DP/DR Casts its Gloomy Shadow

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Depersonalization and Derealization are the terms for a very strange and uncomfortable sensation which is often part of the withdrawal process. DP for short, is when you have the sensation of being a stranger to yourself. For me it’s been a long lasting sense that I’ve lost myself, there is no one here running this ship any more. It also feels like I can’t really connect with anything or anyone in the way that I used to. DR, is similar, in that everything on the outside seems strange and unfamiliar. So when you have both, which I do, its like being thrown into a nightmare where nothing inside or outside feels familiar, safe or predicable.

Some things make this symptom worse, like bright lights, noise, busy environments. The worst for me has been going into grocery stores, trying to buy food and supplies, especially stores with harsh fluorescent lighting, which most of them tend to have.

Its back pretty badly at the moment, so visiting my daughter in her newish apartment last night was particularly difficult. But I’ve been feeling so guilty and ashamed that I haven’t been able to see the place she bought almost a year ago, so at least the guilt has subsided now. I think I’ve got somewhat used to feeling this way though, its no longer terrifying, but still very unpleasant, it ruins any possibility of being able to enjoy myself or have a nice time. I can go through the motions of what needs to happen, but my inner experience is awful. Nothing feels right. Its like looking at everything and everyone through a thick fog. I can’t see details or nuance, can’t appreciate the world like I used to.

I can see, and know intellectually what things mean and understand their commonly accepted values. But there’s a disconnect between my cognitive understanding and my emotions. I know something might look beautiful, but I can’t feel it, like I used to. There’s no accompanying emotion or passion about anything when in the throes of DP. The same goes for DR, I know my body is where it is and I can hear myself talking, making conversation about this or that, but its like I’m on the outside, watching from far away, as a complete stranger lives my life. I can’t connect with myself or my environment, so everything feels very pointless and meaningless. I don’t know why I’m still alive, there no longer seems to be a purpose to my life. Why am I still here? What am I supposed to be doing? I’ve lost my beliefs, and my previous values seem to have revealed themselves to be a bunch of self serving ideals, they still cling to me, frantically trying to patch the remaining remnants of me together, but there are no ultimate truths. I don’t know anything, and I never did, neither does anyone else.

I’ve heard a theory that DP/DR is a protective mechanism, by disconnecting like this, it protects the nervous system from being overwhelmed by too much sensory stress. This feels about right. I’m very easily overwhelmed by everything these days. The slightest increase in sensory stress and DP/DR kicks right back in.

The sad thing is that I remember when I used to be able to feel connected with myself and the world around me. I loved that intense sensitivity I used to have, it made everything about life seem so rich and meaningful. I could immerse myself in all kinds of simple things and get a lot of pleasure from just the sense of being one with whatever it was. I could look at a painting or piece of art for ages, feeling into its essence and connecting with the source of its creation. I used to be able to feel into animals and plants, connecting with their unique life forces….. but no more. I had no idea my experience of life was in any way unique, I thought everyone was like this. But I guess not. Now its all blurry surfaces, weird shadows and faint memories from a past when there was a rich depth to life.

During my windows, the depth and beauty of life becomes available to me again, even more than it was previously, and I handle it just fine. But I guess this….. whatever this is, is a process, with lots of back and forth.

I think perhaps I’m having to learn how to live in the world, keeping my feet firmly on the ground for my own survival, before I will have permanent access again to my deep perceptions and sensitivities.

In the meantime, I’m trying to accept this terribly limited existence. Doing the best I can to keep myself alive and healthy in spite of a lack of pleasure or meaning. I try and appreciate that I’m no longer in the absolute depths of hell daily, like I was a few years ago.

I’m 50 something now, past the half way mark I guess. But my concept of time is much different now. It used to be a finite thing which I moved through. There was a limit to how much of it I had access to, I was always trying to get to the next bit of time rather than live in the current bit of time I was in. This constant forward movement made time seem like a limited resource which one day would run out.

But now, the thought of living another 20 years or so seems like an eternity. Each moment has its own incredible depth now, like as if there is an eternity hidden in each moment, if we just reach for it. Down and down into forever each moment stretches, the deeper you sink, the deeper time goes, it endlessly expands into each single moment.

In some ways, my previous 50 years of unconscious, frenzied, chaotic activity seems completely ridiculous now. Its like, what was I thinking? What was I doing? My life was an unconsciously driven search for something. Partly it was an ongoing quest for relief from a bunch of uncomfortable emotions which varied in their intensity depending on current circumstances. There was the proverbial trying to fill the inner void, which has been like a bleeding wound my whole life. Then there were the episodes of pleasure seeking, but maybe they were just more distractions from discomfort.

There’s no more running and seeking. It stopped. Something in me died quite suddenly one day…. and then I was no longer able to look for answers ‘out there’. I still tried, especially when the suffering became unbearable, but it was like shadow boxing with myself.

The answer is in the question. The reward is in the quest. Or as is commonly heard these days .. be the change you want. Or more accurately ‘I am what I seek’.

My inner void was a lack of myself. The emptiness inside needed to be filled with me. But not a false image created to please others, not a reflection of the outside world, or to fill the wants and needs of other people, no, I needed to find out who I really am, for me, and have it be ok. I’m learning to survive without a reactive inner person. Life is slowly and painfully clearing out years of emotional trauma, inflicted on this body and mind by a mostly selfish, parasitic external world. I was never loved or valued for who I really was, but cruelly warped and hammered into a facade of something which appeared acceptable… almost, but never completely.

Now I’m terrifyingly free and totally unacceptable according to the current cultural standards which surround me. My life is mine, completely, and it probably looks pretty awful from an outside perspective. But now, when I look at the culture which surrounds me and notice what mostly everyone else is doing, it looks like insanity. I often silently mumble to myself “I’m glad I don’t have to do that any more”.  But then I nostalgically miss being able to do all the stuff I no longer seem able to do. I want to go back in time, to when I was able to handle the full onslaught of the world and re-experience life, knowing what I know now. I was never really living, instead I was reacting unconsciously to my environment, surviving, without a clue what I was really doing.  I remember, I know what it’s like to be caught up in all that frenzied activity, but I broke free…. and as frightening as it is to be outside of the matrix now, as insecure as it makes me feel, its still freedom, the only kind of freedom which can really be called freedom. We are not free to leave if we don’t realize we are somewhere, and there’s somewhere else we could be.

Somewhere else does exist, its like the mirror image of somewhere. You can never escape from being somewhere, but it’s possible to be somewhere else at the same time. Like bringing two opposite halves of something together and making it whole. But first you must realize you are only living half a life. If you only live one side of the mirror, you completely miss a whole other reality.

But the transition is hell, or it can be. All the demons and ghosts from the depths of the abyss are released and come screaming to the surface, wreaking there havoc until they have burned themselves out. It’s the way it has to be. Pandora’s box, once opened, can’t be closed. The hounds of hell claw their way out of that box, leap on your soul and devour you alive. Until everything you thought you were is gone. But something remains, but it looks nothing like anything you’ve seen before.

There’s no escaping from it… and no hiding. But for a long time, something still tries to escape, seeking relief in the old way. The patterns of a lifetime take a while to wind down, but now, the old methods don’t work, they make things worse. Life becomes the cruelest teacher you can imagine, the toughest lover you will ever encounter.

There is only life, everything else is an illusion.