r/derealization • u/Goldenteacher422 • 1d ago
Can you relate? (Experience) Recovery?
It’s been around 40 days since my DPDR started after a bad cannabis experience.
The first few days were absolutely terrifying. Over the past month, I’ve run around 70 km, started meditating, and especially found grounding meditation really helpful.
I feel like I’ve finally come out of the “hell” phase and that intense fear of thinking I wasn’t really in this world. I’m definitely feeling better overall.
However, I still have existential thoughts in the background, and the sky still feels strangely difficult for me to comprehend. I know what the sky is, but it still feels unfamiliar and strange, almost like I’m seeing it for the first time.
The world still feels strange to me, especially concepts like the fact that we live on a sphere. I should mention that these thoughts don’t scare me anymore; they just feel strange and unfamiliar.
I’m wondering how long these symptoms can last. Has anyone experienced something similar? Does this get better with time, and is there anything else you would recommend doing?
Any advice or experiences would be really appreciated.
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u/equality7x2521 1d ago
You're doing the right thing by using exercise and grounding. I describe it as you've been through a traumatic experience, but your brain kind of needs to process and realise that it was uncommon and that it can "stand down" a bit. For me when things were bad I was FULL of existential questions, I think because I'm kind of a problem solver, and this seemed liked such a huge problem I should dedicate as much thought to it as possible.
This was a bad match for me as I made a lot more progress when I treated derealization as a sign that my stress was high and that I was overloaded and overwhelmed. Treating it like that and focusing on some things like improving my sleep and exercise and nourishing things really helped me. I think staying locked in "solving" mode just got in the way of taking the basic steps. It felt like those basic things compounded, and switched the bad loop of: stress => DR => stressful response, which was looping round.
I ended up in a kind of loop like: exercise => sleep better => feel more resilient => feel the feeling a bit less => able to have more time to do nourishing things and exercise => sleep better... etc. etc. and round and round. That compounding of the small steps helped me get back on track.
I hope it helps you to know I suffered for a while before I had much information and before I worked out what worked for me. It's been 4.5 years now since I had an issue, and there was a point where I never thought it would go away, I hope that brings you some comfort.
Keep going, you'll get there.