# RECOVERED! (Long-term social anxiety induced)



## AsleepToDeadToAlive (Apr 23, 2017)

HELLOOOOOOOOO everyone!

Ima start this off by saying I have made a FULL recovery from SOCIAL ANXIETY induced DP/DR.

So in here I will be giving my story, followed by what worked for me.

Dunno how long this post will be, but if you feel like yours is also caused by SA then read  hope its helpful to some.

Story:

So I was born and raised in the Netherlands until I was 4, after which my parents decided to move to Tunisia to start up a business.

Went to Tunisia, business didn't work out, moved back to Netherlands age 7.

So this is where my SA started. I had grown up in the Netherlands at first around my friends, had to leave them for Tunisia where I had to learn arabic, make new friends and fit in the culture. Finally got accustomed to Tunisia, had to move back and start ALL OVER AGAIN for the 3rd time at such a young age.

At the time, this fucked with my brain as I just felt like I would never really belong somewhere for some reason. So anyways, in the Netherlands from age 9-10 I got SEVERELY bullied. In retrospect I understand everyone gets bullied in their lives, but at the time this caused me SO MUCH stress and worry that I could not function normally anymore. Luckily the bullies left the school after that year and I got to start over. This time around, I had made my mind up nothing like this could ever happen again, and was extremely insecure inside from the abuse. What I ended up doing was I copied likeable traits from everyone around me and basically ''acted'' how a cool person would act. In other words, extreme social conditioning. This carried on through all of primary school and highschool. In this period I made great friends, and wouldn't have to act at all around close friends. Anxiety also went into other areas of life, i.e I couldn't meet new people, go out to dinner or anywhere on my own without being super anxious. So here comes UNI, the best time of our lives, right? I'm 18 at this point btw. So I go to uni EXTREMELY ANXIOUS, because I had superficial confidence from all the friends I had made, however all my friends didnt go to the same uni as i decided to go to, so i was alone once again. Basically this is when I realized I had become an extreme people pleaser (Acting) and had the fundemental belief that I was unworthy of love and acceptance unless i act a certain way. At uni, I made friends, but no great or real friends. Bear in mind the past 8 years or so I had always been able to fool people with my act into becoming great friends with me. So I became extremely desperate and started doubting myself to the core. This introspection and selfdoubt hightened my anxiety at the time and triggered all of the pent up anxiety and insecurity of my childhood. Brain couldn't handle it, triggers DPDR mode to cope.

*TL;DR* anxiety was too much, entered DPDP mode

What I did about it:

let me say first I had this for 6 or 7 months now, and the past couple of months have been an absolute blur as i am sure many of you can relate.Complete zombie mode. first 3 months i spent completely clueless, even thought I had a candida yeast overgrowth messing up my chemical imbalance hoping that would explain the lack of emotion. Find out about this forum and DPDR, spend next 2 months in the famous cycle of checking my own sanity/reality and the forums/articles. Until the last 2 weeks pretty much! I finally decided enough is enough this isn't working. I sat down, did my daily meditation, got real calm and thought about what caused this. I always knew it was the anxiety, but I did not knwo what to do about it. I started off by acknowledging the trauma, stress and anxiety. This can not be done INTELLECTUALLY. It has to be done from the core and emotionally. I know it is hard to feel emotions during DPDR, but try as much as you can. For me, thinking back to every major time I felt anxiety like presentations or the time i got bullied helped bring up feelings of anxiety. These feelings I released by breathing into them and letting them go, getting lighter with each breath. After about half an hour of doing this, I felt extremely peaceful all of a sudden, no longer that heavy foggy clogged feeling in my head, and slightly more in touch with reality. Went to bed afterwards, woke up, cured 

*DPDR IMO is caused by stress/trauma/anxiety in either an extreme form or for a long period of time. * It is up to YOU to find out what that is for you and confront it. Start out by releasing all resistance to DPDR, and realize it is there to HELP you. Until you confront this trauma and process it, DPDR will stay there. I read a lot of people talking about eating healthy, certain diets etc. but they all just slightly help, THIS is the real cure atleast for me.

*ANOTHER BIG THING: All rumination is COMPLETELY USELESS. YOU ARE REAL. *Meditate every day and break the cycle of rumination! Try and think in the way that you would think when you were still present. For me, reading ''the power of now'' by ECkhart Tolle helped with this. STOP READING THIS FORUM. It will only remind you of your DPDP and reinforce the belief that it is bad/permanent, as most posts on here are negative.

*Do not let society tell you how you should behave. BE YOU. You're beautiful.*

*Anyways, long post. written in 1 go, sorry for messiness its 4am...  i'll reply all comments GL*


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## 707 (Mar 1, 2017)

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## M1k3y (Sep 19, 2016)

can u go more into detail about how u released those feelings? like did u picture the situation and say it was okay? i wanna try this, cus i do get anxiety in some events and maybe ill let em go, also did medication play a good part?


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## Broken (Jan 1, 2017)

Meditate everyday I already do. Can I ask what technique you use? Could you go into a little detail/give tips as well please as there are many ways to interpret mindfulness meditation


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## Jordi95 (Feb 14, 2017)

Bro where do you live in Holland? I'm also from Holland. Good to hear you recovered tho! Very nice for you. Thanks for sharing your story!


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## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

GREAT! U snapped out of DPDR by breathing into your past anxious situations ? too simple hah


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## bintuae (Jan 17, 2017)

Except this would not work for someone like me who's has to take a med (necessary for my severe social anxiety) that actually induces dp/dr (and worse yet is one of withdrawal symptoms). The cause of dp shit isn't always anxiety or trauma. You should educate yourself about the topic.


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## XBrave (Oct 28, 2016)

AsleepToDeadToAlive said:


> ...i was alone once again. Basically this is when I realized I had become an extreme people pleaser (Acting) and had the fundemental belief that I was unworthy of love and acceptance unless i act a certain way. At uni, I made friends, but no great or real friends. Bear in mind the past 8 years or so I had always been able to fool people with my act into becoming great friends with me. So I became extremely desperate and started doubting myself to the core. This introspection and selfdoubt hightened my anxiety at the time and triggered all of the pent up anxiety and insecurity of my childhood...


WOW I can relate to this :O


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## yoloking123 (Jul 6, 2016)

I really want to say thank you so much for this. It has touched me so much from 6th grade on up I had really bad social anxiety. I think a mix of social anxiety and smoking weed combined caused my DP/DR. Im starting to do this rn and i kind of feel like its working. God bless you my friend.


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## oolongmonkey (Dec 23, 2016)

AsleepToDeadToAlive said:


> HELLOOOOOOOOO everyone!
> 
> Ima start this off by saying I have made a FULL recovery from SOCIAL ANXIETY induced DP/DR.
> 
> ...


What kind of meditation and how often? Many meditations are dissociative in nature. Trust me, I followed a dissociate path and through meditation induced Dp/Dr that has lasted 5 years. I don't doubt that meditation can help but keep it somatic and on the body.


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