# waking_up_1111's recovery journey DP/DR



## waking_up_1111 (Mar 21, 2015)

Hello, as I start this thread I am about three months into my DP/DR and recovery journey. I was not in a good enough place when I began to be able to write like this. So if you start reading this and think, "this guy is not DP/DR'd" you are part way right. I am in a much better place now than when it began. If you are starting out at the bottom of your recovery curve, read renzime's thread, it helped to save my life.

http://www.dpselfhelp.com/forum/index.php?/topic/20892-the-holy-grail-of-curing-dpdr/

Like renzime's thread, I am going to try to write this as brutally honestly and transparently as I can. I will pull no punches even though I am a "silver lining" guy by nature. But I feel that if I share bravely, it might really help some poor soul who has been on this razor blade ride we call DP/DR. Depersonalization and derealization.

Also I am married, and even though I do not hide things from my wife and trust her, there are things that I haven't told her because there is no need to drag her down with me. It has been hard enough for her to be there for me and love me through this bullshit. It is hard for someone who loves you to not be able to reach you or connect with you, because you are a wooden robot. But making myself get out of the house, and go do dumb couple shit like looking at antiques is fun, and has really helped me even when I couldn't feel much of it. Fresh air and sunshine, feeling the texture of the wood on an old piece of furniture, holding hands with your sweetie even if you don't feel much, keep doing these things!

I am fortunate to be a person who takes things seriously, but not too seriously. I have never really considered being suicidal, but I will tell you that this DP/DR journey has been a merciless hell, and has really tested me. There have been small moments when I felt surprised by the idea of jumping off of a parking garage or something popped into my head. Don't freak out at these moments, it is just the anxiety and fear. I didn't enjoy these moments but I just shook my head, and said "wow anxiety, you are in rare form today". It is the DP/DR fucking with you, it does not come from you. Everything is relative, perception is reality. Choose a positive perception and positive reality, right this moment. Okay now this moment too. Okay now this moment too. You get the idea. Fucking sucks, keep it up.

This is getting long, I will post this introduction and write more later. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, there is nothing else. Keep trusting people and connecting with them in the moment.


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## waking_up_1111 (Mar 21, 2015)

I want to start my story, in hopes that it will help some one relate. My problems are very first world problems, compared to someone starving in a refugee camp somewhere. We feel what we feel, and those of us that are dealing with DP/DR are some of the most sensitive people on the planet. Sometimes life is hard for sensitive things. I'm not writing this for anyone to feel sorry for me, I'm writing it in hopes that someone else that just started feeling these things will feel like they are going to live.

It seems like my DP/DR started because of a wierd combination of stressful things. Like others have said, it doesn't matter what started it, you have to march out of it. I have a history of letting my body almost die before realizing that I was under way too much stress, I'm thick headed that way  I come from farmers and coal miners, what do you expect? Somehow I have been given gifts and talents that have allowed me to go from the farm to working in fairly rarified air as an engineer in a niche little world. I know that many people on this planet would do anything to take my place, but knowing that doesn't somehow magically make DP/DR better. In my case it actually was part of the cause.

Think about it, you grow up on a rural farm and spend most of your adult life as a kind of hippie slacker, and suddenly at age 43 you are some kind of engineering rock star. Important people that you've never been introduced to act like they know you. You are just kind of scared and confused. It seems like everyone knows everything about you, like they spend all of their time talking about you. It feels really fucked if you are a shy introverted hippie engineer, with absolutely no clue about business at all. You start to feel like they are fighting over you like a piece of meat. It didn't make sense because I have always been pretty smart, and worked really hard. What changed all of a sudden? What the fuck was happening? Is this even really my reality, or have I lost my reality and fallen into some alternate reality? I started to reject my reality.


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## waking_up_1111 (Mar 21, 2015)

I wanted to just post an update. I have been going to my therapist since February, taking the vitamin supplements, and I was totally sober for a few months. I have been drinking socially some and have been sparking some weed a few nights a week, and it doesn't really feel different either way. I'm disappointed honestly, usually going to therapy and living clean highlights whatever it is that I'm dealing with, but things are kind of staying the same.

Having said that, I am doing better. It might just be the six to seven month automatic recovery thing. I have been focused on taking care of myself, which is good because I am untangling some things that kind of had me tied up mentally. I realized that I was trying to be the perfect husband, and maybe I felt kind of invincible because of the beer and pot use that I was doing before my DP/DR experience happened. We have limitations.

