# Buddhist psychology for DP/DR



## Pablo (Sep 1, 2005)

I have been reading a book about Buddhist healing and an important point mentioned was that wanting to get better or striving to improve your condition no matter what it is can actually be a barrier to improvement. ie to get better you have to give up wanting to get better. Because if you strive to change you cant get complete acceptance of your situation and it is said that if you get deep acceptance that healing comes as a byproduct.

Anybody get what I am saying?


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## sleepingbeauty (Aug 18, 2004)

thats been my method. i think its a bit easier for me though since im a lifer and dont really know what normal life is like anyway.


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## widescreened (Jun 22, 2005)

nicely put pablo.sleeping beauty,i dont get it.dont you have first to be 'normal' in order to feel unnormal?its the move from stability to emotionally charged that is the root of dp/dr in the first place.therein lies the trauma.


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## Pablo (Sep 1, 2005)

I just think that eastern understanding of psychology has so much to teach us here in the west as in the west we have only been studying psychology for probably less than a hundred years while in the east it has been rigorously studied through personal method rather than intellectual understanding for over five thousand years.

Im sure freud and all the other cronies are highly intelligent people with genuine understanding of many aspects of the human psyche but I think that those yogis and guru types be they buddhist, taoist or hindu spend a large majority of their lives examining thoughts, psyche and mind so if they cannot get any sort of deep understanding of the human mind I dont think anybody can, but because what they teach is often infused with religion and mystical aspects many people in the west dismiss it as un-scientific and especially un-christian.

Many of the psycholgists studied today were highly influenced by the east like Freud and Carl Jung , but while these men are given status as experts of the mind probably the greatest psychologist the earth has ever seen: the Buddha, is largely ignored. I am not Buddhist nor eastern but what the Buddha provides is the map and the direct path through the territory of the mind which is completely scientific in nature, but because stuff like reincarnation is mentioned the whole theory and understanding is dismissed by mainstream society.

I hope I have convinced you all to book your tickets to tibet and renounce all worldly posessions :wink: .......no seriously mindfullness and a yogic understanding of how to deal with problem emotions has helped me far more than any therapy or psychological approach, and as a result any setbacks dont last long and my thoughts and emotions dont spiral out of control any more like they used to.


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## sleepingbeauty (Aug 18, 2004)

wow. i didnt realize we knew what the root of dp/dr was yet. wouldnt this be like the biggest breakthrough on this site? holy crap!! 

no youre right widescreened. ive been making it all up this entire time. :roll:

look, i had no idea what dp/dr was until 2003. up till that point all i knew was that i wasnt 'normal' meaning, i wasnt like EVERYONE ELSE. you dont have to be like EVERYONE ELSE to not feel or act or behave like they do. whenever i would describe my symtoms to people the reaction i would get is 'wierd' or 'i dont get that'. these reactions, at least as a kid, made me want to retract further into my shell. i had no idea that the doodoo monster that was attacking me at night was your basic run of the mill panic attack. i had no idea that the strange space trips i would take without warning that scared the life out of me and made me live in fear was out of body asteral projections. i didnt know that i was having petit mal seizures when my teachers would yell at me to pay attention and stop daydreaming. i mean shit... i didnt even know i needed glasses until i failed the entire 6th grade! you would think my teachers would have noticed but nooooooo it was those same teachers would make my parents come in to school and tell them i was a 'discipline problem' because i was always zoning out, thus my parents, instead of thinking gee, maybe our daughter could use some outside help, maybe we should take her to a doctor? nah, lets just beat her and send her to her room, where she will lay listlessly counting those little magic floaty things that no one else sees until the doodoo monster arrives. i mean sh1t, wouldnt you think that after i dont know.. the 50TH time they had to pick the lock on the bathroom door because i was asleep on the floor next to the toilet just in case the doodoo monster would come i would fluch him down, that they would think something was seriously not right with me? nah.. lets just beat her again and again and again until we beat this wierdness right out of her. youd think that since other kids terrified me to the point where i would vomit in class on a daily basis, youd think that when even at the time of birth when my tongue was lolling out and my eyes were rolled back pretty much through my entire infancy, (my baby pics are the proof) that i never cried EVER, that my mom had to force feed me everyday, that my grandma insisted they take me to see a doctor, nooooooooooooooo!! they took that as a personal insult. "theres nothing wrong with our kid! god, at least my mom has accepted it. my dad STILL thinks im making it up and that as he puts it 'its all in my head and i need to 'snap out of it". well hey! youre right daddy! it is in my head you complete peice of dog nugget. personally, i think it would have been nice if my parents werent so self absorbed in their own misery to even aknowledge their childs serious mental problems. IIIIIm the one who had to find out at 26 years old!

