# What was your process in recovery ?



## MisterMister (Oct 12, 2009)

A question for those of you who are recovered: what was the process you went through from the beginning of your most sever dp episodes up until the time you felt like 'you' again. As in, what did it feel like as you became yourself again, what lifted, what emotions came back first, what was the experience like ?


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## Misia (Nov 1, 2009)

My derealization was cannabis-induced. At first I was so scared I couldn't eat for about 3 days. I started taking multi-vitamins and it lessened a great deal. I couldn't study or work or clean, so instead I read and drew. Reading helped a lot, although some people's dp makes it hard to read. Telling people *everything* I felt helped as well. I've recovered, but I'm still depressed, so I'm not overly-joyous about it. I don't really give a damn. I've forgotten the feeling.

All it takes is optimism and time. Don't ever believe that this is permanent. It's not. No matter the case, it will go away if you let it.

I also want to say that this site is a stupid, hypocritical idea. It makes you worse. Read what you want and leave and have someone block it for you.


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## voidvoid (Sep 5, 2008)

You are entitled to your opinion but I have made some great friends here and gotten some great information here, this forum is not a bad thing. People "interacting" from all over the world is never a bad thing. However, *excessive* internetbrowsing can be a bad thing. And that ofcourse includes this forum. These last few weeks that I have been feeling really bad I have done absolutely nothing (Well thats not entirelly true, couple of days ago I walked 7 miles, and some other stuff) but sit in my PC-chair. Sucks too because I was one phonecall away from starting up studies again. Hopefully I will get back to my "baseline" illness again and be able to do that.


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## pancake (Nov 26, 2009)

MisterMister said:


> A question for those of you who are recovered: what was the process you went through from the beginning of your most sever dp episodes up until the time you felt like 'you' again. As in, what did it feel like as you became yourself again, what lifted, what emotions came back first, what was the experience like ?


While I have had transient episodes of DP/DR all my life I have only had one continuous spell of it and coming here I have been trying to remember how long that really lasted, but for the life of me I can't quite work it out. My best guess is about six months of continuous robotics during and for a while after depression during my teenage years.
At the time I did feel like I had lost myself and couldn't even remember what this "personality" I was so eager to regain entailed.

The first step was beginning to sociallize online again. This helped me remember how to string whole sentences together, which had become difficult (in part due to the depression).
Once I became comfortable interacting with people in the safety of my home, the next big step was making myself go out and interact with people in the real world, regardless of how hard that was at first. While I felt like a complete misfit just going through the motions of socializing helped me take my mind off the worst of it.

The feeling of missing a part of myself became less frequent over time. I am guessing because second to the fear of going insane it was the single most worrying thing about it all it stayed with me the longest. I can't remember clearly how I ended up coming back to myself, or if I really just filled in the blanks as I made new experiences. Nobody who knew me before ever mentioned any personality changes to me afterwards, so I would assume things naturally fell back into place over time.

A conscious effort not to be so hard on myself still continues. I will still get stuck in circular thinking regularly but evenso when I recognize what I am doing I make every effort to get out of such loops as swiftly as I can. Sometimes I find myself recalling errors I made back in kindergarten and feeling just as guilty about them as I have done everytime I remembered them over the past twenty something years. When it comes to it I know that's ridiculous and I just have to push it away, or write it down for that matter. Sometimes writing is helpful to me: On first write something down it is invariably long and sprawling and on re-reading it I ll often realize I am not really making any sense or not saying what is really bothering me. So I will re-write it until it ends up being short and concize (well, in an ideal world) and at times I can get quite surprised at the conclusions I end up with.

When things do feel unreal I try not to obsess about it. When I suddenly don't feel at home in my body anymore I try to make myself to do something active (cycling, swimming, dancing - or just cleaning up my shithole: washing up, hoovering for once..) although at times the opposit of active also helps: Melting into the couch, sticking on some music television and disappearing into a daydream.

There 's me talking about being short and concise and l end up submitting a TL/DR again ;-)


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