Dismissing Fear and Living Normally

        This blog entry will focus on the steps of recovery I have employed as well as the barriers that exist for people to fully enjoy their days and their lives.  One of the things that I have noticed recently is the major obstacle fear plays in feeling better.  Although I have been experiencing the world and my life in a way that is closer to normal I still have points in the day in which I become overwhelmed with reality and my own existence.  Furthermore, there are times when I feel a bit detached from myself and reality and merely exist as a being without autonomy.  However, these feelings have been less acute recently and have occurred less frequently.  Due to my new perspective as a nearly healed person, I believe that fear often exacerbates the feelings of depersonalization and derealization.  When I start to feel my symptoms, I notice how fearful I become of even the simplest things.  I begin to witness a downward spiral of my thoughts that I will never feel good again.  Fortunately, I am now able to recognize the downward spiral and examine the causation of it.  As I stated previously, I believe that fear causes some of the worst parts of the experience.  Fear works for us in many respects.  It is the reason many of us do not engage in risky behavior or do things that have negative consequences for our families and society.  However, just like the symptoms of DP/DR themselves, fear fails to serve us.  There is nothing to benefit from when we become fearful of our symptoms.  No matter how you look at DP/DR, either as an ailment on its own or as a byproduct of anxiety, something has gone awry in the way our mind and body are experiencing life.  It is important to recognize this and respond accordingly.  Perhaps, I cannot control the onset of my symptoms right now, but I can recognize my thoughts about them.  When I recognize these thoughts I now choose to dismiss them and the fear that arises when I have them.  Being in my basement doing the laundry or quiet and lonely moments of the day often make me realize the experience of DP/DR.  When the thoughts come up I just say to myself, "this isn't the way my life is and these thoughts are just the symptoms, not the definition of my life."  I dismiss the thoughts and experience entirely and while this strategy does not immediately eradicate the symptoms it does mitigate the negative feelings associated with them and helps them recede more quickly.
        The other thing I have noticed as I experience the world more normally is a piece of advise I have read from other recovered people.  Many people have said to start living your life as if you do not have DP/DR.  I think this bit of knowledge is not only helpful, but perhaps the crux of many of our problems.  One of my goals when I first started looking at DP/DR as something I wanted to systematically rid from my life was to "get lost in the moment again."  I was thinking about existential concepts too much and focusing my energy on feelings "normal" again.  I obsessed over both of these goals.  However, the irony was that the more effort I put into feeling normal again the more I had to think about it.  While I maintained many parts of my recovery process such as meditation, journal writing, yoga, prayer, and reading other parts have slowly proven to not serve me anymore.  I started using a planner to hold myself accountable for not staying inside and doing nothing all day, but I do not have to do this anymore.  I used to pray for relief, but I have decided to let this prayer go.  I used to write about the feelings of DP/DR, but I have decided to not spend any more time thinking about it than I have to.  As a result, I started to live more normally or at least closer to the normal I had before the onset of my symptoms.  Psychologically, we can in fact "fake it til we make it."  We can trick ourselves into feeling better.  This does not work perfectly, but it does work to an extent.  No matter how bad the pain is, no matter how uncomfortable you feel doing mundane and routine tasks, DP/DR can not end you.  It can not destroy your will to live and it can not completely take over your life.  Consequently, I strongly urge you and others to live as normally as you possibly can.  Control what you can right now.  If you used to go grocery shopping after work, but stopped for fear of social anxiety than try it again.  If you used to read or write or watch TV in your free time try to start it up again.  Nothing will allow you to "get lost in the moment" the way you used to than living normally again.