but you know what, as bitter as i sound when i recount all of this, i cant blame them. my mom was playing her roll. as the subservient good wifey, to the point where she would allow my father to drunkenly rape her on a daily basis and throw her through glass doors. and my dad? can you believe that i still have a relationship with this scumbag? yes i do! not a great one.. but i still visit him on a weekly basis. in fact i help him out whenever he has projects, because he has no friends and refers to me as his 'best friend', and we have a big drywalling project to do on tuesday. i cant hate him. my dad has sooooo many problems of his own that are beyond mine. he recently confessed to me in a very nonchelant way, that he frequently sits on his bed with his 44 mag lodged in his mouth. he still tells me to 'get over' my problems though. now i realizes hes saying it more to himself then to me.


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## Methusala (Dec 22, 2005)

SleepingBeauty, I too am a lifer. I believe I know just what you mean. I also developed dissociation as a coping mechanism when my personality was supposed to be forming while growing up, and am still working on integration.

I also first understood I had DP in late 2003 after a psychotherapy seminar given by Dr Ross- rossinst.com Before then I had a much less then satisfactory level of awareness that I had some kind of problem and so did the world. That led me to keep looking for answers on and off until I finaly learned about dissociation and trauma in 2003 from that seminar and the book 'stranger in the mirror.' We also share having traumas at birth and assault traumas involving glass. I really relate to your description of how they didn't react to your obvious signs of distress. I believe we will both be able to heal.

I have been in support groups were alcoholics chided me for mentioning flashbacks. I have also been in work places were bpd emotional manipulation was acceptable but amnesia of any kind wasn't. Despite the hurt of this type of thing I think people with dissociation issues can and will continue to move forward with healing, feeling good about themselves and supporting each other.

M


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## sleepingbeauty (Aug 18, 2004)

methusala, yea we sound alot alike. we knew, if not deep down, that something wasnt right. some of my very first, and fondest memories, are dissociative ones. i have this one memory, i think i was 4 or 5 at the time, i was at my aunts house and she lived at the foot of this big cliffside, and it literally looked like a cardboard cut out that was falling on top of me. now i know this is obvious derealization. but for the longest time i thought that either i was a wierdo, or that other people could see the same thing, but didnt want to admit it, or it didnt effect them like it did me. that 'alien' feeling that we tend to get was a prominant theme throughout my life.

and about you mentioning 'amnesia'. i cant recall anyone saying it that way usually its 'repressed memories'. but now that i think if it, i could have a form of amnesia. i have really strange memories. some have been pretty traumatic flash backs, of strange things that make no sense, and i know they werent dreams, because i can remember the physical pain of it. for instance, i remember this one time ( i cant believe im gonna admit this), but i remember once when i was around 4, my dad doing something to the surface of my butt with a needle. i remember the pain and feeling terrified. i figure he was taking out a splinter or something lol, and i dont 'think' it was a sex abuse thing, but the memory is so vague though i know this happened. i did mention it to my dad a few years ago, and he completely blew it off as me making up stories. i just wanted to know what he was doing and why.. did i have a splinter, a pimple? im sure there is a logical explination. my dad did alot of terrible things to me and my mom, but i just know that my dad would never have done anything wierd or sexual to me. everything he did to me was out of frustration that i didnt turn out to be the beauty queen princess star athlete that he always wanted. instead i was this alien freakazoid powderpuff that always had a vacant look on my face.

pablo, sorry for hijacking your thread. i do think your ideas are right on though. dispite my past and my problems, im doing MUCH better and its because i just stopped fighting them and started accepting them as part of who i am. im never going to see a tree or a mountian or a cloud the same way as everyone else, but thats ok. i just see the world in a different way. theres nothing wrong with that.


