# Anyone that has recovered.. what have you found as proof that other people ARE real?



## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

This is what I'm struggling with... even though ALL evidence supports the fact that everyone IS real (and I should just go with Occam's Razor) I just can't shake this.

If anyone could provide things that other people said to them, or things that other people did that made them feel more real to you, please share.


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## NEEDMOREBLAZE (Apr 8, 2013)

How long have you been DP'ed??? What really worked for me in the early stages was shifting my focus to certain tasks/exercises.....like gardening, exercising, and mind games/puzzles like word search and crossword puzzles. The unreal feeling will fade away if you allow yourself to accept it and not fear it, you may even feel insane at times but you ARE NOT going insane. It also helped me to visit old friends and places that i grew up with and around. Your mind needs to unravel out of the fear/worry cycle that is currently stuck in....once the fear is gone the DP will continue to get weaker and weaker, your memories of it will cause it to reappear at times but if you learn not to fear any of it your mind will attach itself back to this reality and you will literally feel like you have woken up from a dream. It's a long road/path but you are not alone and your brain is perfectly healthy it is simply utilizing its natural coping mechanism to take away the fear/stress/worry cycle.


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Loza782 said:


> Have you read wittenstein argument against it?! The theory suggests that language and words pre exist; we think in language! Language is used for communication with others; this is a social thing. The theory suggests that a conciousness and mind exist! How do we know these are real?! The theory is not logical!


'The theory is not logical' you said,you dont believe it...because that kinda helped ,me


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

yeah I've definitely stepped away from the solipsism theory... now I'm just struggling with the idea that my head keeps telling me "there's no way anyone else is real" ... basically just because there's no way to prove that everyone IS real, or to disprove that everyone isn't.

I guess my head absolutely NOT being able to walk away from the worry that this isn't real... is the definition of derealization. But how do you ever just let that thought go??


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

miabella you really helped me, but you still stuck ,reminds me of myself n pure o....solipsism is a common human thought because its false, its equivalent to imaging cold water will be hot which it wont when you put your hands in cold water...you can fantisize about being alone, but its not true,like you can have a fantasy of flying or raining money


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

I mean, sure it's ridiculous to say that one of us is the only one here, but wouldn't it be just as ridiculous to think a billion of us exist individually? since there is no disproving either one?


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

I mean, I guess it's kind of impossible to answer any of these question while you in a state of DP/DR... because the reason it's so hard to accept that reality is real is because my mind is making it REALLY seem like its not.


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

It's not that I'm obsessing that *I* created it... its more like I feel like I'm a character in someone's game or something. Like I'm real and aware, I didn't create this world and what's in it.... someone else did, but everyone around me is just mechanical/programmed. not real.


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

yeah I have no idea. lol.


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Mia i let my mind go there too, i feel like i could be stuck in a game that is advance but i dont know it, kinda like gta,yu see how the pedestrans seem real just to make your protagonist seem real,sometimes ifeel like, but in a real advance game...like no one can see,hear, or feel,they just going on by special sensors like gta or sims,a simulation.....i hate those thoughts which stem from solipsism


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

those worries are SO hard to live with... especially the idea that you can't prove anything. But that's why this forum helps me. If it were all a game, why would there be so many people asking the same questions and feeling the same way about all of this -- terrified?


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

I agree, why would i be aware of me being in a game...i hope i didnt give you this fucked up idea in my previous question on your other post..i just want to be rooted in reality again...if you never look up solipsim yu would nver let these thoughts cross your mind...just an anxious imagination that is fueled by fear


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

haha actually, I thought up the whole idea of Solipsism in my head before ever reading about it. I wonder if that makes me as 'smart' as some of these philosophers 

Honestly though, why can't we all just settle down and go with the flow and think to ourselves "we're all here, the billions of us that there are, asking the same questions. none of us know the answers, but we are all just as real as the next person." why can't I just settle on that?!


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

HAHA seriously. I agree, very crappy. That helps SO much. I feel like I need some 'slaps in the face' like that every once in a while... where people are just like "I AM real, why would you think I'm not?!"


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

agree,though vanilla skyy made question my reality, solipsism was the ultimate kick in my ass, i want to kill the person 4 comingup with that idea.. check this guy out


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

anyone else notice how bad situations (like slipping and falling, realizing you forgot to pay a bill, etc.) spring you back in to reality for a short time?


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

its funny how the mind works,i remember playing the sims n a sim saying 'have yu ever felt like someone was controlling you' n that give birth to my new irrational fears lol


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

mia yes,a close tragic situation brought me back to reality shortly


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

I guess really we should all just laugh at ourselves then. Because Solipsism cannot be so, and the whole brain in a vat/real-life sims game thing is crap too.... because we're all here questioning it and fretting about it. So then, I guess, the only thing that keeps us hooked on the irrational thoughts of those things being possible is that we FEEL like everything is unreal, so we are just ASSUMING that everything is actually unreal, when it's not... because all evidence goes against that.

