Noticeable Changes and Unnoticeable Changes

        I can gratefully share that I continue to experience incremental progress in healing from DP/DR.  Every day I find myself fascinated by the depth, scope, and complexities of the experience.  From the beginning of my writing blog posts and journal entries I held the position that more than anything DP/DR is an ailment of perception.  This is not to invalidate the physical manifestations of DP/DR or the very real lived experience of the symptoms.  The pain is real.  The experience is real.  And the feelings are important and real.  However, I believe our time can be more efficiently utilized by focusing on what we can control and the perceptions of our experience.  Every day I experience more clarity and every day I feel more integrated into my life both physically and mentally.  When I first began to feel noticeably better I would do so with reservation.  I would avoid existential thoughts and do everything I could to avoid triggers for my thoughts and feelings that did not serve me.  Now I can entertain some of these existential thoughts without fear and I do not have to be as mindful of my triggers.  Although this bit of information may not be useful from a practical application standpoint, I did want to share this to demonstrate the small steps one must take in recovery and to show people that life does get better and the feelings and experience more manageable.  This improvement has allowed me the space to understand that nothing in my world has changed, in many ways I have not changed, but rather the way I am seeing it all has changed.  I can be fascinated by my mind, my body, the physical world, and the universe without completely devolving into negative thought patterns.  The intrigue remains the same, but the way I feel about it has changed.
        Not to contradict myself or confuse anyone, but I do also want to say that something has changed in my.  When I say this I mean that my recent improvement has been more noticeable.  It has been the DP/DR version of my "A-ha!" moment.  I can point to certain points in time when I can clearly distinguish between DP/DR me and "normal" me.  Something has changed, but in a good way.  If my experience of healing is typical than there is a feeling or a change to look forward to.  We can certainly point to times in our lives when we did not have DP/DR for most or all of the day, but it can be kind of hard to notice the intricacies of the transition from "normal life" to DP/DR.  I am sharing this reflection because I want people to further understand that healing is multifaceted but not necessarily linear.  In short, there are changes that have come which are noticeable and there are some that result from my commitment to the healing process.  Be well and stay hopeful because life is much more enjoyable the more you heal.