# Questions For Recovered



## Juniormafia (Jan 25, 2012)

hello everybody im really happy to be in this website

first off sorry for my bad english cuz im from Paris

I have some questions for people who are already recovred !

1- did you recovred from DP at once ? ( like you wake up someday and you feel normal like before DP )

2- are there any signs of recovery ?

3-i don't take any medcs or suplements im just trying to live my normal life and forgeting this trouble despite of its symptoms ! Am I in the good Track of recovery ?

4- Can cigarettes affect DP ? (for smokers)

5-why there are some people who have DP for 10 years and 20 years before recovery and others who have it for short time ? it depends to what ? and what is the difference between them ?

Thank you for answering ! it will helps others and me a lot !


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## Juniormafia (Jan 25, 2012)

please reply im suffering


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## kate_edwin (Aug 9, 2009)

i can speak to number 5: the long term kind seems to come from drugs and early childhood events, the short term kind seems to come from one or short time drug use, or when dp is a symptom of another problem like depression or an anxiety disorder


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## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

Juniormafia said:


> hello everybody im really happy to be in this website
> 
> first off sorry for my bad english cuz im from Paris
> 
> ...


I am not completely recovered but I have fully recovered before, so I can answer these questions for you (I got dp again because the abusive situation I was in did not change. So don't freak out that if you recover you'll get it again because you probably won't).
1. Most people, infact the majority of people do not suddenly recover from dp. You don't just have it horribly one day and snap out of it the next. It is a slow process of healing. It happens gradually. The first time I had dp, I had it for a week and a half from start to full recovery. That is what I would call an episode rather than depersonalization disorder, as the disorder tends to be much more long term. But in recover from that experience and in recovery from my current experience, it happen very very VERY slowly. I've been recovering since like 5 months into it and I've had it for 2 1/2 years. I think a lot of that depends on the cause of your dp and your ability to live in a stress free environment away from what caused it. It also depends on your mindset and motivation to recover. There are many people who get trapped in freaking out about how they feel, obsessing over symptoms, refusing to get out of bed and they don't recover. If you do what you need to do and move on with your life, not obsess, etc you will recover a lot faster.

2. Yes, there are signs of recovery. They are probably different for everyone but he ones I've noticed were things like my sense of self returning, old thought patterns returning, memories returning, dp symptoms disappearing, etc. More recently I've had moments where reality either partially or fully breaks through. A recent instance of it partially returning was that I was sitting outside and I could feel reality. I could feel the energy in the air, I could feel like around me but my vision was still flat. Other instance, it all returned. My vision went back to normal and I could see reality as well. All of that comes in isolated instances as of now. In my first recovery, it didn't happen that way. It was much more like becoming sober again after drinking. I just slowly felt better and clearer each day to the point where everything was almost completely normal except this one slight thing I just couldn't put my finger on and then the next day I recovered completely.

3. I didn't take any medications or supplements when I recovered the first time. The thing about dp that most people and doctors get wrong is that they try to treat it as a sickness when it isn't. Because it has symptoms of other conditions like anxiety and depression they automatically think that it must be the same trigger. In cases of anxiety and depression, for example, the brain usually is low in seretonin or dopamine and that causes the anxiety or depression. So you can take an antidepressant and it will cause your seretonin/dopamine levels to return to normal and resolved the anxiety and depression. Well, depersonalization doesn't function that way. First of all, it's not an illness, it's a defense mechanism of the brain. It is meant to protect you from whatever threat your brain sees as so big it cannot handle it. When this happens, it shuts down certain parts of the brain to cause you to exist in unreality. There has been a lot of research into what the brain is doing while you have dpd and they've come to find out that many different areas of the brain are functioning abnormally. Blood flow and electrical activity is either under or overactive in different lobes of the brain as compared to normal. So it isn't as simple as saying take this pill to regulate this one chemical and it will cure everything. Because it's an overall brain dysfunction, not a singular thing. 
That being said, I do take supplements for the anxiety and depression that are a side effect of the dpd. I had those before dp anyways but they are much more severe since getting it so I take Vitamin d3 to boost my seretonin levels and prevent depression. I do this because I have tried 12 different medications from antidepressants, to antipsychotics, anticonvulsants to benodiazapines and all of them made my dp worse. Every, single, one.

4.I would say yes. Cigarettes paralyze the villi in your lungs, which causes them not to take in the normal amount of oxygen. Your body and brain need oxygen to function normally. If you remove it from your blood through smoking, its going to cause your brain to not operate the best that it can. I would say that you should do everything you can to make things as easy as possible for your system while dpd and smoking it pretty harsh on your system.

