DP/DR causes fear and anxiety and that in turn causes DP/DR.

What we all have to do is keep faceing down our fears, anxiety, depression, bordom and loneliness. We can't let ourself push it away and pretend it don't exist.

Even the symptoms of DP/DR exist but if we acknowledge that fact in our minds then it will lose all of its power and we will be able to live again.



> I do not want to accept that it is me who is living this sad life. I do not want to accept that it is me who has f*cked my life up so much. I am so afraid to deal with life and my anxious and depressed feelings that my consciousness barricaded itself off.


Yeah thats DP and I think that DR is the thoughts about how messed up the world around you is and not wanting to deal with it. So what we do for some reason is we obsess about it and by peering into things so deeply we tend to lose the real mening, we lose reality and ourselves because our mind is so wound up in what we don't want to believe.

We are all trying to use psychic powers in a way to change reality.
But it will never work, we have no psychic powers and the problems we keep thinking about will never go away unless we just accept them and deal with them. Only once we learn how to accept the reality that we live in, will we be able to start changing that reality and become a part of it.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

Y'all seen the movie Traffic or Magnolia? Or maybe Cyriana? It's about all these different stories, one is about drugs, the other is about coincidences, and the Cyriana is about oil and the Palestine conflict. Point is, the movies have these directions, this differrent stories, which take place in different places. Well, in the end all this stories merge into one one big story, which gives you a message. Traffic mainly tells you War on drugs is pointless, and that people are pawns. Magnolia tells you sh1t happens. Cyriana tells you how the oil business uses CIA agents, soldiers, consumers and suicide bombers are pawns of one big game. It's all one big message. So this article also tells us to look into the big picture. How pointless our fight is...We go around and around the symptoms and solutions. We must achieve the cure in order to achieve our dreams. We want to use the cure in the futrure, but we don't care about the mess we are on RIGHT NOW. Look at the big picture fooz


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

ComplicatedFool

Very good point.



> We want to use the cure in the futrure, but we don't care about the mess we are on RIGHT NOW.


That is exactly what I am doing and that is why my DP/DR is going away!

I am only conserned with where I am and what I am doing. No longer will I let myself fight a pointless war that I will only keep loseing. Now I realize that it is the engagement of this war in my head that has cause all the problems. Now that I have ceased in fighting the war, guess what, the war is over!


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

New people should read this.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Yeah why not make this a sticky?

I think I will just cut that first post out and save it so that I can just post it onto all the new peoples threads. LoL.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Really, That first post needs to be stuck somewhere so everyone can read it because it holds the cure to DP and DR.

ComplicatedFool thanks for bumping this back up becuase I needed to read this thread again myself. It is easy to forget the answers even after you have found the cure. Maybe I should print this out and stick it to my forehead or something. LoL.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

This is one of the best posts on this board....ever. Required reading for new folks, even though it's long.


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## 1A (Aug 12, 2004)

This graph is so important. It illustrates the necessity of feeling worse before feeling better. Just let the DP climax; avoid resisting the DP.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Yeah 1A that's the key there but people really need to read the whole thing to understand it and so it sinks in. If any of you don't understand it then read it over and over until you do.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

By the way 1A now that it has been a while I am wondering how many up's and downs have you had since your cure because I have already had 4 or 5 but I know what the cure is, it is just hard to hold onto sometimes. Knowing the cure is only half the battle it seems. I guess it just takes time to change a bad habit and way of thinking that you have been stuck in for about 9 years. I am guessing that it will be about another year before I am totally out of it all the way.


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## ComplicatedFool (Dec 19, 2005)

LostOne, the key is actually NOT holding onto the "cure". Rather, stop holding the problem.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Yes I know.

That takes some practice though :wink: .

It is going to take me some time to work though my many problems that I have put on the sidelines over the years because of DP/DR.

Many of my emotians and problems in life are really messed up and they make me almost want to slip back into DP/DR just to hide from them. I am dealing with things though and I know that dealing with things is all I can do. If I run from my problems then they will never go away. For a long time I thought of a cure as me just one day feeling wonderful but that's not how it works at all. I do feel much more real now but now my problems are also much more real and I still have to deal with them. It is learning how to deal with life that I need help with now because I have been running from life for so many years. I don't have very good skills in dealing with my emotions becuase I have been pushing them away for so long and now I am being flooded. Sometimes it is hard to see the advantage in not having DP/DR because DP/DR really is like a protection or something and when that protection is gone it is pretty scary.

