# Faking It



## pigandpepper (Sep 26, 2010)

I've noticed that a lot of people post 'before and after' (dp) pictures of themselves, and the physical difference is astounding in many cases. That never happened for me. I still, for the most part, behave and interact with others in the same way, the difference is just internal. Basically, it feels like instead of allowing my symptoms to manifest physically I fake my way through normalcy. I put on make up in the morning, take impecable care of my skin, go out with friends, act social, and, now that I've transferred, I've even started to make an effort in school again. Internally, however, everything is still a mess. The thing is, there are moments when I think to myself, maybe this is just it. Maybe everything really is as bland as it feels. But I really hope not. 
The problem is, I don't want to let myself go but I feel that the more I keep faking it, the easier it becomes to make people believe that I feel anything, or even register what I'm talking about or what they're saying to me. And I don't want to live the rest of my life faking it. 
Is this just me? 
Now that I'm lucid dreaming (or, rather, having super intense and terrifying lucid nightmares), everything is blurred. It's getting harder and harder to distinguish dreams from reality. Rather than feeling as if the tangible world is the only truth, I've begun to feel as if maybe my dreams are just an alternate plane of reality, especially because when I'm in them they feel just as real, if not more real, than waking hours.


----------



## babybowrain (Aug 24, 2010)

What I want to know is how you fake it so well! I'm serious, write a mini-guide for the rest of us. I look much sadder and creepier with dp. Yes I still put on nice clothes and makeup, but you can see it in my eyes! People have told me.


----------



## TheGame (Feb 1, 2011)

Faking it can take you far by learning what the social accepted norm is. But it wont take you beyond faking it. To progress you must accept who you are in the now. That is a mess...If you wont go through the mess then you cant expect to learn anything from it. And therefore will have lost vital experience that will lead you towards enlightenment. Its every man and womans choice but id strongly suggest you try to be honest with yourself and to try to reconnect with your emotions. After all, who are you really?


----------



## pigandpepper (Sep 26, 2010)

TheGame said:


> Faking it can take you far by learning what the social accepted norm is. But it wont take you beyond faking it. To progress you must accept who you are in the now. That is a mess...If you wont go through the mess then you cant expect to learn anything from it. And therefore will have lost vital experience that will lead you towards enlightenment. Its every man and womans choice but id strongly suggest you try to be honest with yourself and to try to reconnect with your emotions. After all, who are you really?


I totally agree with a lot of what you're saying here. My only problem is that I've gone through the mess and haven't been able to function as a human. I stay home all day and do nothing. I have school 5 days a week and I'm at a musical theatre conservatory, so I have to dance and move around and use my whole body. The best I can do right now to keep it from consuming me is to keep faking and keep pushing along until I can get rid of this. 
And if I could write a guide to faking it, I would, but I honestly have no idea how the hell to go about it as I'm not quite sure how I do it myself. All I know is that I find myself talking and laughing and acting normal, but I have no idea what I've just said, nor do I feel any humour from my laughter as anything beyond a physiological response. It's actually terrible. Maybe it's a bad idea for there to be a guide. I wish I could just put everything on hold and act the way I feel and really take time to focus on recovery but I can't.


----------



## Gypsy85 (Sep 23, 2010)

pigandpepper said:


> Maybe everything really is as bland as it feels. But I really hope not.
> Is this just me?


Gosh... I hope you do not mind if I ask you to feel jumped at and hugged!!!!!!!!























THIS is exactly what I have been struggling with for quite a while now. Each and every word of your statement could have been written by myself, honestly, and it is such a nice feeling that there is someone else who feels exactly the same. For quite a while I thought I was the only one, because most posts are about feelings of unreality, fear of going nuts and the impossibility to function.

I am past that now, I think. I can function fairly well and I am not afraid to go insane anymore. But now, I ask the same questions you ask, each and every day... Maybe life IS this way... maybe it is just difficult, complicated and extremely bland and boring. Maybe you are all right and this is just the way life is. A matter of survival rather than a matter of enjoyment. I can relate to all this. And to me, personally, it is just as bad as the fear of going nuts.

Unfortunately I do not have answers myself yet. The only thing I can say is: Did you ever feel like that before DP kicked in? Ever? I, personally, never judged life to be bland or extremely complicated. I enjoyed every minute and wanted to become 120 years old LOL. Why on earth should this change from one minute to another?

I guess it is not life that has changed, it us just our perception of it. Without strong emotions and connection, life appears bland and boring. We should not believe these terrible thoughts. I know it is hard, but I am sure they are not true


----------



## Gypsy85 (Sep 23, 2010)

I have forgotten something...

Maybe this is really just due to faking it. When I did not get out of bed half of the day I KNEW that this was not normal. I KNEW that most of all the other human beings do not have such problems. But now, that I do everything they do (or almost everything), I start to wonder whether this is just it.

Maybe this could be an explanation?!


----------



## girlie (Apr 1, 2010)

--


----------



## TheGame (Feb 1, 2011)

ive come to find that faking it can be a good way to actually remember how you used to be able to interact with others. and so is a good thing to do but to once in a while face up to your unhappiness is actually going to transmute your unhappiness to peace and calm...faking it is a stressfull fasade to keep up. Authentic living is the only way (at least for me) but as you say, it can be really good to show others that your not dying and that your keeping the good fight going even though youd sometimes just want to fall down on the floor and actually die xD

My advice to you is to conciously be negative and miserable. go into the misery and the misery will have been transmuted. its when we surpress psychological suffering that neurosis and stuff like this happens.

