Hello long lost friends!!!
So I thought it was way overdue for me to say g'day and give an update on life. Thanks so much for being interested in my journey and for your ongoing encouragement, Im sorry for the delay in posts.
Before I get into it, a big fat shout out to my girl Bec Sara, and her equally beautiful and precious sister Kathy . You girls are gorgeous and an absolute delight to share life with. So finally here is your blog ;)
Phew where do I start. Ok the reason for the delay in time was actually purposeful. It was something I needed to do for my own progress and state of mind. Ok firstly, if you are reading this and have come across it somehow from searching posts on depersonalisation here is what you have been looking for :
There is a cure...
If you google the disorder or ask your doctor they will tell you that it is a coping mechanism that your brain is using to protect you from trauma, and there is...no cure. I have been told this for 4 years. BUT There is so much help out there. Please go to http://www.dpmanual.com/. I dont know the author but his manual will change your life, it is the best 40 bucks you will ever spend. It is a story of recovery and specifically how to re train your brain out of this state. I also came across http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk/. The book on this site actually changed my life. I am not recovered, but believe I am on the track to recovery. Paul, the author took the time to contact me and email me personally about my journey, so much help and such an awesome person. So please, I beg of you, get a hold of this material. It will literally change you from the second you read it. There is hope!!!!
So basically here it is, depersonalisation is, as they say, a defense mechanism that the brain uses in intense trauma. Everyone actually uses this system in trauma, the brain goes numb, out of body, robotic eg if you lose a family member, or suffer a car accident and injuries etc. There are heaps of different triggers and reasons for it. Depersonalistion is something maybe we can all recall having at some point. The disorder takes place when the sufferer at some point focuses on the feelings associated and then develops anxiety around them., the brain learns a pathway of anxiety that actually keeps those sensations present and functioning. Without the constant analysis and worry about the weird feelings, they brain begins to heal and the symptoms lessen and eventually leave. In my case, and in many, I was uneducated and until a month ago, had no idea what my brain was doing or why and I was just making it all worse. I was analysing,worrying, comparing, becoming obsessed with the symptoms of depersonalisaton and all that time it was only continuing to make it stay/ actually get worse! I have been continuing this bad thought habit for 4 years! So I am on a long journey of retraining my brain out of habits that are almost engrained in me now. Hence why I havent been on here aimlessly trying to figure out and wonder what it wrong, I have been trying to distract my mind and not give attention to my symptoms anymore. I urge any readers who suffer, pleeease get the books,it will change you.
So Ive been an quite a rollercoaster lately. But there have been some major adjustments that have taken place in my life and the main being how I view God. After the last blog I wrote, I just fell apart and instead of yelling out to God and wondering why He didnt yell back, I just sat in silence. One night, I just sat. I asked Him to sit with me. I didnt feel Him rock up, He didnt beam himself into my lounge room through a bolt of lightening, but He came and met me, and I didnt even realise it. Instead of questioning Him and expecting Him to jump out infront of me, I asked God to reveal himself to me in His own way even if I didnt understand it. Like I said, Jesus didnt appear infront of me that night, infact nothing physically happened. But the next night I felt like researching my disorder, something I hadnt done for a long time, and I came across the dpmanual, a manual of a recoverer and a step by step guide out of the disorder. The words I had never heard before- you can and will recover! The next tuesday I went to my doctor, and he handed me a piece of paper and said that he had researched the disorder and wanted to give me the info 3 weeks before but didnt feel like I was ready. He had found and printed the first chapter of the exact same book that I had found. At this point I began to realise, maybe God had never forgotten me, I had closed my ears. I expected Him to work a certain way, and in doing so, I had missed what He wanted to do all along. I then went away and while I was away a friend contacted me with a vision they had of me, and it was exactly the same as what the book was telling me my healing would look like. My faith began to build. Then over the next few weeks, quotes, tweets, verses...God was talking to me all the time. Seriously, it was like nothing I had experienced. When I allowed Him to work how He wanted, I found Him everywhere, and it wasnt a feeling. Then the big one, I visited an anxiety recovery site and after visiting, the author contacted me saying that he had found my blog, was a recoverer from depersonalisation , and wanted to give me a free copy of his book! I live by that book now, daily. Not only that, as I said, the author has taken the time to personally email me and answers questions that I struggle with along the way. So my path has been set, and people dont even realise they are answering prayers as they help. I still find on a daily basis that I have a conversation, or see a quote and I just know that Jesus is confirming the path I am on.