I don't know if anyone else that has been able to come out of DP/DR has had problems dealing with buried emotions and problems but I am. I feel almost like I don't know where to begin. One step at a time I guess.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

Ok I just wanted to bump this back up for anyone that has not read this thread.

The first post of this thread really has the answer for all of us.

The way out of DP/DR is simple but it can also be very hard because it may mean facing up to some things that you don't want to face up to. :wink:


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## AllmindnoBrain (Jun 28, 2007)

Interesting and somewhat helpful post. This viscious cycle philosophy can be applied to my OCD but not my dp/dr. for as long as i can remember whenever i was faced with some kind of anxiety or stress i would attempt to alleviate it through constructively thinking about it and finding ways to disprove the thoughts or happenings that lead me to feel that way and it would sometimes work. It came to the point where i would be doing this every time i was faced with any type of uncomfortable feeling and couldnt and wouldnt stop thinking about the issue until i resolved it through thinking, this obviously cant work all of the time so i would often find myself trapped in my thoughts for a large portion of my days. I dont know how this can be applied to dp/dr, dp/dr is a real thing that is right there in front of your face that is too evident to just ignore and not attempt to think about it and solve it in order to end the cycle. Maybe it is possible though, that would only be the case if dp/dr is caused by high stress levels and anxiety causing us to detatch and coil up into an emotionless self, but if it has other causes this will not be a solution. What i am taking out of this which is proving to be a great help to me is to accept the dp/dr, myself and that dp/dr is apart of me and to stop questioning everything that i do, think and say because there is no real way you are SUPPOSED to be, also that who i am inside isnt necessarily my choice, being this way isnt my fault so i shouldnt be ashamed of who I am,Battling this dp/dr doesnt help it, it makes me feel more ashamed to be me and crazy and abnormal. I think its about acceptance, some may say i am succumbing to this illness but i dont think that is the case, i am being honest with myself in that I have recognized this is how i have been my whole life and i am most likely going to feel out of it and dreamy and detatched from reality, but trying to rid myself of this illness is casuing me shame because by wanting to get rid of it I am saying that i dont like who i am and that i dont accept myself. This is all that i can do at this point, So far this new way of thinking has helped me more than anything else.


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## LOSTONE (Jul 9, 2005)

> Battling this dp/dr doesnt help it, it makes me feel more ashamed to be me and crazy and abnormal. I think its about acceptance, some may say i am succumbing to this illness but i dont think that is the case, i am being honest with myself in that I have recognized this is how i have been my whole life and i am most likely going to feel out of it and dreamy and detatched from reality, but trying to rid myself of this illness is casuing me shame because by wanting to get rid of it I am saying that i dont like who i am and that i dont accept myself. This is all that i can do at this point, So far this new way of thinking has helped me more than anything else.


 

Yes it is about acceptance. The cure may be harder for some people then it is for others. And some of us have many other problems going on in our heads besides simply DP/DR. The best way to fight off DP/DR is to accept it though. If you are always trying to force it away from you and you are trying to force away all your anxiety or your bad feelings then your DP/DR will only become stronger. You have to accept your feelings as being real. You have to realize that they are real feelings that are normal and you have to just live with them and deal with them. 
If you don't focus on DP/DR all the time then it will lose it's power. DP/DR is a result of the bad way that we think. If you change your thinking patterns and accept the life that you are living and make the best of it then you will start to feel better.

The hard part about this is that your mind will find many new ways to trick you back into DP/DR if you let it. If you get hit with serious DP/DR one day then don't just assume that you are doomed or that you are going over the edge. Just try to ride the DP/DR out and accept what comes your way and then it will lose it's power.

This is the answer. It can just be a little tricky applying this and actually being able to accept the pain that got you into DP/DR in the first place.


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## nu-power (Sep 27, 2006)

how do you feel now steve? how is your dp/dr ?


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