# 5 minutes



## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

This evening I felt reality for 5 minutes. It came out of nowhere and it was really..........real. It wasn't that all of my symptoms went away and I felt cured. It was more like my brain woke up for 5 minutes and instead of everything feeling unreal and dreamy and not solid, everything was solid and real again. I'm not going to lie that it was a little hard to handle. I just tried to breathe my way through it and tell myself just to not feel overwhelmed and freak out but to accept it and enjoy it while it was there. And it was there and then it went. It's so different. Just so completely different. I used to be used to reality and then dp came and I was freaked the heck out and wanted it to go away. Then, after a while, dp became normal and now, when reality shows back up, it feels uncomfortable and weird. I don't really know how to explain it more than to say that life with dp feels more like an idea or a suggestion than actual concrete fact. Everything flows along in a dream state. Even though we deal with the same issues, behind this veil, they are like dreams. Kind of out of reach of really completely absorbing. Then when reality comes back, man, everything is suddenly solid. I'm a person and life and death and responsibility are all concrete. There is no dreamy ability to pretend those things are mere suggestions. So it was overwhelming but, still, just different and just as I got used to being dp, I am determined to get used to being real.

**edit**
Wow. I just looked and saw that I already posted about this earlier and had no memory of posting that post. Scary.


----------



## christy (Dec 19, 2010)

ustabetinyfairypeople said:


> This evening I felt reality for 5 minutes. It came out of nowhere and it was really..........real. It wasn't that all of my symptoms went away and I felt cured. It was more like my brain woke up for 5 minutes and instead of everything feeling unreal and dreamy and not solid, everything was solid and real again. I'm not going to lie that it was a little hard to handle. I just tried to breathe my way through it and tell myself just to not feel overwhelmed and freak out but to accept it and enjoy it while it was there. And it was there and then it went. It's so different. Just so completely different. I used to be used to reality and then dp came and I was freaked the heck out and wanted it to go away. Then, after a while, dp became normal and now, when reality shows back up, it feels uncomfortable and weird. I don't really know how to explain it more than to say that life with dp feels more like an idea or a suggestion than actual concrete fact. Everything flows along in a dream state. Even though we deal with the same issues, behind this veil, they are like dreams. Kind of out of reach of really completely absorbing. Then when reality comes back, man, everything is suddenly solid. I'm a person and life and death and responsibility are all concrete. There is no dreamy ability to pretend those things are mere suggestions. So it was overwhelming but, still, just different and just as I got used to being dp, I am determined to get used to being real.


I know you said it came out of nowhere... but did anything unusual at all happen before these 5 minutes?

Just really curious..







I would love to know anything random that might alleviate the symptoms, even slightly.


----------



## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

christy said:


> I know you said it came out of nowhere... but did anything unusual at all happen before these 5 minutes?
> 
> Just really curious..
> 
> ...


No, nothing out of the ordinary at all. It just came out of nowhere.


----------



## York (Feb 26, 2008)

I've had a couple of episodes (seconds really) of "reality", and I feel exactly the same as you! Scary how similar we label our experiences, and sort of exiting. It means it really does happen, DP is real, it has a distinct set of symptoms. 
It's comforting in a way.

Anyway, I felt the same way, I recall feeling like DP is sort of like a "concept" even though I can't recall what I meant by that..
Something I created, a dream on top of reality almost. It's pretend, that becomes very clear. And reality is so very solid like you said. I too try and comfort myself and just go with the flow.. I want reality back, but when it happens it's like I lose some sort of control, like I hold my DP-reality together with OCD DP-thoughts, and when reality hits I'm just free falling. I can't explain it.

And you are not alone in not remembering what you've done, I think that is very common when you're freaked out 24/7.


----------



## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

york said:


> I've had a couple of episodes (seconds really) of "reality", and I feel exactly the same as you! Scary how similar we label our experiences, and sort of exiting. It means it really does happen, DP is real, it has a distinct set of symptoms.
> It's comforting in a way.
> 
> Anyway, I felt the same way, I recall feeling like DP is sort of like a "concept" even though I can't recall what I meant by that..
> ...


Yeah I know what you mean. I think in retrospect, dp may have become a very good coping mechanism for me. I mean, when you can take something hard that you're going through and will it to just feel unreal and without impact and consequences, that's a very powerful tool. When reality comes back, there is no ability to keep things from accessing you and impacting you. I mean, it really is the difference between making something feel real and making something feel unreal. If you can make something feel unreal, suddenly it's just like a plot in a movie. It's just a story, it never happened, it can't hurt you, it's made up. There are people who can exist in reality and use dissociation to distance themselves from what they are going through. They can control it and snap in and out of it at will. We just don't have the ability to do that but I think that I've realized that, for me on a very deep level that I honestly was not even aware of until last night, that dp has become my ability to take my phobias and fears and all of the pain from my marriage, my divorce, the abuse, and simply make it feel like it didn't really happen. It's just a plot to some book written by someone else. It's fake, it's make believe and it doesn't have anything to do with me. So when reality came back for 5 minutes last night and suddenly all of that was actually real and in my face, I was scared. To realize that is incredibly profound.


----------



## dpsince2002 (Oct 26, 2008)

I'm happy for you that reality came back, and can definitely relate to the scariness of it. In the few, super-brief periods of my dp going away in the 8 years since it started, it's felt okay, but there's this mix of horror and comfort when it starts back in again; funny to have both of those at once, but living with it for this long has made it normal, even though it never feels right or normal, on some basic level. There are a lot of things in my life today that I have this terror of losing, of not being able to handle, if I lose dp, and I think that terror makes doing the things that seem to be helping a little bit, like exercise and staying occupied, tougher to do. I find myself not doing them, and wonder why, but that might be a why.

I've had some good experiences in the last week or so with the feeling of unreality thinning down, like I can start to apprehend individual objects in my environment, there's the tv, there's the couch, etc., and it is a wonderful thing, no matter how my mind frames it. My current therapist talks about dp as a defensive mechanism, especially when it comes to relationships, which makes sense, especially since mine started after a breakup. I guess the key for me, if that's the case, is to keep on developing tools that I can substitute for dp. Scary, too


----------



## Brando2600 (Apr 22, 2010)

Sounds like a good sign, utbtfp.


----------



## Mushishi (May 31, 2010)

Psh, Reality is the new Santa Clause. And I don't believe in it anymore.


----------

