# Finding reality in an MRI machine...



## Beth (Sep 27, 2004)

Hi all, it's been a while. I don't even know if anyone is still around from when I used to post here. I've had an intense few days, I think I might be coming out of dp, and it's (as always with dp) the kind of thing that it's hard to communicate to friends, even if they are willing to listen, so I thought I'd bring my thoughts here. This is going to be long, I'm writing it partly for my own benefit, but also I don't want to over simplify and make it sound like I understand what's happening to me, or have a theory, because I don't, so I'm going to include everything that feels relevant.

I started to get depersonalised when I was 17, it became constant over the next couple of years. I slowly learnt to deal with the terror, which I used to think was the whole experience, and by the time I was 24 I had pretty much readjusted to living in the alien world of dp. I sometimes got scared, I sometimes got flashes of something that seemed like reality, and if I stopped and thought about it I was sad that I couldn't connect in the same way any more. But on the whole I'd adjusted. I'm 26 now, and have been living fairly comfortably with dp. It interferes, especially with relationships, and a little bit with work, but I could almost forget that I had it at times.

A month ago I had an xray for a chest infection, to see if it was pneumonia. It wasn't, but in the xray they found a lump on my spine, and I had to wait until this week to have an MRI. I won't know until Friday what it is. It's been a lot to deal with over the past few weeks, and this week particularly, because the MRI was a stressful experience - they ran far more scans than they'd planned, and decided half way through to inject some dye, none of which seemed very promising. Obviously it's all rather scary and I really hope I don't have cancer. But weirdly, I've been getting really strong and fairly lengthy periods of being grounded in reality over the past three days.

The first one I didn't even recognise what had happened. It was the day before the MRI and I was thinking about a guy who I'm interested in, who's not my usual type at all and who I feel is kind of too sane, good-looking and happy to like me, although he seems to. I was walking up some stairs in the tube, and I realised that it was ok to fall in love with him if I want to, even if he turns out to be a player, or even a complete arsehole, or even (worst case scenario) if he turns out to be amazing in every way but doesn't feel the same way about me. I realised that that's ok, that I can deal with that if it happens. It isn't a reason to stop myself from feeling whatever I'm feeling right now, or to screw things up accidentely-on-purpose by acting too impulsively. I felt that I could take that emotional gamble. Up until then I hadn't even realised that I don't usually let myself take that sort of risk. I was at the top of the stairs, turning right into a long passage. The realisation was like stepping out into fresh air from a stuffy room, or having a drink of cold orange juice when you're really thirsty. It literally stopped me in my tracks. Now I realise that I'd become un-depersonalised for a second, but the tube is such an unlikely place for that to happen, and it had been such a long time, that I didn't recognise reality. I knew there was something important, and dithered about trying to take a photo of the corner of the stairs on my phone, as if that would somehow help me make sense of it.

That evening I had a long bus journey home. I was tired, hung over, caffeinated, stressed, in a lit bus when it was dark outside - all the sorts of things that should make dp worse, and usually would for me. I decided to think more about the realisation that I'd had, and I was also mulling over the MRI that I'd have the next morning. I felt like I was reasoning through loads of useful stuff. I thought about how I relate to people, how I cope with scary things, all kinds of big stuff. I had been rereading Laing's 'The Divided Self' and 'Bird of Paradise' and that influenced how I was thinking as well. It felt as if some kind of switch had been pressed and I could look honestly at lots of things about myself that I've been hiding, or making excuses for. Being scared of cancer was an excuse to act even more like myself than normal - I'd been drinking and smoking too much, using people to distract myself without much regard for their feelings, taking drugs for the first time in ages. I realised that I didn't need to do these things to cope with being scared, that they didn't really make a difference. What had made a difference was having a couple of really good friends, spending some time outside and meditating, and also looking back at how much I'd got through with dp. Thinking all of this made me feel really grounded, and this time I recognised it. I spent most of the 2 hour bus journey sitting and looking at the plastic bar at the top of the stairs, and my bag on the chair next to me, just looking at how real they looked, and thinking, and quietly crying with pretty much every emotion there is going. I've had bits of reality like this before, but not for a very long time.

I stayed at a friends house that night, and he drove me to the hospital the next morning. Going into the MRI machine I had a surge of panic, but I'm used to that and not so scared of fear anymore so I closed my eyes to let it pass. I kept my eyes closed and did metta meditations for the first few scans. It was all rather trippy, but I was coping fine. Like I said, they ended up doing far more scans that they'd said and I was in there for about an hour in total (they'd said 25 minutes). Halfway through they took me out to inject the dye and I chatted with the radiologist. I said I'd been keeping my eyes shut and she said that when she'd done it she'd kept her eyes closed at first but couldn't resist peeking. When I went back in I dared myself to open my eyes and keep them open, just staring at the two weird strips of light on white plastic just in front of my face while weird banging noises went on all around me (and now I had a line in my arm as well). It almost could have been created to be a dp-inducing experience. But I felt realer than I have for years. I felt completely in my body, completely where I was in space, completely secure there. Time made sense. I felt like I had a personality, like I'd been born and would die. It was fucking incredible. Those strips of light were all I could see, I couldn't move my head, but they looked so incredibly real and solid.

