# Happy Anniversary, DP.



## ohelp (May 22, 2007)

It's been almost a year since all of this started for me, and while I'm not entirely recovered yet, I thought I'd tell you about my story and offer some advice because I know how frustrated you might feel.

Some basic info about me: I'm 19, female, living in Germany, which is also the perfect excuse for any grammatical errors.  I have never taken any kind of drug and honestly didn't even know what the word "anxiety" meant until last year.

Anyway, in November 2006 my life started spiraling downhill pretty fast. I had developed an eating disorder withing a pretty short time span, my relationship of 3 years came to an end, my mum was about to marry a man I couldn't stand and she had to undergo surgery soon. Still, all of this was NOTHING compared to the horror of DP/DR. I just remember walking into the bathroom one night, and then something hit me. I can't fully explain it, but I literally felt like there was some sort of power outage going on in my own head. Within a second I didn't know where I was, who I was, even what year it was, and what the hell was happening to me. I didnt recognize ANYTHING around me and seriously thought I was losing my mind right there on the spot. All I remember is sitting down on the floor praying this feeling would stop, I was so out of it that the thought of calling someone for help didn't even occur to me in that moment. Luckily this feeling supsided after about 20 minutes, so I went to bed thinking I must have had a panic attack or something like it. But when I woke up the next morning something still felt wrong, like I was isolated from the rest of the world through a thick invisible wall and I constantly felt like my hands did not belong to me anymore. So the first thing I did was to schedule an appointment with the next best psychiatrist, but I had to wait 2 months. Oh, great! :shock: I seriously considered checking myself into a mental hospital right away, but for some reason, nobody noticed any difference about me at all. I could still go on about my day and pretend like everything was alright, and I pretty much had no other choice. The first few days were pure hell. I was scared to leave my room. I was scared to take a shower. I was scared to watch TV. Normal daily tasks like going grocery shopping seemed impossible. I still had no idea what was happening to me and feeling completely isolated from everyone else around a time where my mum needed me the most was the worst.

I finally got around seeing the doctor and he assured me that I was sane and that DP/DR was my body's way of coping with things. While the actual expierience was even worse than any kind of emotional stress, it did make sense because looking back, I didn't care much about what was going on around me anymore because I was so busy checking how I felt every second of the day.

So anyway, enough about me! You probably came in here to gain some advice, so here it goes.

- While DP/DR leads to all kinds of crazy ideas (personally, I thought that maybe I had died, or maybe I was the only person on earth, or that I was purely hallucinating all of this), you are not going crazy! As long as you notice that your thought pattern seems a bit irrational your reality testing remains intact, and no one is going to lock you away unless you are in danger to harm yourself or anyone else.

- Try to let go of existential thinking. I have realized that the brain simply cannot handle thoughts like "why am I here?" and you actually do not need to know why everything is the way it is to enjoy your life.

- Getting enough sleep and eating right is very important. I completely had to cut out sugar, caffeine and alcohol out of my diet and while I miss chocolate horribly, it really helps, especially when you're prone to panic attacks aswell.

- Be gentle with yourself. If you're having a bad day, close the curtains, lay down and watch some Seinfeld episodes. Listen to your body. If you're hungry, eat and when you're tired, sleep. I've had to learn the hard way that your body is ALWAYS stronger than your mind.

- Never give up. Don't let DP/DR sucker you into thinking that you will forever feel like this, there will always be better days and there is always something to look forward to.

- Most people have no idea what you are going through unless they have expierienced DP/DR themselves, so if you don't have such thing as a "comfort" person you can talk to, post on the board! Sometimes just knowing that someone can relate to your feelings helps.

- I know that being around people can be horribly when feeling severely derealized, but hiding away from the world will only make things worse. Try to stay active, have your friends come over and try to get as much distraction as possible.

Okay this was way too long, so I'm going to stop right here. If you have any questions feel free to PM me anytime.


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