# Recovered and functional with some challenges but hope !



## monica (Nov 18, 2014)

Hi Everybody out there,

It's good to find this forum-just knowing that we are not alone. I was diagnosed with Depersonalization disorder (among others)nearly 20 years ago, so depersonalization was not well known and I had no idea what that was about. And of course, I had no idea there were any people suffering from it in the world as well. It's a very very strange disorder, there was no "cure"to be mentioned of, I felt completely lonely and isolated without any hope. I thought that I would never ever be normal, and knew that I couldn't live like that too long. I know how horrible and terrifying this is, so I hope my post here can provide some hope, well, a realistic one.

I would say that I'm fully recovered and fully functional now, and have a relatively happy life. Well, I should feel very happy and blessed, but you understand, once you go through depersonalization, the life would never be that easy and simple, so I struggle sometimes to stay on my course, but I do feel very happy, and can recognize my life as a very happy one, if you understand what I'm trying to articulate here. So I would say this is never easy, but we all can have hope to have a happy life, even with your dream come true. I have a great spouse and I'm hoping to start a family, too. I'm doing what I have always wanted (being musician) and hopefully I can come out with my history someday to connect with people with same struggle through it.

What happened to me 20 years ago was that I had a long sustaining dysfunctional relationship with my family(although their intention was never bad), particularly with my mother, and after many years of struggle and deprived sleep (about 4 hours per day for 6 years), my mind just finally gave in. I had repeated episodes of complete panic and complete numbness through a month or so, then slowly the numb, quiet episode got longer and it took over my life. After that point my memory is very vague, I remember some point that I knew that I didn't have any emotion, lost the appetite and will to move and to talk. I went sleep all day, or just layer in my room all day from that point. I also lost the sensation of "self". l would lift my hand and looked at it, but I couldn't recognize it as "mine". Of course the brain knows that is part of my body, but the understanding and recognition of "my body" was lost. After while when I started to walk around that I tried to remember how "I" felt like before that, and I couldn't honestly remember. The feel, that you walk in the brisk air, feeling the wind through my fingers, such simple joy and sensation, was all lost. I felt like that I was already dead, and not existing but just an eye watching the body going through the life. But it was not life anymore, as most of you know. Without "self", there was no "will" to live. I was just breathing dead body. My parents had to wake me up and to take me down to eat, otherwise I wouldn't have ate, but I also didn't deny eating either because I had no will to fight or no anger left inside of me.

After many months of it, there was no improvement, so my parents carried me into the car to see a counsellor. There I started to talk and was told that I'm the case of Depersonalization. I had no idea what it was, nor really cared what it was at that point, but vaguely in my cloudy mind, I just knew that I couldn't live long like that. Through the counseling, I started to get back to the life little by little. I kind of learned to live like a normal person while I felt completely empty inside. I even started to take few odd jobs, but I couldn't even have good conversation, perhaps with luck of interest and complete luck of understanding self and others. I was never fired but I never kept any job. I was just simply waiting to end, but without "will" to end myself.

After a year passed, things were not changing much. Only thing was that my vague feeling of the quiet agony, watching myself being dead, and just moving around was becoming more torturous. It's strange that I couldn't feel any anger or sadness, yet to be able to recognize the agony. Maybe it was a very small, small part of "me" struggling, telling me to get out. I couldn't, though still. My parents took me to the psychologist in Canada that point, then my symptom got slightly, and temporary better. I guess the changing the environment, sometimes is effective, with new stimuli without old stimuli, not quite sure. But it was short lived. But there I was mentioned to try out "naikan" therapy.

I came home and again more month passed without any improvement, but my quiet agony grew. I knew there was nothing out there to help me. Counseling was helping me to deal with living, but my mind was not coming back in any way at all. I think there I made a critical choice, even with my complete "out" state of mind, that I would try something I would never consider trying. My mom and I decided to go to naikan therapy after all, as there was no alternative, especially my parents against taking any medication or putting me into psychiatric hospital.

Long story short here, the naikan therapy worked for me. I'm not quite sure if it works for everybody. The premiss is sort of strange, but it's known to be very effective, and I can see why it was effective after I done so. It's basically experiencing your entire life all over again in controlled setting. It's self-healing, controlled journey of your life. So I was also fearful of experiencing my painful past which actually made me depersonalized, so there was a question of why do I want to go through that again ? But I went in, and took the 7 day intensive (stay over in the institute, completely isolated) session. I had to think a lot of things in relation to my mother, and quite frankly I didn't want to think about her as I thought she was a huge part of the cause, but it worked. As I feared, it was indeed very very painful. But I started to "feel" pain again through the course. 6th day, I thought I was going to break and completely go crazy, instead of going back to normal. Probably that was the point of separation, I came out normal though. 7th day, my memory both regular and emotional started to come back to me. The last day I was leaving, I "felt" the sun through the window, very bright and warm on my skin, which I couldn't feel for a long long time. I cried with all my heart, I was so sad, but I was so happy that I could "feel" sadness again, feeling like a human again. Since then I felt that I was lucky to be alive, and back in the life, no matter how miserable life can make me feel like. Feeling something was better than nothingness, and it gave me completely new perspective of life.

There is of course, down side, too. As effective as naikan was for me, it was sort of self-brain washing process, I think about it now. But most importantly it got job done and saved my life back then, so I think it was necessary process for me. Possible downside of that for me was that so I came out with completely different personality. Before I was intense, very focused personality, after I was very relaxed and became very happy and easy going. It doesn't sound bad ? Well, but I think that I became almost "too happy". I felt great, though. But the problem was that I kind of knew that I wasn't like that before, so I started to have problem recognizing my self "After" and "Before" as one. It's like having two separate life history inside of my brain which constantly thought I should have only one. Although I became very happy, and probably that saved my life, I started to struggle to have knowing this two persona. I couldn't feel that my "new me" was my "old me", and I continuously tried to find the bridge between them, and I couldn't find it. I think I had super happy "me" for about 4 years, then struggled with those personality difference for 10 years, then after more years, very recently with few life incidents helped me to merge these two&#8230;.I'm a bit more depressed and intense than my new "happy me", but I'm starting to feel more of myself, and I still feel happiness. But it's a long road, but along the way I did find the strength to move forward and to grab what happiness is in our lives.

For all of us, there must have been some reasons that we depersonalize ourselves, and once we do so, it is a struggle. I feel that I made that big black hole in my heart, and by letting myself through there once, I just know it's there no matter how far I have traveled. So I don't deny the challenge, but we can try moving forward and try living. And maybe some of us will find the happiness. It may not be the happiness we always dream to have, but in the reality, who has such happiness ? But let's keep moving forward, and grab the happiness as it comes in our lives. And even if you feel nothing inside of you right now, don't give up-there will be some day that you can really feel happiness, if we keep moving forward. And that's why we have to keep moving forward. I still think about my sanity everyday, and I think about those who are suffering from same way I used to be-I cross my fingers for all of your recoveries.


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## seafoamneon (Jul 16, 2014)

Congrats!!


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