# Ups and Downs while recovering - any advice?



## illmatic (Apr 16, 2016)

I haven't posted on here in a few weeks, because I have been feeling pretty good for the most part. I felt like I was well on the road to recovery after having DP for about 3 and a half months.

However these past few days I've had a set back and I guess I just need to vent and hopefully get some advice from you guys.

I have been feeling really good for the last month. About 90%. All the panic and anxiety and physical symptoms of DP had cleared up for me. The last remaining symptom of DP was minor brain fog / kind of feeling "off" in a way. It is very annoying and hard to ignore. I have read some recovery posts on here with people saying this is the last step of fully recovering and that it could take months before feeling 100%, so I have tried to stay positive.

Then yesterday out of the blue I just got a big wave of depression and dread over me, and started feeling panic. I took an Ativan to help out before it got worse and it helped. I hadn't taken any meds in about a month. Today I am feeling the same way and feel pretty depressed.

I think a big part of this is my own fault. I haven't been eating healthy and haven't gone to the gym in a few weeks now. I have also been going to bed really late and not getting enough sleep. I have started drinking coffee again and yesterday kind of overdid it. I have also been less social and have been staying home a lot. I was feeling good so I guess I fell back onto my old bad habits. I guess I need to keep being healthy and working hard on recovery even when I am feeling better.

Has anybody else experienced ups and downs like this? I just feel so low right now and guess I need to vent a bit. I get thoughts like I will never recover. It's been hard to stay positive with the last bit of DP not going away, and now I feel like I have taken a step backwards with other symptoms coming back, and I am wondering if I even got a bit better in the first place.


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## Alex617 (Sep 23, 2015)

I think it's great that you identified some of your triggers. Two things I've been learning about recovery that many people don't appreciate enough.

Firstly, we have to accept that once we have been prone to a mental illness, the chance for relapse always lays there. This doesn't mean you can't recover, this means that you can't be stupid with your health once you do get better. It's okay to experiment with things like trying coffee again, if it's really something you need in your life, but expecting to go back to old habits and using stimulants is a big relapse risk.

Secondly, I don't care what people claim about instant recovery but for most people it's never linear. As with everything else, we have highs and lows. Same as an alcoholic, they might have a great first few months but once the honey moon period settles off the cravings can come back at any given moment. Same with this kind of problem, sometimes we can have a minor relapse just out of the blue. The most important thing to learn is to not let this get you down, you have to just keep pushing through and do what you can to have better days. This is your life we're talking about, so try to take it seriously and stay positive even when you feel like nothing helps.


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## sunjet (Nov 21, 2014)

Yes. I was in that "last stage" for about a year. You will still have alot of these setback with full panic attacks. You should not give them attention its something completely normal. We tend to think that are body needs to be perfect and never too happy and never too worried. Damn, we must understand that even if people don't have DPDR, they also have days when they feel bad/shitty and days when they're happy without some triggers. It's human being, hormones playing around to stabilize our mood.

Also together with this feeling, it will bring ALOT of bad thoughts like "Omg, its not working, I thought im recovering but I'm in a complete waste now, I will never recover and other bullsh1t your brain brings up together with your worries". The more you give these thoughts importance, the more dragged down you'll feel. Let all this package of setback "kill" you, don't fight with it... Let the worries/panic/depressive state make you feel bad... You need that, don't resist it, it's for your own sake. You should never resist any of your feeling, they're meant to be FELT not analysed and tried to be replaced. Just do what you were doing, even through your anxiety and enjoy the ride, go with the flow and don't try to react to your thoughts. It's not the thoughts and anxiety that makes you feel so good this setbacks but your reaction towards it.

Damn, you don't imagine how many setbacks I had and still have but more and more rarely, and now even if sometimes i feel anxious, I'm just laughing at it and just enjoy it, cause you'll need to say to it goodbye soon. 

DON'T ANALYSE YOUR SETBACK, DON'T TRY TO RESIST YOUR "SUFFERING/SETBACK", ENJOY THE RIDE AND IT WILL PASS LIKE IF IT'S NEVER BEEN THERE.