5. People usually have dp for different lengths of time depending on what cause their dp in the first place. It also depends on if any permanent damage was done to the brain when you got the dp and if you are able to be in a healthy stress free environment while recovering.
The people who get dp for 10, 20, 50 years are usually those who suffered very bad trauma, particularly in childhood. It leaves a permanent scar on the psyche. Then there are people like me, who were in abusive situations later in life that triggered the dp. I've had it for 2 1/2 years and got it after 5 years of a very abusive marriage and about 5 other traumas that occured within a 6 months time period. It was too much for my brain to take and it shut down. I am about 98-99% recovered. I have no depersonalization symptoms and only have mild derealization at this point. People who get dp from things like a panic attack while smoking weed tend to recover the fastest because there was no actual trauma in their lives to process and overcome. They were in an altered state of mind when they had a panic attack, which made the brain perceive a treat and kick in the mechanism to protect itself. Once the brain sees there is no threat, it will release the defense mechanism and the person will recover. This is the case in 99% of people who have dpd. As long as you can get to the point where you don't view the original cause of the dp or the dp itself as a threat and move on with your life, it will go away. The mistake most people tend to make is that the allow the symptoms of the dp to become the threat. They feel terrified of feeling unreal, detached, etc and so they keep feeding the brain signals that the threat is still there. The constantly think about the fear, obsess over the fear, work themselves into panic and it just feeds this loop in the brain that says "I'm still under attack, I need to keep everything unreal". In essence, they are shooting themselves in the foot because they are prolonging their dp. If they were able to no longer fear the dp the brain would no longer receive the threat signal and it would start to recover. What I've come to find is that sometimes it can take a long time for your brain to correct all of the areas of abnormal function. There are so many chemicals and electrical processes that need to return to normal and it takes a while for your brain to sort all of that out.

Hope this helps.


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## katiej (Jan 21, 2012)

Everything u said was completely valuable and helpful thanks for taking the time . Do u have all the philosophical rumination that won't go away ? And do u reckon that will leave at all


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## joshz28 (Jul 22, 2011)

What I dont understand is how everyone says this is related to anxiety. I did have a couple of panic attacks in the beginning but I havent had any anxiety in 7months. I do feel better, but in the morning I feel extremely groggy when I wake up and just stupid all day and cant remember anything, and when I speak I fumble over my words and cant find the words im trying to say I also get headaches like 4 times a week. I cant help thinking about it when im so groggy and I get headaches almost everyday...am I missing something. I do not fear this I havent from sometime. I cant help but think I should be exploring other avenue of causes of this feeling. I simply dont know..thoughts?


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## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

katiej said:


> Everything u said was completely valuable and helpful thanks for taking the time . Do u have all the philosophical rumination that won't go away ? And do u reckon that will leave at all


I used to have that and it's is completely gone at this point. I don't remember when it stopped but it's been a long time now.

Josh- It's certainly worth exploring if there is a deep root cause for your dp but in the end, it's like I said, dp fades slowly, even after you stop fearing it. I remember that I was 8 months into dp when I finally accepted it. Here I am at 2 1/2 years and it's still not gone. Your brain has to readjust how it functions and that can take a while.


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## Juniormafia (Jan 25, 2012)

Thank you very much !


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## noname (Sep 23, 2008)

There is a limit to disseminate always negativity, even if some like me have a natural attraction toward it. 
Especially in the context of this thread.
Good luck to the OP


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## noname (Sep 23, 2008)

I posted this into the wrong thread, sorry


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## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

I was wondering lol


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## drose (Dec 31, 2011)

1- did you recovred from DP at once ? ( like you wake up someday and you feel normal like before DP )

Like the ValleyGirl83, I had this (well, I had derealization) before, about ten years ago and completely recovered to the point that I couldn't remember how I had gotten there in the first place. I also got involved in an emotionally abusive relationship that lasted two years and that is why I am going through this again - on top of having PTSD from getting hit by a car in 2010.

My DR in 2002 and now was caused by stress. I believe that everyone's, except maybe those who get it from a seizure disorder or drugs, is caused by stress, but not the full on, heart pumping anxiety that people usually think of. My first time was because of a slow descent that I didn't pay attention to. The same thing happened to me this last time. (So, when you recover, make sure to keep taking care of yourself. You might not feel like you need to take care of yourself because the feelings of DP and DR are so foreign that you forget exactly how bad it was. The memory of how you feel now will be like a bad dream or like something you look back on and think you were silly for even letting yourself get to that point.)