I was also trying to be the perfect engineer, and again taking on way too much and thinking that maybe I could handle anything. I think that I was very run down because of this lifestyle, and got sick with pneumonia at the same time that my DP/DR occurred.

I also think that because of this emptiness that I had created inside myself, by burning myself down to nothing, the attention that I started getting from a lady at work freaked me out. I was attracted to her so I stayed away from her intentionally, but she started taking more and more interest in me personally. In my weakened state I knew that I would not be able to keep my shit together as well as my marriage if she kept being nice to me. That was also part of what spun me out. I'm not used to attention from women like that, particularly at work. I dated someone at work once, and it worked out okay, but it was stressful and I definitely try to have boundaries with coworkers. Particularly when I'm married and so is she, and we work too close together to hide some kind of office romance.

I have spent the last few months being intrigued by this lady, and with feeling like my wife was taking advantage of me, I developed deep feelings for this coworker. So my own struggles are all tangled up with this work stuff, and marriage stuff. Thanks to my therapist, I have kept my shit together and have remained professional, and have been working on talking through things with my wife. My DP symptoms seem mixed up with this longing and heart break that I feel for this woman, but I am working on the mindset that when I feel that heart ache it is just pain, it isn't necessarily associated with a person. So I just let my heart hurt for a while, and try to use my buddhist meditation mindfulness stuff on it. I just notice how the pain feels, but don't try to associate any meaning to it. I try to just accept it as the current reality.

When I experienced DP/DR at first, I felt very unsafe everywhere. I moved into the spare bedroom in the house because my wife didn't seem to understand what I was dealing with, and she spent a lot of time crying and yelling. I couldn't really handle crying and yelling while I was barely functioning, I tried to get my wife to understand. I do think that the crying and yelling was about her and not me, which made it more unbearable. While she was on a business trip, I rented an apartment and camped out there. When she came home we talked, and she talked me down from the ledge so to speak. I came back home and was able to work things out, and the house was rented to someone else right away so I got out of the lease.

Am I a mess? Definitely. My motorcycle has been saving my soul, something about the winter ending and blasting down the roads on my bike seems to soothe the savage beast. It also tires me out so I sleep well.

I'm having trouble letting go of the idea that I need to find a new ladyfriend to be happy. My therapist made me promise not to do anything impulsive, and made me promise to try to work through things with my wife for a year or so. I have stuck to that but I am struggling, and my therapist knows that. Once I promised that I started trying to let go of the whole idea of getting closer with the lady at work, and that made me feel sad, and that was when I started sparking one sometimes. I think that I really was drinking and getting high to help me deal with some of the issues in my marriage. My job can be stressful too, but it seems like if my home life was more centered, things would be a lot better. So maybe this whole experience is exposing things that I needed to deal with that I was trying not to deal with. Probably so right?

I have been fairly even keeled at work, so at least everyone there doesn't think I'm totally insane, from what I can tell. Who knows. I am kind of zig-zaggy, I'm a sagittarius. I have withdrawn from any drama in the office, after all, isn't the drama constant? If I miss it I can always get involved with it again haha.

So once I gave up on connecting with the lady at work, I played a trick on myself and started surfing a dating site. I got the idea from a self help book. It did help my self image, but my therapist made me promise to stop doing that. I'm obviously looking to make connections with people in hopes that it will help this emptiness and pain that I feel. Letting go of the idea of dating or leaving my wife, I just feel kind of sad and lost. I guess it's just still DP/DR, I was distracting myself from it. Or maybe my marriage won't work out. I'm giving it a really sincere try though, this is my second marriage and we have a good life together for the most part.

My wife is responding to my independence though, which is interesting. She is being more giving and understanding, suddenly she is realizing that I might really be gone if she doesn't meet me part of the way. Maybe we can work things out? She is bright and positive, and perhaps an overachiever LOL. She has been working and sleeping basically, and was using me to take care of everything else in our life together. I enabled that for sure, and I think that she has a narcissism that makes her think that that arrangement is natural. We seem to be adjusting, time will tell. I just know that I have to recharge my batteries and I don't have much to give right now.

So I'm back to focusing on getting out and doing things, being social, doing activities that I find fun, just for me. This is all embarrassing but I hope that it helps someone who feels some of the same things.


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