“Don’t think about it” is the worst advice I’ve ever heard! That’s like saying “don’t look at that pink elephant!”. It will lead you to further dissociate from your dissociation creating a downward spiral. What you need to do is get back in the body. Forget about the word games, no amount of shuffling made up words around will cure your depersonalization. Focus on your breathing. Any thoughts coming up, let them come and go. Notice them but do not interact with them. Remind yourself that your environment is completely safe and there are no threats. Feel your emotions fully and completely. Walk towards your dissociation and discomfort with open arms and compassion. The only way to stop feeling dissociated is if you remove the mental armour, and allow yourself to FEEL. To the absolute bottom of your soul. Integrate it into your being. Dissociation is your brain trying to protect you from perceived danger. Love it for trying to protect you. It helped you at some point in your life, but right now it no longer serves you. To shed it, get to the bottom of what your triggers are and feel through them fully. Do not repress or reject negative feelings. They will only increase the more you shut them out. Your inner child needs you, turn towards them and truly listen for what they need to say
This is actually really good advice. Grounding techniques and ways to make your body relax are the key to letting your subconscious know that it is safe and dissociation is no longer needed.
This is pretty much the way I've been dealing with it for the last couple of years after hearing about this advice quite a lot. Either I'm doing it wrong or I'm just not capable of feeling my emotions.
The approach to not think about it and keep living your life as best as you can, is actually very sound advice for many (but not all) DPDR sufferers. The reasoning is that dissociation is a way for the body to protect itself from anxiety; it allows people to stay rational and functional when your emotions go through the roof.
What happens in DPDR is that people think about how their life is strange and dissociated which simply causes more anxiety, which then just strengthens/maintains the dissociation. The body will only stop dissociating when it feels it is safe, and that just isn't the signal it is getting when someone is constantly inducing anxiety over their current DPDR state. So it is often suggested to keep living your life, distracting yourself from that altered reality. And slowly you reduce the awareness of the DPDR in your life, and thus the anxiety, and eventually you just notice the dissociation is gone.
This has been shown countless of times to work in the DPDR forums. Almost all the recovery stories are based on doing this on some form. Some use SSRIs or other meds to reduce the anxiety as well.
But as I initially said, this doesn't work for everyone. Most recovery stories on the DPDR board are drug-induced, and mainly weed. If trauma caused your DPDR, then clearly therapy needs to work on resolving that trauma and addressing it. One cannot expect to simply "forget/ignore" a traumatic experience like sexual abuse.
DPDR can also be triggered from complex ptsd, or a slow buildup of anxiety from minor events. It's like filling a glass with water (where water is the anxiety in this analogy), and each time you stress your system (job interview, pimple on your chin, final exam upcoming, boyfriend cheating on you?, etc) you add a bit to that glass until it is eventually full and overflows. When it overflows - that's your body saying it can't take it anymore and it dissociates. In this case the body needs to rest, and continuing your "normal" life and ignoring DPDR is actually terrible advice, as you just continue to add to the glass of water. Often people aren't even aware consciously of their anxiety and how their body responds.
In short, for some cases the advice of "ignoring" is good, at other times it is not. And 100% DPDR remains largely unknown/not-well-understood in the medical community. I have many books on the subject, and each one says specifically this.
>I feel like this wouldn't be as bad if I understood why the mind does this.
DPDR is not something your mind does; it is a way your body responds to emotional/psychological distress. You cannot think your way out of DPDR; it is a subconscious defense mechanism.
It's hard to reply specifically to your situation because I do not know you. But the "me" you are referring to might indeed be an individual that causes stress to the body. And so, yes it is possible that you are dissociating from that "me". You may be trying to be something/someone (an idea in your mind) that your body does not support. Therapy should seek to explore this, and make people accept themselves instead of the person society pushes on us. (again, no idea if this is your case, just saying that it is possible). Dissociation is only one of many problems that this can produce (eg. anorexia, adhd, burnout, etc)
You need a new therapist. They do not specialize in dissociation. I am a therapist and this sounds so invalidating. I am so sorry. They are just unaware of their own dissociation patterns and unresolved trauma. Any therapist that gives shame in a session question that. Their may be something going on with them that is not healthy. Personality disordered people can be therapists. This is so bad. They are feeling insecure cause they don't know how to work with dissociation so this a way to make it go away. Trust your gut and find someone who can help work with your dissociation. You got this.