My first recovery was fairly sudden, from the sounds of it. I think that was because I didn't know what it was, frankly. I just accepted that it had to do with my anxiety and frustration. I think frustration is the biggest part. I don't mean a moment of getting stuck in traffic or spilling your drink in a restaurant. I mean the frustration of self that seeps in slowly, every time you do something that drains your energy or put off something that you really desire. I reached the point where I checked myself into a mental and chemical dependency treatment program (though I don't and never have drunk or done any drugs whatsoever). The atmosphere at that place in particular was very very effective, though it had nothing to do with DP or DR specifically. I recovered from my DR while I was in the treatment center, which I stayed at for a week after three months of derealization. At the point of deciding to go there, I was waking up and crying because I couldn't convince myself I was awake. Everything was weird. These two little girls came up and were talking to me while I was in the parking lot of the hospital, devastated from the lack of help, and I almost thought I was hallucinating them. It was just incredibly awful, as you probably know.

Being in the treatment center forced me to step back from life, let go of all the things I felt obligated to, and focus on the past few years of my life. What I learned is I had slowly been letting go of little pieces of myself that I didn't realize were incredibly important. I have to give credit to my counselor at that time as well. Mainly, he made two or three statements that cut down to the core of what was going on with me with what seemed like just flippant observations. One - he said that so much anxiety (as I was having at the time) is just a signal that something in your life needs to change in a MAJOR way. Two - and this is one that I think has the most power for me - he said that he's seen that artists and creative people really do need to write or paint or make a sculpture or do whatever it is they need to do or they will "go crazy". He didn't mean that they will go psychotic, but that creating is a need. I think this could be applied more generally to more people if it was "expression is a need". Those are the two things I remember most that helped me after I went into the hospital. I had reached a point where I really needed more help than just weekly counselling, but he really did help me. I guess I don't know exactly when the Derealization went away. I wasn't focused on it because I just thought it was anxiety caused by ignoring myself for so long. It definitely wasn't constant when I was in treatment. I had a panic attack and the derealization came back when I left the hospital (treatment center) and I actually went back for a night, but quickly realized I didn't need to be there and left the next day.

The derealization was definitely gone within a week or so, except for during panic attacks, which had happened since I was a kid anyway and, like I said, after being in the hospital my panic attacks faded to months and years apart. I was on Paxil for two weeks, starting my last day in the treatment center, but I stopped it. I was just kind of like - okay, I was getting happier anyway and this stuff hasn't even fully kicked in and I don't really need this. A week or two after that, I walked into my counselor's office and told him I didn't need him anymore (mistake in the long run because I still had things that I could have talked about some more even though I was feeling happier and had zero derealization). He was visibly shocked at my demeanor because I wasn't the sad and frantic person he had seen earlier. I felt confident. I felt brave enough to pursue the things I really wanted even though they were scary and, maybe most important to me, disapproved of (or I thought they were disapproved of) by people I loved and felt dependent on.

2- are there any signs of recovery ?

I didn't notice any signs of recovery then, but I have noticed moments of re-realization this time and, what's more, I've noticed that those moments are just as shocking, almost as panic inducing as the derealization at it's worst. I've also noticed that sometimes things like smiling and feeling happy are even scary because... well, I feel like if I forget about the derealization, it might just take over. This is silly, as you know. Come to think of it, ten years ago I didn't know what derealization was, but when I did start to really let myself laugh again (I remember the specific night), it did feel kind of odd and unstable, like balancing on a tightrope, but I just took that energy and went with it. A lot of those first few weeks, maybe even the first month or two were like that. I let myself laugh and I had to actually LET MYSELF laugh and connect with people (this was very important) even though my heart was racing as though happiness was dangerous. I wonder if anyone else here has noticed such a thing with their DP/DR. ??

3-i don't take any medcs or suplements im just trying to live my normal life and forgeting this trouble despite of its symptoms ! Am I in the good Track of recovery ?

Well, based on my first recovery, I'd say yes and no. I don't think you need the medicine. I didn't need it the first time I recovered. However, I am taking medicine now that is helping me with PTSD from getting hit by a car and it has allowed my brain to calm down enough to focus on what I need to deal with to get rid of my DR. I've been journaling much more and focusing on things that I want, working through my past and these were things that would cause me huge anxiety before. Even journaling caused me anxiety! So, I'd say if you have something like PTSD on top of your DP, you could try a medicine. By the way, I hate medicine and feel like I will get off this one very soon.