I think at this point, I just need to distract myself. None of those scenarios are even logical/possible.


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

That's called emotional reasoning, I guess. Explains why healthy minds are able to just know this stuff... because they aren't letting emotions mess with logic.


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

I almost feel like the missing piece to recovering is being able to talk to people who understand this face to face!! that would really help solidify (for me at least) that all of us are real, and that we are all working through this together.


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

it helps!!! hahaha I'm sitting at a desk at work... 5 minutes after 5pm (17:05) on a friday... what am I still doing here!!! I'm real too!

Thanks for that :0)


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

miabella said:


> I almost feel like the missing piece to recovering is being able to talk to people who understand this face to face!! that would really help solidify (for me at least) that all of us are real, and that we are all working through this together.






 here is a video of a person from this forum that talks about these thoughts,hell be close enough


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## zhqhqn (Aug 15, 2005)

miabella!

you were looking for an answer from someone who has recovered. well have a look at my join date. I joined this forum about 8 years ago, and got better, with a couple of bumps along the road for sure, and almost never looked back! (there's a serious shortage of people who got better on these boards, but I am certain that most of the people who joined at the same time as I did got better and never came back, which is why)

let me first indirectly address the question of solipsism, and consciousness and the bizarre, amazing incredible fact that we all exist and experience the world. YES it is completely crazy, it's totally beyond understanding and belief, and when you're DPed, it's one of a terrifying milieu of existential thoughts we get, instead of say, a wonderful, spiritually enlightening thing like it 'ought' to be, (say if you had had the thought at the height of a great acid trip or profound meditation instead of an awful one like life seems to be when you have DP/DR)

but I didn't get better by finding an answer to my obsessions! I still don't have any proof that other minds exist, I still cannot describe the essential being and experiencing that I am, and all the fruitless thinking got me nowhere nearer to the meaning of life. I simply don't care anymore, and neither will you. The questions still make sense, but the obsession and the fear that go along with them no longer does.

let's suppose there's an answer out there to the problem of other minds, and I never found it out, and I never will. I think the fact that millenia of philosophers didn't either is enough proof of that. even so, there's other questions out there, like what's the size or age of the universe, or how many planets are out there. since my getting DP, and recovering, the answer to those questions, which are studied and measured by astronomers and are of fundamental importance to life, the universe and everything, have changed several times because of new discoveries, and it hasn't made a damn bit of difference to my life!

so I offer no proof. a multitude of minds is just another miracle like every other aspect of human life. maybe your worst fear about reality is true (although I can tell you, from where I am sitting, it definitely isn't). but you will never know, and when you get better, you won't know as well, but I promise you, you won't care. The question will lose all meaning (it will still make sense, but it won't matter ).

and maybe even if you don't get better, you will still be able to live with these questions

Quote

I mean, I guess it's kind of impossible to answer any of these question while you in a state of DP/DR... because the reason it's so hard to accept that reality is real is because my mind is making it REALLY seem like its not.

this times a million. it is your state of consciousness, brought about by anxiety, DP, and obsession, that made this question worth posing in the first place.

hope this helps


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Vice Chancellor Selig said:


> The funny thing about solipsism is the face that I know I am real disproves it for you. But not for me.


The bby you holding in your hand, you know the precious child is real?


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Vice Chancellor Selig said:


> I cannot technically prove it, but what does it matter? We could spend our whole life obsessing over whether others are real or not. I used to think about it and stopped caring because I can't prove or disprove the theory. I don't believe in it though, as I am pretty sure that post you just typed was from you, and you are real right?


I'M real of course, but it doesn't worry wondering if people really see you? but not figment? those 1% possibility sucks,getting dress just for nothing idk lol


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## Hosscat (Oct 23, 2012)

You cant be sure about anything though. Your heart COULD stop beating any time, you cant prove it wont happen, but since you aren't really afraid of it right now,(not caring) you are not thinking about it, thus not 'living with it'. You have to allow the uncertainty to be there, get used to it. When the fear is gone your true feelings will come out on the subject even if you cant be certain.


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## Midnight (Jul 16, 2011)

I really don´t know what to say except is that you in your avatar??



miabella said:


> haha actually, I thought up the whole idea of Solipsism in my head before ever reading about it. I wonder if that makes me as 'smart' as some of these philosophers
> 
> Honestly though, why can't we all just settle down and go with the flow and think to ourselves "we're all here, the billions of us that there are, asking the same questions. none of us know the answers, but we are all just as real as the next person." why can't I just settle on that?!


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## miabella (Jun 19, 2013)

yes. it is.