The rest of the day, and continuing into today, I've had lots of experiences of feeling real. I sat outside with the friend who'd driven me and had a conversation that I felt real for. Although I've had moments of reality occasionally over the past few years I have never had a real feeling human interaction. Not for the past nine years. I've now had three conversations that I've retained a sense of groundedness for at least a part of. The sense of reality isn't continuous, and it's not complete. It's about 95%, but with tiny fleeting moments of something like 100%. It's almost as if it's there when I remember to check for it, but if I focus too hard on it then it starts to slip into something more absurd. I find it a bit hard to trust, as if it's made of plate glass and could shatter. Or I start to worry that I can't really remember reality, and this is just some other way of feeling altogether. But those moments of near 100% just have such a sense of rightness to them. I've only managed to touch it once, and I'm not completely sure that it looks right. So far if I reach out to touch something, or look too hard at it then reality seems to recede back a bit. But I did stop and touch a railing, and felt for a good few seconds that I was touching it, that it was solid right through, that I was in my body, which was in the street, in the town, in space and time. It was incredible. I'm trying not to hold onto it too tightly. I'm scared of trusting it in case I lose it again. I'd learnt to live without reality, but if I immerse myself back in the real world then will unreality become a terrifying hell again if I ever find myself back there? It's taken so many years to learn to live in that world that it feels strange to step out of it completely.

I want to live here again. Especially to talk to people again. It's weird though. And it's weird that it's weird.

I don't know why this is happening. Reading RD Laing has helped. And I think the other factors are to do with realising that dp is harder than what it is trying to solve. I've known that intellectually before, but I've started to believe it. My dp was drug induced, but it was also largely due to an abusive relationship. My ex convinced me that I couldn't cope with anything by myself. Well, I've realised that actually I can cope with the possibility of having cancer, that that thought isn't as scary as half the shit I've faced with dp. It's scary, yes, but it isn't existentially terrifying. Only existential terror is that. And similarly, it's actually more painful to sabotage relationships before they have a chance to begin than to give them a go. Other people might be able to hurt me, but even if they do, so what? I can deal with that. None of these things will make me crazy, only the attempt to avoid the possibility of them makes me feel mad. More generally, and this is from reading Laing as well as thinking, I don't mind if other people can see me, and judge me. That doesn't change me. Again, only trying to avoid being seen and judged by other people changes who I am.

Well, I think that's about the sum of it. It'll be interesting to see what happens to my sense of reality on Friday when I find out if I've got cancer or not. I don't know which I care more about! If I could choose dp and a benign lump or no dp and a malignant lump... I honestly don't know. Right now I'm tending towards the latter, although that does make me sad because at least dp doesn't worry my parents the way cancer would, and I would quite like to pursue this new potential relationship. I suppose there's no need to play would-you-rather with it though, obviously I'm hoping for neither.

Love to everyone who's coping, more or less. x


----------



## Emir (Nov 20, 2010)

...


----------



## Beth (Sep 27, 2004)

Hi j4mtj,

Thanks for your reply, that's a very interesting observation, and is an aspect that I hadn't considered. I think there's certainly some truth in it, and I suppose along with that passivity and 'safety' goes the feeling that finally someone has noticed that there's something wrong with me.. even if it's actually got nothing to do with dp. After years of electric shock feelings, and buzzing, and weird visuals, it's quite a relief to have someone scan my head, even though I know it's all psychosomatic.

I'd like to think that it's all a bit deeper than that though! I do feel like it's not just random flashes, like the opposite of highs, but that I'm accepting reality more fully, so when it comes it lingers. The fact that I've had several conversations where I've felt that both me and the person I'm talking to are real is pretty promising on that front I think.


----------



## Guest (Mar 9, 2011)

j4mtj said:


> I've experienced something similar in a medical setting before. Like you I wondered why it happened then and my theory is that we give up control and place ourselves (and our trust) in the people carrying out the procedures. Since everything's out of our control, yet safe at the same time in a strange way, we just relax. Since most medical procedures are novel for the first time, we are completely in the moment as well. I've had 2 MRI's, one with dye, and they quite take your whole attention.
> 
> Also if dp was due to trauma, a feeling of 'safety' goes a long way to alleviating it.


Yes, so have I. Most of last year I had to deal with breast cancer. I have so many doctors I can't remember their names. But, yes, being cared for, releasing one's self to complete attention and care can alleviate my DP to a degree. Even during the summer recuperating, having a WONDERFUL friend stay with me ALL the time, I was able to laugh, not think of the cancer, dealing with post surgical ridiculousness.

But as is true with many cancer patients, ultimately the doctors fade into the background. I don't need my surgeon now. I don't need my wonderful lymphedema specialist. I don't have 500 visits to talk about options and test results. I feel into a depression and worse DP again, AFTERWARDS. All of the support ... logically ... moves to the background.

I never learned self-soothing skills. I practice them, but I find them most in a medical setting -- not necessarily with my therapist, but when I have a serious medical issue.

I got more love from my "cancer team" in 6 months, than I got from my parents in my lifetime. I don't know if that's part of it, but all of this makes sense.


----------