As for living your normal life. I feel like that is the HUGEST mistake anyone can make when they have DP or DR - if they want to get rid of it anyway. DP and DR are giant signposts that your brain is thowing out in front of you. "Hello!" it says, "You're doing something wrong and you should probably take a look at it!" The way I recovered so quickly the first time, even though my DR was incredibly severe, is I actually had to completely withdraw from my life for a week, physically and mentally. Mentally letting go of certain thoughts and habits was obviously much more difficult than just going to a different location. I then had to keep redirecting my thoughts and actions almost entirely after I left the hospital. I had to make plans and follow through on plans to change my life drastically, to come up with big ideas and go after them. Big ideas at that time were ending the relationship with my children's father, going to school in a different town, and going out of my way to connect with new people. The sincere intent and planning to do these things brought my relief from derealization well before I actually moved and even before I divorced my kids' dad.

4- Can cigarettes affect DP ? (for smokers)

This one doesn't apply to me. I haven't smoked since I was fourteen.

5-why there are some people who have DP for 10 years and 20 years before recovery and others who have it for short time ? it depends to what ? and what is the difference between them ?

Not sure. I would say it's because DP is actually scary to let go of. It's there for a reason. Personally, when I first started to come out of the more severe symptoms I had in the beginning of this round, I immediately started having panic attacks. That whole week I had panic attacks. I also started having weird dreams. I think this time, my DR was definitely affected by my PTSD and the images of a certain event that were bothering me before I got derealization also started to come back with just as much intensity as they had months earlier. Also, for me this time around, I've noticed that moments of suddenly coming out of DR all of a sudden are almost as disturbing as going into DR because it's like you're being shoved into a completely different moment or sense of reality. Something like that. Has anyone else felt that way?


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## insaticiable (Feb 23, 2010)

drose said:


> My first recovery was fairly sudden, from the sounds of it. I think that was because I didn't know what it was, frankly. I just accepted that it had to do with my anxiety and frustration. I think frustration is the biggest part. I don't mean a moment of getting stuck in traffic or spilling your drink in a restaurant. I mean the frustration of self that seeps in slowly, every time you do something that drains your energy or put off something that you really desire. *I reached the point where I checked myself into a mental and chemical dependency treatment program (though I don't and never have drunk or done any drugs whatsoever). The atmosphere at that place in particular was very very effective, though it had nothing to do with DP or DR specifically. I recovered from my DR while I was in the treatment center, which I stayed at for a week after three months of derealization*. At the point of deciding to go there, I was waking up and crying because I couldn't convince myself I was awake. Everything was weird. These two little girls came up and were talking to me while I was in the parking lot of the hospital, devastated from the lack of help, and I almost thought I was hallucinating them. It was just incredibly awful, as you probably know.


This is incredible! I recovered too, while I was away from home at a psychiatric hospital. I was there for a week, and on my 4th day there, my very severe dp and dr suddenly vanished away after 14 relentless months. I do believe in a change of environment/atmosphere as being very constructive to my recovery.


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## nearlyrecovered (Feb 1, 2012)

Hi, I've almost recovered.

1- did you recovred from DP at once ? No, I'm finding that little things are happening at the moment. Yesterday my hearing changed. All of a sudden the background noise sounded so much clearer, louder and I was very aware that people were talking around me instead of just subconsciously hearing people talk.

My day used to feel like time didn't exist and it was just one big blur, but lately I'm aware of every second, every minute.

2- are there any signs of recovery ? Yes, you will feel more "real" my first sign was things seems wider. Like paths, shops, they didn't seem so 2D any more. You realise things are taller, wider, further than you did before.

3-i don't take any medcs or suplements im just trying to live my normal life and forgeting this trouble despite of its symptoms ! Am I in the good Track of recovery ? Definitely! I tried everything under the sun when I got DP. The best thing for me was forgetting DP. I literally let every bad, scary thought go and it started getting better. It was hard at first because I was scared I was going nuts or dying, but it gets easier and my mind started becoming quieter and quieter until I realised I wasn't thinking so much about it. Some supplements helped a bit too, but I think DP is massively fed on fear/anxiety.

4- Can cigarettes affect DP ? (for smokers) Yes! I only smoke on a night out, but it made my DP a lot worse and instantly gave me very bad OCD.

5-why there are some people who have DP for 10 years and 20 years before recovery and others who have it for short time ? it depends to what ? and what is the difference between them ? I think it's down to anxiety and I was stuck in a anxiety-dp-anxiety pattern for a long time. Once I got rid of the anxiety the DP started to go. People are stuck in a fear cycle and some can break it sooner than others.


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