# Protective Mechanism



## Guest (Jul 4, 2010)

I am convinced that DP is a Protective Mechanism that is stuck on protect mode. I'm without doubt that we are constantly in the 'Fight-or-Flight' state of mind. And I'm also believing that all symptoms stem from this one source.

I think it's like as if you had your eyes stuck cross eyed. You'd look at your hand and say "I feel like I have two right hands, I feel like I have two left hands." This is the same equivalent as looking at your hands and thinking they don't look real, while DP. I'm also of the mind that we aren't REALLY dissociated, it just only feels like that.

I mean have you seen the lady talk about her "Stroke of Insight"? She said she FELT like she was ONE with the entire universe. It's because she had a stroke and one of her brain hemispheres was shut down (I forget which side it was). She eventually recovered...so she wasn't ACTUALLY one with everything, it only felt that way.

What we have to do is take manual control over the Protective Mechanism and override or reset it. Then all the symptoms will vanish in thin air. I am working on this now.

Here's "The Stroke of Insight" lady at TED talks: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

Understanding DP as a Protective Mechanism leads one to Forgive the Good Intentioned State of Mind and move towards Acceptance of this condition. Which is a major step in Recovery. Some people need to work through past trauma as well, before moving on to LIFE!


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## insaticiable (Feb 23, 2010)

ThoughtOnFire said:


> What we have to do is take manual control over the Protective Mechanism and override or reset it. Then all the symptoms will vanish in thin air. I am working on this now.


And how do you presume we do this? I am curious.


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## hoot (Jun 17, 2010)

ThoughtOnFire said:


> I mean have you seen the lady talk about her "Stroke of Insight"? She said she FELT like she was ONE with the entire universe. It's because she had a stroke and one of her brain hemispheres was shut down (I forget which side it was). She eventually recovered...so she wasn't ACTUALLY one with everything, it only felt that way.


What if we are one with the entire universe, but our brain make us feel separate for practical survival purposes? I think that's more likely. Ever heard of quantum entanglement?

As for the protective mechanism thing, could be. But I would refrain from generalizing, and there may still be different reasons as to why this protective mechanism is switched on, that may vary from individual to individual, thus there could be different cures for different people. Whatever helps is great, though.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2010)

insaticiable said:


> And how do you presume we do this? I am curious.


Right now I am reclaiming my thought process. If it works for me I'll go into more detail. If not, well if not then I'm just being a fool thinking I'll recover, again.


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2010)

I realize the protective mechanism here is like my hands turning into fists. It's like my mind is a hand that has balled up into a fist. The method I'm using is coaxing the mind to let it's grasp go. I do this by recognizing that my thoughts are being balled up, and that's why it seemed that my mind was blank all the time. Reality has been coming back in waves...and my sense perceptions (hearing/seeing/etc) are starting to naturally fall into place. I'm even starting to feel like I'm not only in, but AM, my body again. I'm not 100% cured but I do feel a vast improvement here. I'm starting to think that feeling reality is, and has been all along, a relative experience.


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## hoot (Jun 17, 2010)

ThoughtOnFire said:


> I realize the protective mechanism here is like my hands turning into fists. It's like my mind is a hand that has balled up into a fist. The method I'm using is coaxing the mind to let it's grasp go. I do this by recognizing that my thoughts are being balled up, and that's why it seemed that my mind was blank all the time. Reality has been coming back in waves...and my sense perceptions (hearing/seeing/etc) are starting to naturally fall into place. I'm even starting to feel like I'm not only in, but AM, my body again. I'm not 100% cured but I do feel a vast improvement here. I'm starting to think that feeling reality is, and has been all along, a relative experience.


That's awesome! Could you explain a bit more what you've been doing? Glad to hear you're improving.


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## Tommygunz (Sep 7, 2009)

i love your views david, and i agree whole heartedly. in fact i would go as far to say that you are entirely right as to what the problem is. of course we can always argue the cause for the problem. the one thing that i might differ on is the approach in stopping the fight or flight process. while your approach is worth while and definitely will get results. i think you might be internalizing a bit to much. one thing i have leaned through my recovery is that the taking the bull by the horns approach pretty much backfires. or in another sense, basically getting to involved with overcoming DP, ultimately keeps you too involved with DP all together. something that i don't really advocate to others as a legitimate approach towards recovery, yet was still crucial to me making a full recovery was resuming my party life. while physiologcally it disagreed with everything i knew. psychologically it unlocked the social side of me. in the last month of my recovery i was going out to the bars and having a blast a couple times a week. while i would have thought this to be extremely detrimental to my overall mental health. it actually allowed me to sorta find the old me and made that side of me more prominent, primarily because the more i was out having a good time, the less i was thinking about/feeling DP. once again, i'm not saying that everyone should go out and drink there DP away. it's more like the less time you spend having anything to do with DP period, the less you will have DP. rather than atively coaxing your mind to relax, forget that it's tense and it will start to relax itself.


