Urgency Without Forcing It

        One of the positive outcomes of my experience with DP/DR has been the knowledge I have obtained from self help books.  I actually stopped focusing on DP/DR related self help books and began reading widely into how I could affect numerous aspects of my life.  Once I discovered that DP/DR was not as much a physical problem, but a mental, emotional, and lifestyle issue I began focusing on how I could become what I believe to be a better form of myself.  This isn't to say that making the above stated changes necessarily help with DP/DR, but they do help the overall outlook of one's life.  Many of the changes I made allowed me to work on the problems that contributed to and perpetuate my DP/DR symptoms.
        Perhaps the most difficult part of life for anyone to endure revolves around change.  Experiencing DP/DR was the worst I have ever felt on a day to day basis in my life.  I have had other changes that I certainly disliked, but from the moment that I noticed something different about my experience of life I knew this was a new low for me.  Fortunately, I have been able to reframe the experience in a positive fashion, particularly since I am feeling much better, but I spent quite a bit of time hating the symptoms and the discomfort.  Very few people like change and I would say even fewer like it when it is unexpected on not on their own terms.  Additionally, many of us have a difficult time being self reflective and self critical in a useful way.  Sure many of us have dealt with low points as far as self esteem goes and I'm sure we all have edited a paper or two for school in our lives, but the kind of self analysis I am talking about is the kind that is both deliberate and serves a function in advancing your experience of life.  I am grateful for my DP/DR because it is the first time in my life that I reflected and made changes resulting from the reflections that have bettered me in the long wrong.
        Undoubtedly, experiencing DP/DR results in the person experiencing a great amount of desperation to feel better.  For me this desperation often manifested itself in being willing to do whatever it took to get better, but at other times it resulted in my feeling defeated and overwhelmed.  What was the use of doing all this stuff if I was never going to feel better?  Luckily, the "doing whatever it takes" side won out and has allowed me to make giant steps in the past two months both personally and DP/DR wise.  Another byproduct of this desperation is a desire for the symptoms to subside and never come back.  Yet again this feeling can either serve us or defeat us.
        There is a huge difference between doing things with urgency and forcing an outcome.  An urgent driver remains focused on the road at all times, while one who is forcing it cuts people off and acts dangerously on the road.  An urgent Black Friday shopper gets up early and waits patiently in line to get good deals for Christmas, while the person who is forcing it ends up trampling others to save $10 on a toaster.  The same logic can be applied for DP/DR.  An urgent person experiencing the symptoms patiently and methodically allows her/his treatment plan to work, while the person who is forcing it relentlessly frets over the lack of short term results or relief.  This is not to say that the person who is forcing it does so with faulty intentions.  Quite the opposite is true in fact.  These symptoms are terrible no matter what way you look at it, but our response to them is what makes all the difference.
        I would recommend taking some time to think about how you are handling your symptoms.  Are you forcing it?  Dig a bit deeper and think about your obsession with how bad you feel or how uncomfortable the experience is.  Having read many recovery stories, the one thing that stands out is that time is the ultimate cure if we allow it to be.  It seems that in some ways obsessing over our symptoms serves us.  Otherwise why would we do it?  Unfortunately this obsession can only take us so far and we have to learn how to adapt our thinking patterns to the physical discomfort we experience.  Getting caught up in our symptoms only makes them more real and more powerful.  The symptoms can and do exist independent from the reality that we experience and certainly from the reality that people who don't experience DP/DR live in every day.  So I encourage you to think about how you are being urgent and how you may be forcing your recovery a little too much.
        None of us were born as a finished product.  We crawled before we could walk.  We babbled before we could read.  And now we are experiencing DP/DR for a reason too.  Destiny and fate talk aside, there is some reason that this experience has come our way.  For me, DP/DR has allowed me to find coping tips for the things that bother me in life and it has allowed me to actually feel rather than going through each day emotionally unawake.  You can allow this experience to define you or you can take control and use DP/DR as your crawling emotionally and spiritually before you can walk in happiness and peace.
        Accept your symptoms because they are a very real part of your life and the lives of many others, but also realize that you can control your response to them.  Once you start working with urgency rather than force, I believe that relief will come shortly after.