# Recovering. Not recovering. Recove...not sure



## adamz (Dec 12, 2008)

So to start off I've had dp/dr for about 11 years but did not know what it was until december last year. I was recovered you could say for about 7 years, I had mild ocd and very rarely a panic attack during that time period but was fully functional and happy despite always feeling that something was not quite right. When I first got dp'd it was shortly after my mother died, I was 13 started smoking pot, and had major surgery. When I got dp'd they said I had anxiety and depression and put me on paxil. It helped I suppose but I continued to drink and smoke pot heavily, later I was switched to prozac and back to paxil and back to prozac. When I was 16 I quit all ssri's, drinking, and pot and started working out. THat's when I started to feel better. My wife reminds me that I did go back on paxil for a very short time because I had quit without tapering so I took it just to taper off properly.

Well last summer I was in the best shape of my life training muay thai and bjj full time as well as strength training. I was preparing for my first fight when I reinjured an old soccer injury that caused me to stop working out for a while and stop eating as nutrionally. I was drinking quite often and smoked pot twice that summer. I got a bad staph infection as well and was given about 5 different antibiotics, a tetnis shot, and percocet in a 72 hour period. This fucked me up physically and mentally for about 3-4 days. A couple months later I was driving to work and had a terrible panic attack. It wasnt until getting really hammered on halloween and being a complete douche to my wife that I had the entire next day to sit at home with a terrible hangover and think about it. That was the precursor. For the next month I started feeling more anxious, my ocd got much and then I had a series of panic attacks that sent me to the er thinking I had some terrible disease. I did infact have very low vitamin d, and high alkaline phosphatase levels (bone scan still pending on this). I went to every dr, and had alot of tests run. I do have alot of shit wrong with me, visual snow, tinnitus, migraines, post nasal drip, chronic neck, back, and joint pain, fatigue ocd, etc. So I was convinced there was more too it. Turns out I have really fucked up TMJ and this can be causing the tinnitus, and all the pain. The ENT said it's really bad so I will be seing a dentist that specializes in tmd to maybe deal with that.

Sorry this is so long but to get to my point, I have improved alot since december when I was anxious every minute of the day and ocd was so bad I couldn't function. Missed about a month of work. I am back to work full time, have been on the vitamin d for 6 weeks and I am taking fish oils, as well as b-complex, and just starting rhodiola as well. The hardest thing I'm going through right now is the fact that most of my anxiety is gone, my ocd has improved alot, I am much more functional and have been feeling better, but I'm not really sure if the dp/dr is better at all. I forgot about it for a while which helped, but when it comes back its much more disheartening. Like now I feel very dp'd. The worst part about it is that my perception of everything is really fucked up. When I was going through all that anxiety I thought about things that your brain probably is not supposed to think about and I'm not really sure how to forget about that. It caused my perception of life and the world to be completely unnatural and I keep telling my self that I can work it out if I just think about what normal is supposed to feel like enough, however I believe this is what makes dp that much worse. So my question is do you think that I maybe am getting better or am I just running myself in circles. I know that if you forget about it and just do stuff it will go away, but this is the hardest part when it feels so robotic, because I have a beautiful family that loves me and I feel like I am ripping them and myself off by not being able to fully and emotionally enjoy my time with them.


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## adamz (Dec 12, 2008)

Also I am not on any meds and am no longer going to therapy. Something interesting for others that have ocd as well, I stumbled across this by accident. I noticed that I often sneeze before becoming aroused so I thought I'd google it to see if its normal. Turns out it is...sort of. Happens to other people but it is not a normal occurance by means of your nervous system. It is explained as your parasympathetic nervous system sending a wrong or crossed signal. Peculiar I thought. So I looked more into the sympathetic nervous system. For anyone not educated on it, it works as an opposite to the sympathetic nervous system the part that controls anxiety, adrenaline, stress, fight or flight, etc. When your sympathetic nervous system sends the wrong signal at the wrong time such as hmmm adrenaline it causes a panic attack for no known reason. So based on the sneezing theory it would mean that something is imbalanced with my parasympathetic system. AND if that is not functioning correctly than THAT could be more the problem than the sympathetic nervous system. This is probably getting confusing but let me explain. When you first have a panic attack or anxiety, etc, it usually is the result of stress, so your SNS would produce adrenaline and cortisol resulting in the panic attack. But in the future you might get one without being under any stress. That might not mean there is anything wrong with your sympathetic nervous system though. The job of the PSNS is to counteract the SNS, balance your levels of adrenaline, lower stress, calm anxiety, etc. So if your PSNS is not functioning properly it may not do its just, resulting in excess adrenaline and panic attacks. If you've ever been in a fist fight then you know your adrenaline is probably pumping resulting in DR like feelings (you wouldn't notice because you are fighting) but using hindsight you can clearly see that things around you during the fight are different and you dont notice pain as much. So if adrenaline causes DR, (and I've seen somewhere a theory that infact DR causes DP) and stress, imbalanced health, drug abuse, etc causes your SNS to overeact, and your PSNS is not functioning correctly than this could be the reason that DP/DR sticks with us. I've made this long winded too I'm sorry, but my point that I forgot to even adress was that constant adrenaline can be a major factor in ocd, so I thought I'd link it for people that have both dp and ocd.


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## Guest (Jan 28, 2009)

Its not all or nothing, its not either you are better or you are not better. There will be good days and bad days. When I started recovering I still had some very bad bouts of Dp,d. Although my depersonalisation was constant it had decreased in intensity generally..but bad bouts still occurred for quite a while. When you get these intense times of depersonalisation its important to remind yourself that its not a relapse as such, its just a bad patch that will pass again. Its not all bad, try and keep it in context. It sounds like you have had some improvement. Give it time, sometimes Dp can linger for a while even after the massive anxiety and obsessing has gone, just try and make the best of the time with your family, be grateful you have them as I am sure they are grateful to have you by the sounds of it, Dp,d or not, and concentrate on that. You will get there.


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