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## Midnight (Jul 16, 2011)

miabella said:


> yes. it is.


Superb


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## ezra (Jun 24, 2013)

I know it really scary that nothing in the world is certain. For me what worked was thinking, " Ok every thing might not be real but it was a good delusion until i started thinking this way." It will also get better if you say to your self," this is just a symptom and it will get better." Your mind only believes what you tell it.


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## = n (Nov 17, 2004)

Apart from all the practical stuff that people have already mentioned there are a few other things that make solipsism seem quite preposterous. Even through science you can't prove something, but you can disprove something or make it seem extremely unlikely. I wouldnt suggest that anyone with DP read Heidegger, but he is a philosopher who makes solipsism seem a very questionable idea. To put it simply, in terms of embodiment:

Whilst you sit there doubting the existence of others or the outside world you are sitting on a chair which you sat on in a particular (unquestioned) habitual way after opening a door and walking into the room in a particular way, and you question reality using words you learned from others and even a way of talking that you recieved largely from others. Whatever you are, you are it to a great extent through others and in dialogue with others; you have no privileged position from which to doubt other things, since everything exists socially and through a shared understanding which you did not create on your own or independently (this is similar to Wittgenstein's private language argument).

You rely implictly on all these things in a generally unconsidered way in order to question the reality of the outside world or other minds. In other words the very terms and context of your question undermine the meaning of it. If others are not real then on what basis are you or your question real? Since your question uses the shared language and understanding of the world at large and takes place in a world that you continually and habitually take for granted in your everyday actions, people and the world have existed and do exist for you already through your asking of the question.

What is being real or existing for you if it is not that on the basis of which and in terms of which, you yourself exist?

In a sentence: your question is already a proof that others exist.


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## MIndfAEL (Mar 13, 2012)

treat it like any other irrational fear don't feed it and let it die off. by wanting proof u are further feeding the fear. accept it for what it is-anxiety


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Loza782 said:


> Erza - how long did you have it for/ does it still bother you?? I know its all real but my mind is telling me otherwise....


what movie set yours off?


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## Guest (Jun 26, 2013)

zhqhqn said:


> miabella!
> 
> you were looking for an answer from someone who has recovered. well have a look at my join date. I joined this forum about 8 years ago, and got better, with a couple of bumps along the road for sure, and almost never looked back! (there's a serious shortage of people who got better on these boards, but I am certain that most of the people who joined at the same time as I did got better and never came back, which is why)
> 
> ...


If you listen to this guy, you can stop torturing yourselves. He's totally right. It's how I recovered too. Thanks for posting this!


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Loza782 said:


> I watched vanilla sky when I was 19 which set it off as well as watching king of thrones; where there was a part where it showed the life of the living dead and everything was not real! wish I never had seen it!!


vanilla sky set me off when i was 16 too, but not immediately, i loved the movie at first, but got obsessed with it and it numerous times until i thought what if that can be true, what if the movie can be a clue to get me out this dream world, i thought that thought was silly, but got anxious over it, so i feel something wasnt right since i got anxious over it, i got over it,came back, then got over it.. but reading up on solipsism really did me in, i got over it sometimes, but it came back when seeing the movie "inception" in commercials, so many thoughts ran into my head,solipsism thoughts became more intense, start questioning everything to the tee.. never been this low in my life


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## Hosscat (Oct 23, 2012)

I hate having to wait to get help.... I cant take feeling like my family is gone much longer... I want my family back


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Loza782 said:


> I know everything is real but the anxiety is fuelling everything.... when you look at it though, why would we develop everything like evolution, natural selection, all the sciences and then make up a theory saying actually all that's wrong as its your imagination, it doesn't make sense, if everything is there to fool us; why would we develop a theory to then disprove the perceived reality?!!
> 
> I know how you feel but people have got better so im trying to keep with that....
> 
> if we are both feeling absolute crap then I assume we are both real!!


you right, but sometimes i think people like you could be saying that to be fighting for your existence like vanilla sky movie, like that shrink at the end on the roof. its confusing, i was reading the post from a guy with the user name "mentally_" and my god his story is so similar to minds, he post his shit in 2007, and i wish to know how he is doing, makes me sad not knowing where he is..


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## Hosscat (Oct 23, 2012)

I talked to someone who talked with him. He's still around. And seeing how bad he was I can only assume he got better some how. Just remember, he did a lot of stuff to just make himself worse (drugs, isolation etc)


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## OvercomeTheAnxietyDP/DR (May 8, 2013)

Hosscat said:


> I talked to someone who talked with him. He's still around. And seeing how bad he was I can only assume he got better some how. Just remember, he did a lot of stuff to just make himself worse (drugs, isolation etc)


you do, where is he? his new user name? his story was pretty hilarious and sad at the same time, i want to know mommore about him


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