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## illmatic (Apr 16, 2016)

Thanks for the support guys, it always helps. I know recovery will have its ups and downs and I will have many more setbacks, but it's still pretty tough going through the low moments, especially when I thought they were in the past.



sunjet said:


> Yes. I was in that "last stage" for about a year. You will still have alot of these setback with full panic attacks. You should not give them attention its something completely normal. We tend to think that are body needs to be perfect and never too happy and never too worried. Damn, we must understand that even if people don't have DPDR, they also have days when they feel bad/shitty and days when they're happy without some triggers. It's human being, hormones playing around to stabilize our mood.


Are you now out of that "stage"?


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## sunjet (Nov 21, 2014)

Hard to tell if 100%. I'm feeling way better. I just feel like I forgot how real and DPDR must feel and I'm just floating with what it is. I can say it's gone because I don't feel so much affected by it but at the same time I feel like I'm lying to myself cause sometimes it feels like there is still something lingering in the background and that reality actually is more real than I feel it now and i'm just trying to convince myself that everything is fine.

I can't tell you if I'm out of it cause I stopped following it, how much i feel DPDR, if its still there or not, stopped analysing it.

Now all my past now feels like I didn't had DPDR at all, just pure anxiety and I had feelings/emotions every time. That is strange. If I recall some memory it comes together with that emotion, but at that time I don't remember feeling that. Some feeling paradox.


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## illmatic (Apr 16, 2016)

I can definitely relate to that. On my best days there were times where my anxiety was gone, and I felt 100% normal, like there was nothing wrong with me in the first place except anxiety. It's very strange.

I was so busy for the last month that I wasn't thinking about DP at all and everything was normal. Then 2 days ago when I had my "relapse" it felt like my DP just started and I was living normally the few months before. And of course with the nature of DP it made me question everything.

I'm feeling a lot better today after resuming the things that helped me in the first place like sleeping enough and exercising.

People say that once you are 100% you will definitely know, so hopefully staying at that final stage for a long time and working towards recovery will lead to full 100% recovery.

I've also had a cold the past few days so I wonder if that's the reason my DP has been worse.


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## sunjet (Nov 21, 2014)

What also scares me is when I met few of my friends that I didnt see for about 10 years, and we're recalling different memories. I can recall them all and i know i felt good but i feel like it was in another life, or somewhere else life as they just say that they feel it was yesterday. Im trying to understand why i feel like it war 1000 years a go, or another life. Makes me feel that dpdr was like a reborn for me.

But the anxiety dimished, i still feel anxious when something is wrong but its more lite and I just accepted thats just me, just more sensitive than others... I dont its bad or no.

My neurologist that told me i have anxiety said that these people always reach their life goals if they keep it under control and they keep working.


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## Guest (Jun 16, 2016)

Hey guys, I think I'm also in that stage between 90-100%. It can be a very frustrating experience, because you really want to convince yourself that you're recovered, even though there are still some lingering effects that are hard to ignore. I think recently I've been even more focused on checking my symptoms and trying to figure out whether or not I feel "detached." In my mind the only thing still keeping the dissociation alive is our unwillingness to just let go, and accept reality as it is. Checking up on how we feel, wondering if our recovery is still continuing, and freaking out over any small weird moments are the things we need to stop in order to truly return to 100%.

I've only had this for about two months, and I've been recovering steadily for most of that time. I think my biggest fear throughout most of this has been that I could potentially stall at 80-90% and remain there indefinitely. Obviously I don't believe that to be the case, I think in time I'll slowly learn to stop caring about this stupid shit and focus more on my actual life. One thing that is making that kind of hard for me is the fact that I can no longer smoke weed, which sort of prevents me from returning to my old routines and seeing my friends. It's very unfortunate that even after you're recovered, you still can't necessarily return to your old life. This ties into my internal debate about whether or not this disorder is truly "for life." Will we always be prone to dissociation in times of anxiety or stress? Will we never be able to do the things (ie drugs) we used to love? It's part of why I think I'm going to need to try weed again at some point, since it represents the ultimate test of recovery for me.


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## sunjet (Nov 21, 2014)

I think weed is not the cause of DPDR, it's the trigger that amplifies what you have burried deep down. People who don't have worries, are happy, and when they'lll smoke, they will get high. But if someone with some deep unsolved trauma, high anxiety in background or obsessive thoughts caused by health anxiety or whatever and you smoke weed it amplifies your deep down feelings.