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## match_stick_1 (Jun 9, 2010)

Yep thats what my psycologist told me coz mine had to do with some trauma that lasted for a while and i learned to dissociate from myself and anything that was cauing me anxiety so well that i went into it permanently. Its like a wy over protective parent


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2010)

Tommygunz said:


> i love your views david, and i agree whole heartedly. in fact i would go as far to say that you are entirely right as to what the problem is. of course we can always argue the cause for the problem. the one thing that i might differ on is the approach in stopping the fight or flight process. while your approach is worth while and definitely will get results. i think you might be internalizing a bit to much. one thing i have leaned through my recovery is that the taking the bull by the horns approach pretty much backfires. or in another sense, basically getting to involved with overcoming DP, ultimately keeps you too involved with DP all together. something that i don't really advocate to others as a legitimate approach towards recovery, yet was still crucial to me making a full recovery was resuming my party life. while physiologcally it disagreed with everything i knew. psychologically it unlocked the social side of me. in the last month of my recovery i was going out to the bars and having a blast a couple times a week. while i would have thought this to be extremely detrimental to my overall mental health. it actually allowed me to sorta find the old me and made that side of me more prominent, primarily because the more i was out having a good time, the less i was thinking about/feeling DP. once again, i'm not saying that everyone should go out and drink there DP away. it's more like the less time you spend having anything to do with DP period, the less you will have DP. rather than atively coaxing your mind to relax, forget that it's tense and it will start to relax itself.


Thanks for the awesome reply Tommy. And yes I totally understand what you said here. I find myself sitting on the couch looking at the wall, obsessing over this. And my mom comes by and asks what I'm thinking about and so I tell her. And she says the same thing you said here. I'm internalizing it all and that's not healthy. This is why I'm going to just embrace the advice to just "LIVE". I can take any more of this obsession over DP, or curing DP. Because I can see that it's just a major road block in mental health. Like what do I do when I recover? I'll be too afraid to let go of the constant monitoring to move on decently. One thing this experience has taught me is to not be afraid of DP. It's after all pretty simple. Let go and Let live. Peace & Love.


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2010)

hoot said:


> That's awesome! Could you explain a bit more what you've been doing? Glad to hear you're improving.


I just woke up.. so I will come back to this to explain a bit further when my brain is working right.


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## Guest (Jul 10, 2010)

hoot said:


> That's awesome! Could you explain a bit more what you've been doing? Glad to hear you're improving.


Hi,

So basically I changed my understanding of what DP is. I concur that it is a protective mechanism. So I watched inside my mind to see how this was apparently manifesting. I have had a blank mind for 7 years of DP. And I always thought my thought process was broken or something. But I realized that the blankness is what I was thinking. It's like a fist that has tightened up. And as soon as I recognize that my thought process is tightening up it starts to release some. And that's when other symptoms seem to drop away. It's like if you were crossed eyed and you look at your hand. You have two hands! You don't really have two hands, so when the cross eyes goes away that symptom goes away. DP is the same it's like your thoughts are cross eyed and all these other symptoms come in. I hope this describes this a little more.


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## Zee Deveel (Aug 3, 2009)

insaticiable said:


> And how do you presume we do this? I am curious.


A military coup.

We travel the agricultural regions of our country and rally the villagers into a militia, we'll then take them off to secret training camps in the hills where they will be trained by ex-CIA mercenaries to infiltrate and take manual control of our DP.


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## Tommygunz (Sep 7, 2009)

Zee Deveel said:


> A military coup.
> 
> We travel the agricultural regions of our country and rally the villagers into a militia, we'll then take them off to secret training camps in the hills where they will be trained by ex-CIA mercenaries to infiltrate and take manual control of our DP.


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## ValleyGirl (Nov 10, 2017)

Tommygunz said:


> i love your views david, and i agree whole heartedly. in fact i would go as far to say that you are entirely right as to what the problem is. of course we can always argue the cause for the problem. the one thing that i might differ on is the approach in stopping the fight or flight process. while your approach is worth while and definitely will get results. i think you might be internalizing a bit to much. one thing i have leaned through my recovery is that the taking the bull by the horns approach pretty much backfires. or in another sense, basically getting to involved with overcoming DP, ultimately keeps you too involved with DP all together. something that i don't really advocate to others as a legitimate approach towards recovery, yet was still crucial to me making a full recovery was resuming my party life. while physiologcally it disagreed with everything i knew. psychologically it unlocked the social side of me. in the last month of my recovery i was going out to the bars and having a blast a couple times a week. while i would have thought this to be extremely detrimental to my overall mental health. it actually allowed me to sorta find the old me and made that side of me more prominent, primarily because the more i was out having a good time, the less i was thinking about/feeling DP. once again, i'm not saying that everyone should go out and drink there DP away. it's more like the less time you spend having anything to do with DP period, the less you will have DP. rather than atively coaxing your mind to relax, forget that it's tense and it will start to relax itself.


EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY EXACTLY!!! You know what? About a month ago something just clicked in my brain. I was in the bath, working myself into a panic over something, some dp sensation or something, and I just suddenly realized that there was no point. I could have my panic attack, feel like I was going to drop dead, maybe even pass out but when it is all over, the dp is still going to be there. I'm going to wake up tomorrow with it and there isn't crap I can do about it. For some reason, I finally just got that it's time to accept it and move the heck on. Honestly, now I think about dp maybe twice a day. They are fleeting thoughts. If I feel anxious, I just remind myself that the panic attack isn't going to get me anywhere and I don't panic. The biggest key for me is socializing too. I am so wrapped up in what is going on around me that I don't have time to get wrapped up in my own head.


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