This post will focus on comparing how I feel and experience the world now versus a few months ago when I first started noticing the effects of severe anxiety, depersonalization, and derealization in my life. Everyone has a unique story and set of circumstances that caused, formed, or exacerbated their symptoms. My circumstances revolved around going through many transitions, worrying about health, dreading failure, and not addressing the loss of my mother and subsequent shift in family dynamic. One thing I do have in common with everyone who suffers though is that I did suffer the pain of feeling detached from my environment and myself, rumination about existence, fear of existence and my environment, and an overall discomfort in being alive. The pain is real and the discomfort is real. Fortunately for us the maladaptive thought patterns and ways to heal are equally real. No one has to live forever in pain and I believe that many of the strategies I have employed have gotten me to the point where I can live fairly normally again. I still feel a bit odd at times, but these occurrences are fewer and the severity less than ever.
When I first started this blog I was deep in the thought patterns and sense of hopelessness of DP/DR and in the months leading up to that point I experienced extreme pain on a day to day basis. I wanted to rush through my day so that I could pass out and not have to experience reality. This was my life with "was" being the operative word. Perhaps no one can understand what it feels like to experience DP/DR unless they have lived with it on a daily basis. More than anything it consumes every thought and action in a person's life. However, I do think that therapy, journal entries, yoga, meditation, seeking out self-help books that had nothing to do with DP/DR, making a conscious effort to stop researching DP/DR, seeing a psychiatrist, and remaining patient all allowed me to return to a more "normal" me and to begin enjoying life. To offer a sense of where I was versus where I am today I will include in this post an entry from my journal dated January 28, 2013:
"Sense of powerlessness/fear about the magnitude of the universe and the world. I became fearful of my mind.body relationship or disconnect. Are people real even when we're not touching them? What makes someone real and alive?"
January 29
"I have a tremendous sense of fear and powerlessness. I feel like everything is real for the first time. The world feels scary and unfamiliar. I feel like I'm not a part of the environment. I feel fearful of the sky and the vastness and feeling of my head not being covered. I am depressed. How do I fix this?"
These feelings do not even occur to me anymore. This person's thoughts and experiences are no longer my reality. If anything still troubles me it is still anxiety, but this is much more manageable now that I am not thinking about the things that bothered me in the posts from January. Healing or recovering from DP/DR is not a clean process in that it does not flow logically or linearly. Much of my progress was made without my even knowing or noticing it. Many times I felt as if nothing was working and that I would not heal. However, at each point in my reflections I can point to growth, improvement, and a general trend of enjoying life more. The world and life are amazing things to experience and I am grateful for the chance to have these obstacles and overcome them because I appreciate the good things in life even more.
No comments:
Post a Comment