Just a pointer =)


----------



## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

i can really relate to this thread and i'm really glad it's here because i've felt like this for a really long time and it's getting old. except i just call it "autopilot". but "faking it" describes it just as well. i appear to be just fine to everybody else. i even fool myself. and then i'll have one day like months and months later where i break down for an hour and think to myself "how could i betray myself? do i really want to live like this for eternity? no i want to actually LIVE". but then i don't know how to make a change because dp gets in the way and i have to face it if i want to live and be a part of this world. i can't decide which i'd rather do. experience all of life from the background and be okay or be severely broken but maybe get a more sincere version of my life. but anyway, it always goes back to autopilot. it's been my new years resolution since last summer to get off autopilot and i haven't made any changes whatsoever. if anything, i've moved backwards. no one wants to be around a negative person and i get that. people like happy. i like happy. so that's what comes out. it's just, i sat in the bad feelings of dp for a year straight. i dropped out of school and sat with those disgusting feelings. and i have nothing good to show for that year. so i'm back to what is working: autopilot. anyway, i'm glad there's other people out there that feel this way. i thought i was the only one.


----------



## Chlothar (Mar 24, 2011)

> All I know is that I find myself talking and laughing and acting normal, but I have no idea what I've just said, nor do I feel any humour from my laughter as anything beyond a physiological response.





> i appear to be just fine to everybody else. i even fool myself. and then i'll have one day like months and months later where i break down for an hour and think to myself "how could i betray myself? do i really want to live like this for eternity? no i want to actually LIVE". but then i don't know how to make a change because dp gets in the way and i have to face it if i want to live and be a part of this world. i can't decide which i'd rather do. experience all of life from the background and be okay or be severely broken but maybe get a more sincere version of my life. but anyway, it always goes back to autopilot.


I can relate to this thread so much, especially the above posts. I've only had these feelings for a few weeks, which means that I've literally only told one person (my girlfriend) about it. I don't think the rest of my friends would understand, and I don't want their perception of me changing. As far as they're concerned, I want to be exactly the same as I always was. I'm saying and doing everything I normally would have, but I think something is betraying me; people keep asking my girlfriend if I'm ok. I desperately don't want to have to tell them about this, because I don't want them to worry. But on the other hand, I don't want my apparently obvious feelings to scare them off.


----------



## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

umm sorry but why is my post a negative? what i said was seriously honest and it took a lot for me to say that. don't know what i said that was offensive.


----------



## peachy (Feb 9, 2008)

aww thank you anonymous person who did that


----------



## Ivan Hawk (Jan 22, 2010)

I fake a lot of things in life too. Bullshit things that just don't matter - don't ever matter in a real sense. Paying taxes, Respecting absolutely and universally unnecessary Laws that only degrade life and are based off business & government coercion alone - abso-freckin-lutely. Things we do because it's state coercion or powerful (but ignorant) culture that mostly doesn't not take kind to those who are curious of such automated boring practices followed by masses for reasons they have forgotten. It's disgusting and people are moral and generous to revolutionize such methods of treating people as robotic means to exort goods/services from into rational voluntarism of obviously more natural universal preference in life anyways. The desire for people to take care of themselves more than half the time seems pretty obvious, but when external forces coercively reduce that possibility - people begin to feel are bit unnatural.

but there are things I do not have to fake to enjoy and those are the most wonderful parts of all. Particularly when the genuine enjoyment occurs with social interaction and talents. Hold that genuine joy with more things in life and more things pretty much have no choice but to blossom in such a genuine flow where things fall into place effortlessly in things that even require everyone to put forth great effort. The effort just becomes an illusion when you genuinely enjoy the work/play and things fall into place no matter how difficult the activities and ideas generally are in regard to their execution.

money shouldn't be so involved with life in the current way it enslaves most people as a mindless means of production to those with most of it. But those who see these things can step outside of the mess, innovate something, increase prosperity for them-self and those they geniunely love and actually feel the love for most of the time because of natural forces .


----------



## Lostwanderer (Jan 31, 2011)

pigandpepper said:


> I've noticed that a lot of people post 'before and after' (dp) pictures of themselves, and the physical difference is astounding in many cases. That never happened for me. I still, for the most part, behave and interact with others in the same way, the difference is just internal. Basically, it feels like instead of allowing my symptoms to manifest physically I fake my way through normalcy.


I am one of those whose physical difference is astounding. I thought i was the only one who was affected physically by it- when i look in the mirror with dp, it isnt that i dont recognize myself- its that i am even more frieghtened by the look on my face. The look on my face reflects exactly how ifeel- which enforces the DP on me as if it is part of me. 
You are so lucky to be able to hide it, consider it a blessing, because not being able to hide it from people is terrible. I have utterly no power against it, so i can never cover it up or act normal like so many of you can. The worst absolute worst part is when i am around family. The state of my dp is so bad that i fear every interaction with my family in anticipation of DP. 
Thabkfully i was able to get through it by the end of today, and actual feel for my family. I made sure to be the nicest possible to them. I feel guilty for being around them when this shit happens.


----------



## TheGame (Feb 1, 2011)

To above poster.

I just think you need to develop a distance to the DP so that it doesnt effect you as much. And besides you might be in the phase of it where it really does control your everydaylife or affects rather.

Dont despair! i got out of the worst by just WANTING to really really much. and i think so will you!


----------



## QMTversted (May 1, 2011)

OP have stolen my life, and posted it online! - also changed my gender, but thats not important...
I also fake my way through my daily life... Faking it with my friends are easy, I think, it's all about doing the same they do... Its faking it when I'm alone that's difficult... :S


----------

