Hello and welcome to our first blog post on The Life Clinic website. It's Em here, clinical counsellor & principal owner of this therapy practice. Today I wanted to walk you through my experience with DPDR and how I ultimately recovered.
This is a story of hope, honesty & I'm sharing it with you to share how you can recover too.it's never too late to start your recovery journey and you are never "too far gone" or any other excuse your brain may throw at you when you hope to recover from this condition.
Firstly, I want to tell you that if you're going through this right now, it CAN and it WILL get better. It might take time, it might take learning new habits. it might make you feel uncertain and almost "cracked open" because CHANGE MAKES US VULNERABLE... but once you're on the right track with healing, each day gets better.
You are safe. You are not going "mad". You are just someone experiencing anxious thoughts.
So I'll start at the beginning; I got DPDR "out of the blue" (not really, I was HIGHLY anxious for 10+ years leading up to this, but it felt like it was "out of the blue") when I was around 21. A friend of mine had just passed away, my anxiety was at an ALL TIME HIGH with exam stress/uni stress and I was experiencing untreated panic attacks, poor sleep, poor nutrition etc. One day I felt like I was mostly coping, the next... I felt I was going "nuts" because I was landed with DPDR...
I remember it came on all of a sudden when I woke up one morning, I looked in the mirror and I didn't feel like I quite recognised myself... my bathroom looked the same but also didn't look quite right... I went outside and everything felt like a computer simulation almost... my boyfriends face looked right but also didn't, and my hands, 'oh gosh' my hands felt like they didn't belong to me, and that was it. I broke down crying. I cried on and off for WEEKS straight. I couldn't eat, I couldn't hardly talk to anyone or hardly even shower properly. I'd gone into my first full on depression episode due to this condition I didn't even know the name of. I don't know if I left my bedroom for more than 5 mins in those first few weeks. It was horrible....
But time started to move on, as it does, and I had to get out of that room, so for 2-3 years I lived with chronic DPDR and "kind of" got things done. I quit uni for a while, quit my job which in hindsight, probably wasn't the best thing but also, it did provide a small break from some commitment that I maybe needed. I wouldn't reccomend doing that for very long though as life SHOULD go on as normal when we have DPDR - we just have to walk through it. We need to train our brains through repetition and practice that we are SAFE (but I'll get more into that later).
Through distraction alone and some therapy for anxiety, I mostly recovered for around 6 years... I say mostly because in all honesty, I hadn't FULLY dealt with the DPDR at the root, the THOUGHT level... only lowering the anxiety, so at this point, I still feared anything that brought on any sort of feeling towards DPDR and I was still avoiding things like looking at the night sky or staring at myself in the mirror for very long. I'd say I was 80-90% recovered by distraction & anxiety treatment alone... however...
So I went on about my life, finished my first degree in visual arts & graphic design but my passion was truly lying in mental health. I decided to study psychology which was almost a fit for me, however I got a little bored doing stats and LOVED talk therapy - I said to myself I'd try counselling to just "see" if I preferred it, and low and behold, it was my calling... but...
Then 2020-2021 hit, a pandemic and funnily enough, I was back in FULL ON exams for my counselling course... and guess what came back to visit for 1 whole year- DPDR! This time was almost just as scary as the first. After a 6 year break you forget how utterly terrifying it feels to have this condition and I was back to square one I felt. Thankfully I knew what it was, my support system was better than ever and I absolutely DEDICATED myself to getting to the root cause of the DPDR and treating it as a whole. I recovered in a year, but not only recovered from DPDR I also recovered from ANXIETY. This was the game changer. And today, this is how I know that DPDR will never effect me properly again.
It's been 2 years of free DPDR but not only free from it, I'm now finally thriving in my life and helping many others do the same. I can't give you all the tips on a blog of how to recover from DPDR because of course there's individual circumstance BUT I can give some tips on where to start:
SEEK THERAPY. Find a therapist who truly understands DPDR. I found someone called Shaun O'Connor who helped me immensely as well as our therapist here at The Life Clinic- Andrew Gatus (who's doing his PhD on DPDR itself). These 2 experts gave me the support I needed and now the support I share with others.
STOP RESEARCHING DPDR. There's no magic button to make this go away. You need to change your life, keep busy, eat well, take ZERO drugs & get out into life. That's it. No one on the internet can do that for you but you. Also when we google this condition we read about people who have HORROR stories... but do we know if these people did the right things to heal their DPDR? NO!??? Who knows what they do!? We don't need negativity right now, we need to stick on a good path.
Get your lifestyle in order as I just stated in number 2 but further on that- Exercise daily. Eat well. Take supplements like magnesium, omegas, stress herbs etc if your doctor allows. I'd highly recommend getting a blood test for iron, vitamin d, thyroid & zinc levels too if possible as those blood markers being too low or too high can exasperate DPDR.
Learn about ANXIETY. You might think you don't have anxiety because you've never had a panic attack etc... I can almost promise you do. DPDR is ONLY ANXIOUS THOUGHTS. The best books I can recommend are Dare by Barry McDonaugh & Dr Claire Weekes's books.
Know that DPDR is NORMAL. DPDR is not dangerous. DPDR is only a thought pattern that can be changed by distraction and healthy habits. Know that DPDR can't hurt you, you're not going crazy and it CAN be fixed. I promise.
I hope this blog helps. I'll be making many more of them in the near future so stand by.
I promise, it's going to be ok and you can and will recover.
Em