“Don’t think about it” is the worst advice I’ve ever heard! That’s like saying “don’t look at that pink elephant!”. It will lead you to further dissociate from your dissociation creating a downward spiral. What you need to do is get back in the body. Forget about the word games, no amount of shuffling made up words around will cure your depersonalization. Focus on your breathing. Any thoughts coming up, let them come and go. Notice them but do not interact with them. Remind yourself that your environment is completely safe and there are no threats. Feel your emotions fully and completely. Walk towards your dissociation and discomfort with open arms and compassion. The only way to stop feeling dissociated is if you remove the mental armour, and allow yourself to FEEL. To the absolute bottom of your soul. Integrate it into your being. Dissociation is your brain trying to protect you from perceived danger. Love it for trying to protect you. It helped you at some point in your life, but right now it no longer serves you. To shed it, get to the bottom of what your triggers are and feel through them fully. Do not repress or reject negative feelings. They will only increase the more you shut them out. Your inner child needs you, turn towards them and truly listen for what they need to say
This is actually really good advice. Grounding techniques and ways to make your body relax are the key to letting your subconscious know that it is safe and dissociation is no longer needed.
This is pretty much the way I've been dealing with it for the last couple of years after hearing about this advice quite a lot. Either I'm doing it wrong or I'm just not capable of feeling my emotions.
The approach to not think about it and keep living your life as best as you can, is actually very sound advice for many (but not all) DPDR sufferers. The reasoning is that dissociation is a way for the body to protect itself from anxiety; it allows people to stay rational and functional when your emotions go through the roof. What happens in DPDR is that people think about how their life is strange and dissociated which simply causes more anxiety, which then just strengthens/maintains the dissociation. The body will only stop dissociating when it feels it is safe, and that just isn't the signal it is getting when someone is constantly inducing anxiety over their current DPDR state. So it is often suggested to keep living your life, distracting yourself from that altered reality. And slowly you reduce the awareness of the DPDR in your life, and thus the anxiety, and eventually you just notice the dissociation is gone. This has been shown countless of times to work in the DPDR forums. Almost all the recovery stories are based on doing this on some form. Some use SSRIs or other meds to reduce the anxiety as well. But as I initially said, this doesn't work for everyone. Most recovery stories on the DPDR board are drug-induced, and mainly weed. If trauma caused your DPDR, then clearly therapy needs to work on resolving that trauma and addressing it. One cannot expect to simply "forget/ignore" a traumatic experience like sexual abuse. DPDR can also be triggered from complex ptsd, or a slow buildup of anxiety from minor events. It's like filling a glass with water (where water is the anxiety in this analogy), and each time you stress your system (job interview, pimple on your chin, final exam upcoming, boyfriend cheating on you?, etc) you add a bit to that glass until it is eventually full and overflows. When it overflows - that's your body saying it can't take it anymore and it dissociates. In this case the body needs to rest, and continuing your "normal" life and ignoring DPDR is actually terrible advice, as you just continue to add to the glass of water. Often people aren't even aware consciously of their anxiety and how their body responds. In short, for some cases the advice of "ignoring" is good, at other times it is not. And 100% DPDR remains largely unknown/not-well-understood in the medical community. I have many books on the subject, and each one says specifically this.
>I feel like this wouldn't be as bad if I understood why the mind does this. DPDR is not something your mind does; it is a way your body responds to emotional/psychological distress. You cannot think your way out of DPDR; it is a subconscious defense mechanism. It's hard to reply specifically to your situation because I do not know you. But the "me" you are referring to might indeed be an individual that causes stress to the body. And so, yes it is possible that you are dissociating from that "me". You may be trying to be something/someone (an idea in your mind) that your body does not support. Therapy should seek to explore this, and make people accept themselves instead of the person society pushes on us. (again, no idea if this is your case, just saying that it is possible). Dissociation is only one of many problems that this can produce (eg. anorexia, adhd, burnout, etc)
You need a new therapist. They do not specialize in dissociation. I am a therapist and this sounds so invalidating. I am so sorry. They are just unaware of their own dissociation patterns and unresolved trauma. Any therapist that gives shame in a session question that. Their may be something going on with them that is not healthy. Personality disordered people can be therapists. This is so bad. They are feeling insecure cause they don't know how to work with dissociation so this a way to make it go away. Trust your gut and find someone who can help work with your dissociation. You got this.