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## Pablo (Sep 1, 2005)

Jeez sleepingbeauty you have had a tough life, I feel for you, anybody who hits children isnt human in my eyes as for a young child simply being shouted can be traumatizing let alone beaten so if you can come to terms with it you deserve a medal.

I dont agree with widesceened that you necessarilly have to have known 'normal' life as my theory of dp is that it is a defence mechanism against traumatic or sensory overload situations so if you have such experiences very early in life or even at a pre verbal age you will react in the same way as a survival mechanism. I once spoke to a craniosacral therapist who told me that she has treated many people who had birth trauma ie people who were traumatised on the first moment of their life by a complicated birth, so i think it is fair to say that long term traumatic reactions can begin at any age.


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## CECIL (Oct 3, 2004)

Pablo said:


> I have been reading a book about Buddhist healing and an important point mentioned was that wanting to get better or striving to improve your condition no matter what it is can actually be a barrier to improvement. ie to get better you have to give up wanting to get better. Because if you strive to change you cant get complete acceptance of your situation and it is said that if you get deep acceptance that healing comes as a byproduct.
> 
> Anybody get what I am saying?


Yep. Think about what you are saying if you want to get better. "I am sick, there's something wrong with me". A lot of what DP is is searching deperately to find something wrong with yourself that just doesn't exist. "Other people don't like me, I don't fit in, there must be something wrong with ME". There's nothing wrong with you. You are perfect in every way.

However, right now you are creating a difficult experience for yourself that you need to work through. By working to degrade your own stigmas about being "mentally ill" (mental illness doesn't exist) you work towards accepting yourself for who you are. If you accept that, "Yes, I have some issues to deal with" but you don't beat yourself up over it, then you can move to heal. You can begin to actually work on solving those issues instead of obsessing about them.

From what SB has said (btw very powerful story, thanks for sharing  ) and my own personal experience, it seems a lot of psychological issues come from not fitting in. Instead of celebrating everyone's uniqueness our society has learned to punish and torment those that are different and that's where the problem starts. Because from then on its not that everyone is different, it is that YOU are different and you have to find some way of not being yourself. Annihilate your entire being just to try to make a friend and you realise that you've lost everything to gain nothing.

Incredibly interesting.


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## widescreened (Jun 22, 2005)

wow thats heavy sleepingbeauty.didnt realize your backround was so traumatic.i hope you are getting help,professional help as well as help from this site.i hope you dont think i dont believe you.i know for sure you arent making it up.im interested in as many aspects of dp/dr as there are,it helps me and everyone else with a genuine interest in this disorder to better understand it,empathize with different people who feel totally isolated from humanity by it,deal with it,cope with it and eventually get over it/live with it or whatever it takes to eek out a life from it.if you are getting peace from the spiritual side of humanity in whatever guise it manifests itself,the best of luck with your endeavours.as for being a lifer with this condition,im sure it would be easier to live with if you didnt have the childhood history you had.thats where the work is needed i think.


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## Pablo (Sep 1, 2005)

CECIL said:


> Yep. Think about what you are saying if you want to get better. "I am sick, there's something wrong with me". A lot of what DP is is searching deperately to find something wrong with yourself that just doesn't exist. "Other people don't like me, I don't fit in, there must be something wrong with ME". There's nothing wrong with you. You are perfect in every way.
> 
> However, right now you are creating a difficult experience for yourself that you need to work through. By working to degrade your own stigmas about being "mentally ill" (mental illness doesn't exist) you work towards accepting yourself for who you are. If you accept that, "Yes, I have some issues to deal with" but you don't beat yourself up over it, then you can move to heal. You can begin to actually work on solving those issues instead of obsessing about them.
> .


Cheers well put. This realization is almost the whole purpose of Zen and people spend time in a monastery to work at this goal. The senior monks set their students impossible tasks called koans which serve the purpose of highlighting the fact that trying to be something or trying to find enlightenment is a fruitless effort and the real path is to stop and give up all trying and striving.

I know what you mean about not beating yourself up, It took me a long time and effort to start to treat myself in a decent way, i would previosly treat myself in a far worse and critical manner than I would treat anybody else, but after a lot of suffering I realised that if I didn't start to treat myself better nobody else would, as people only treat you in the same way you treat yourself.


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## Rozanne (Feb 24, 2006)

Thanks Pablo, you're an angel.


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