I think sometimes you can smoke weed just to see if you have something down. If you're getting high and not dissociating or going into a panic attack, means your "soul" is clear and you don't have something unsolved inside you etc. And not only weed, but any other triggers (high stress, drugs, trauma) that brings up your "background".

Now, I don't think I feel DPDR, BUT I think I learned to consciously turn it on. It's not that you leave your body or reality becomes unreal, but its like your mind makes reality go off and your thinking becomes from this : "I am watching the tree and its green" => "I am aware that I'm watching and I can see myself from inside my brain watching the tree and its green". This little difference in perception still lingers for a very good time and gives for many of us the illusion that its DPDR. Maybe its a mild form of DPDR, maybe its a last stage from recovery or just learned coping skill.

And what is scarier is when you become aware that you watch that tree, you can and you are going on multiple levels. "I am thinking about my thoughts about the tree" => "I am aware of the thoughts that I'm thinking about the tree" and so on till we get distracted. Thats a reality check and I try to avoid doing it...


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## illmatic (Apr 16, 2016)

soulsearcher86 said:


> Hey guys, I think I'm also in that stage between 90-100%. It can be a very frustrating experience, because you really want to convince yourself that you're recovered, even though there are still some lingering effects that are hard to ignore. I think recently I've been even more focused on checking my symptoms and trying to figure out whether or not I feel "detached." In my mind the only thing still keeping the dissociation alive is our unwillingness to just let go, and accept reality as it is. Checking up on how we feel, wondering if our recovery is still continuing, and freaking out over any small weird moments are the things we need to stop in order to truly return to 100%.
> 
> I've only had this for about two months, and I've been recovering steadily for most of that time. I think my biggest fear throughout most of this has been that I could potentially stall at 80-90% and remain there indefinitely. Obviously I don't believe that to be the case, I think in time I'll slowly learn to stop caring about this stupid shit and focus more on my actual life. One thing that is making that kind of hard for me is the fact that I can no longer smoke weed, which sort of prevents me from returning to my old routines and seeing my friends. It's very unfortunate that even after you're recovered, you still can't necessarily return to your old life. This ties into my internal debate about whether or not this disorder is truly "for life." Will we always be prone to dissociation in times of anxiety or stress? Will we never be able to do the things (ie drugs) we used to love? It's part of why I think I'm going to need to try weed again at some point, since it represents the ultimate test of recovery for me.


I personally think the key to recovering is reaching that "90% stage" and staying there for as long as possible, stress-free, while your brain slowly recovers and gets back to the way things were. Many people reach that point and call it recovered, because it's good enough compared to how bad they were in the beginning. And they forget about DP and their brain eventually adjusts back to the way things were and then they reach 100% without even realizing it. For us, that final stage is too annoying to ignore and we constantly check to see if we are better, that makes it harder to go back into normal life. At least this is what I think from reading advice from many recovery threads. What do you guys think?



sunjet said:


> I think weed is not the cause of DPDR, it's the trigger that amplifies what you have burried deep down. People who don't have worries, are happy, and when they'lll smoke, they will get high. But if someone with some deep unsolved trauma, high anxiety in background or obsessive thoughts caused by health anxiety or whatever and you smoke weed it amplifies your deep down feelings.
> 
> I think sometimes you can smoke weed just to see if you have something down. If you're getting high and not dissociating or going into a panic attack, means your "soul" is clear and you don't have something unsolved inside you etc. And not only weed, but any other triggers (high stress, drugs, trauma) that brings up your "background".
> 
> ...


I agree about weed not being a direct cause of DPDR. Weed and any other drugs I've ever tried never had any affect on me. Only twice weed had an affect on me and both times I had massive DP panic attacks where I ended up in the hospital. I've always been a person with deep thoughts about life, and combined with panic attack on weed it is not a good combo. Drugs are just not for some people. I stayed away from weed after my first DP panic attack experience when I was 16, and should have learned my lesson. But over 10 years later I thought I would "test" things to see if I would have the same experience, and yup, sure enough I did and it eventually lead to where I am today with DP.


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