# 'Shaking OUT' of dissociation/healing...



## poopsickle2 (Aug 4, 2008)

coming out of the dissociation/depersonalization, anyone ever had a 'discharge' happen to them physically, like suddenly feeling your heartbeat, when it was just numb, then having spasming muscles and twitching and shaking and crying and having all you're memories come back, and finally recognize your body as your own?

i want to talk about this with anyone that's been through it.


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## Marie1988 (Sep 15, 2008)

i have yes. when i finally felt that feeling in your tummy when you are laughing, before then i would make the sound that i was laughing, but i couldnt feel it in my tummy. when i did i felt like crying at how amazing it was. for me i can come out of depersonilzation then one day, wake up with it again. cruel that is.


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## poopsickle2 (Aug 4, 2008)

that's beautiful. it's great that you felt that. i think im getting there.

can i ask what brought on your dp?


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## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

marie, i understand what you are saying. i've had short little breaks in between the dp that are just perfect. they make you want to happy cry over everything! but yes, how cruel it is to wake up in the same body that felt all those things and feel completely dead again. however i'm very grateful for those moments i do get. when i hear that most of you never get to feel this 10 minute intermission from dp, it's hard for me to understand how you go on. you are freakin warriors is what.


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## Jelly_Boo (Oct 14, 2008)

I have that, too. Sometimes this other thing also happens, where I'll just be doing some normal activity, then suddenly I sort of 'wake up' .. You know when you wake up from sleeping, and sometimes sort of gasp for air? Well that happens. It's really strange, because I don't make myself do it it just happens occasionally.


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## Rein (Apr 29, 2008)

jealous


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## patrickcolleton (Nov 1, 2007)

It's really cool you ask about coming out of it because that's what I was looking to talk about. I'm 24, and I've had DP/PTSD, or some variation thereof, since I was 4 or so. About a year ago, my life began to stabilize for the first time ever. I started taking Wellbutrin which both made my ADHD more manageable and reduced the familiar despair and depression such that I started handing in schoolwork and showing up on time to my job. For the first time ever, my stress level began dropping and has continued to. I also began practicing Anapanasati (breath) meditation. This practice simply prescribes focusing on ones breathing and when thoughts or feelings enter the mind, without resisting them, one redirects his or her attention back to the breathing. However, as I tried to focus, I noticed very negative thought patterns and large amounts of stress and tension in my body. I realized I had been holding my head in such a way that made it hard to breathe, that I held my abdomen in tightly, that I had difficulty swallowing, the muscles of my rib cage were tense and restricted breathing, the trapezius muscles of my shoulders were constantly tense. I also began to notice that I had a habit of holding my breath a lot of the time. Before I began meditating, I was totally unaware of this discomfort. Even as I slept, this tension did not release. This past year, I have tried to unlearn these bad habits and release the tension I carry, however, the habits are so long established that without focusing, all of the tension tends to return. Not only did I find a strong correlation between my strong anxiety and depression and the tension, but that the anxiety and depression is the tension. My breathing is restricted, which keeps my anxiety level high. The depression is exhaustion from the pain of the tension and anxiety.

Several months ago, I was driving home with a friend late at night, after a good day spent with friends. I was particularly relaxed and contented. I felt a warmth on the back of my head, which intensified. Suddenly, my vision went out of focus and became blurry. A moment later, it cleared up, but something was different. Things looked as they had when I was a little boy. There was some lost visual aspect to objects that had returned. A moment later, I understood what it was. I was seeing a 3d image in which the images of my right and left eye were totally integrated. Normally, I see two images, not phased as if I were cross-eyed, but right on top of each other. It makes reading and tracking moving objects at a distance difficult, even though I have 20/20 vision A half hour later or so, when I arrived home, the warmth and pressure had expanded, but never became uncomfortable. I sat on my couch and the room became totally... silent. A ringing and pressure in my ears that has been there as long as I can remember faded entirely over the course of a minute. I now heard as I remember hearing as a little boy. A tingling suffused throughout my skin. Soon after, my sense of touch was much more acute, as it had been when I was a child. Right on top of that, my balance which is normally poor, became much better. It occurred to me that I had not remembered my childhood incorrectly.

However, I became frightened. As I said before, this state, which is probably just proper brain function, is as different from the way I experience the world normally as waking is from a dream. The feeling of unreality that had continued uninterrupted for 20 years began to fade. My mind was so much clearer than at any time previous. I could remember a song I had heard that day almost word for word. I could recall images with much greater clarity. It was the sensation of waking up after being asleep for a long time in an unfamiliar place not knowing how I got there. It was so overwhelming that it verged on a panic attack. I put my head underneath my pillow and wished it to go away. I woke up the next morning, my senses having returned to their normal inhibited state. That hour felt like entering the gates of heaven.

Since that night, I have not been able to recreate the conditions of that night. I have felt that warmth on the back of my head occasionally. My depth perception is occasionally better, but I have not been able to relax as much as I had that night. I now understand why I have had so many problems in life, why focusing is difficult, why I am depressed, why relationships are so hard to maintain. I am afflicted with some illness, which is environmental in nature and curable. I have tried looking up similar experiences online, but have not found any outside of that one new agey book. It has a large number of physical symptoms, which the army of caseworkers and psychologists that have attended me since I was young had never detected. Since there are so many physical manifestations, it surprises me that I seem relatively normal, troubled, but otherwise normal. When I wore braces, my orthodontist wanted to correct an overbite I had, though he never got around to it by the time I got the braces off. Since I have learned to hold my head in a more natural, tension free way that allows me to breathe and swallow easily, the neutral position of my jaw lines my teeth up properly; I never had an overbite. I never had ADD or hereditary depression.

I think people understand DP as a psychological phenomenon. While I think it certainly starts that way, I have found that it has a larger physical component. I find there is a very subtle, but pervasive pattern of muscular tension all throughout my body that restricts breathing and bloodflow. Hyperventilating, which happens during a panic attack among other things, makes a person dizzy and numb by changing the Ph of the blood through an imbalance of O2 and CO2. My (very nonexpert) guess is that I have a habit of subtly hyperventilating all the time. This habit is so unconscious and so long established that I have a lot of difficulty just changing it. The result is that my experience of the world is constantly inhibited. Often, when I consciously relax this muscle or that, my DP will fade slightly; sometimes a lot, but never to the point where it goes away entirely like a year ago. My ability to intentionally make my environment feel more real has gotten steadily better. It feels as if I am locked in a room inside my head with a combination lock on the door. I found the combination a year ago, and the door opened. Since then, I keep being able to find part of the combination and it's just a matter of finding the rest of it.


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