# Mindfulness or Depersonalization?



## flyfeather (May 15, 2013)

I am Brian from Canada.

Let me quote a passage from "What the Buddha Taught":



> Then there is a way of practicing mental development('meditation') with regard to all our sensations or feelings, whether happy, unhappy or neutral. Let us take only one example. You experience an unhappy, sorrowful sensation. In this state your mind is cloudy, hazy, not clear, it is depressed. In some cases, you do not even see clearly why you have that unhappy feeling. First of all, you should learn not to be unhappy about your unhappy feeling, not to be worried about your worries. But try to see clearly why there is a sensation or a feeling of unhappiness, or worry, or sorrow. Try to examine how it arises, its cause, how it disappears, its cessation. Try to examine it as if you are observing it from outside, without any subjective reaction, as a scientist observes some object. Here, too, you should not look at it as 'my feeling' or 'my sensation' subjectively, but only look at it as 'a feeling' or 'a sensation' objectively. You should forget again the false idea of 'I'. When you see its nature, how it arises and disappears, your mind grows dispassionate towards that sensation, and becomes detached and free. It is the same with regard to all sensations or feelings.


In the past year or so, I have been feeling like I am watching myself like a third person. My emotions, thoughts and actions somehow feel unreal and irrelevant any more. It is not a pleasant feeling my friend. I know it is different from normal self awareness but don't know how to describe it. I don't normally feel love, hate, anger, sadness, worries, joy any more. All normal feelings feels unreal and I can't get engaged in anything. Everyday I live in a fear that I may get crazy.


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## Haumea (Jul 11, 2009)

See, Buddha's talking about something slightly different.

The difference is this: Buddha's talking about *the mind's attitude* towards the emotions one is experiencing.

*It's ok to feel sad, to feel happy*, *angry*, etc., but worrying about *having the feelings* - in other words being attached to the idea that one shouldn't have this emotion, being worried that one has this emotion - is spiritually unhealthy.

Depersonalization is something different. Depersonalized people frequently *do not feel normal emotions*.



> I don't normally feel love, hate, anger, sadness, worries, joy any more.


Ahem. 

Instead they go all or nothing: either they detach from emotion or have intense emotions, like passive aggressive anger or anxiety.

But they do not flow with their emotions like an emotionally healthy person.

This has been the hardest thing for me to understand until recently, when I began having "normal" emotions.

Because I was so left-hemisphere oriented (probably partly due to my dysfunctional upbringing), I really couldn't have "normal" emotions - and suffered greatly for it.

This is what DP people should keep in mind - you cannot compensate for not having normal emotions with your mental processes or intense emotions. You just can't. That's the problem at the core of DP.


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## wise (Mar 29, 2012)

Haumea I agree with your points. Emotions need an outlet in order to be processed and to be mentally healthy and if they don't get processed in real time, then that's what therapy is for.


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## quail (May 18, 2013)

Buddha wanted a life without hatred and anger. He found that fetish and adhesion make negative feelings, and he let go of those. 
I read some of the book of original Buddhism, he gradually seems like a depersonalization.


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## Guest (May 19, 2013)

quail said:


> Buddha wanted a life without hatred and anger. He found that fetish and adhesion make negative feelings, and he let go of those.
> I read some of the book of original Buddhism, he gradually seems like a depersonalization.


I don´t think Buddha is a depersonalised, no-no. Rather the opposite *lol*.


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## Haumea (Jul 11, 2009)

Depersonalization is as far from enlightenment as you can get.

People who become depersonalized tend to suffer serious dissatisfaction issues - perfectionism, etc. because they have a core sense of inadequacy/shame/low self-esteem/whatever you wanna call it. They are not content - they are the opposite of content. They are not at peace - they're as far away from being at peace as possible.

So it's one of those "superficially sounds like it, but fundamentally as far from it as you can get."


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## flyfeather (May 15, 2013)

Haumea said:


> Depersonalization is as far from enlightenment as you can get.
> 
> People who become depersonalized tend to suffer serious dissatisfaction issues - perfectionism, etc. because they have a core sense of inadequacy/shame/low self-esteem/whatever you wanna call it. They are not content - they are the opposite of content. They are not at peace - they're as far away from being at peace as possible.
> 
> So it's one of those "superficially sounds like it, but fundamentally as far from it as you can get."


Hello Haumea,

Do you have any suggestions on finding inner peace?

Brian


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## Haumea (Jul 11, 2009)

> Hello Haumea,
> 
> Do you have any suggestions on finding inner peace?
> 
> Brian


Hi Brian,

See my post "How to overcome depersonalization."

The first step is to overcome that core sense of inadequacy by doing. You also want to practice controlling your negative thoughts and bad feelings. It's ok if they come into your head but not ok if they stay there. You focus on something else, like an activity, a goal, or even something sensory. This is when you want to emulate people with ADD. You want to practice "good ADD", in other words shift your attention to something else when you get caught up in bad mental or emotional states.

If this sounds hard, just remember that we here in the West are generally not taught these various spiritual techniques and so may be unfamiliar with them, or think they can't possibly work. But they become easier with repetition like any other skill we want to acquire. People in the West frequently want magic bullets to Nirvana, but the first step in finding inner peace is realizing you are not powerless.


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