Something huge began to happen to me. All my life I had searched for God and felt like He never rocked up.I had asked, begged, pleaded for proof that he is real. Being a Pastors Kid I feel I can say that churched kids from my generation tend to have 2 wrong core beliefs that send us bitter and angry at God;
1) I cant feel God, therefore God isnt real.
2) We dont physically know how to have a relationship with God because our parents have always done it for us.
Ok, to the first one, I was bitter.I sat on that couch and claimed to Jas that I was forgotten, hard done by, abandoned. Jas looked at me and said, babe- you are spoilt. After the initial shock and me saying a few words that I wont repeat ;), I realised he was right. Jas didnt grow up with Jesus. He got saved at 16 and his life completely changed. I never had that moment. I said to him- how do you just know that God is with you if you dont feel Him, how do you trust Him and know him?
Jas's reply will stay with me for life. He said- babe that is like me being completely immersed and under water, and you asking me what it would feel like if you flicked water in my face. Im always in it, regardless of how it feels. It is always with me.
I realised then that my perception was all wrong, and it always has been, all my life. I saw God through my eyes and through my understanding and through what I had been taught, and I had missed Him all along because of my own ignorance,and then blamed HIM for it all. When the whole time he has been screaming at me, and I havent been listening, instead filtering my own wrong perception of God and believing it, creating a life long cycle of rejection and disillusionment. The thing is, so many of my friends who have a similar upbringing feel the same, they know God is real, but cant seem to really find Him for themselves. Its like we have been waiting for something else, some feeling, or event. Our up bringing has meant that our parents are our access to God and that is our relationship to Him, not their fault, but an issues all the same. Why would we need God when he have them? It leaves us with NO answers because we have been ''in the ocean" our whole lives, so we have the need to look for something more. A sign , word, proof, when really, we have all that we need right now, and we are almost immuned to it. I sat on the couch saying- God where are you, show up!
I looked beside me and saw the bible, His word that he fought hard to give us, His spirit that cost Him everything to give us , The cross that bridged any gap and made him accessable all the time. He gave us His word as a manual to daily live our lives with, a step by step guide to life. He gave us His Son so we are free from our screw ups and now He gives us His spirit to be with us all the time, and we do nothing to deserve it. what more do we need? !!! He covered all bases. And I sit there, with all that at my feet and say, excuse me- where are you? I see no evidence of You..
Its the way we view it and percieve it that leaves us needing more or questioning what we have. To Jas, he lived without those things, so when he read the bible and received the spirit, it was life altering. But for us, it just always has been. Those times we feel God are nice and rare and special but not what we should base our belief of God on, or what we base our relationship with him on. This needing a feeling from Him is engrained in us and it is wrong. By looking for that,we are missing the simple truth, we have never lived without God, so we havent experienced that hopelessness that comes with not knowing there is a creator. We are spoilt, well I know atleast I was.
How did I really get to know God? I had to go through hell. I had to be somewhere that only He could save me from, and He did. He is. I was sure he had forgotten me, based on what I knew, and I hated Him for it. I thought He was sick for watching me suffer. I realised I had been the one who was far away, I had closed myself off from the way God wanted to speak, I had told Him how to talk to me, and when He didnt do it my way, I claimed He had failed me.
So heres what I have started doing, I chose to sit down and read the bible regardless of how it makes me feel, even if it feels like im reading nothing, I chose in faith to just set time aside to read it. When I pray it feels completely like Im talking to myself, but I just chose to believe Jesus can hear me. I find that when I do that, an author will contact me, or my doctor will give me the exact same thing I found, its like a path forms and its is undeniably God. He shows me what is next in ways I never expected.
For the pastors kids-churched kid, these could be the 3 most cliche, over used words youve heard: 'relationship with God. ' Its because somewhere along the way, we have percieved that it means that we sit quietly and read the bible, because we have to, and wait for God to speak ,and he never ever does. It has been something that we must do, and must be done a certain way, and a system that has failed us. Somewhere along the line we missed it !! When I break down what a relationship is, I realise how far from it I was. I have all different kinds of relationships, with some people I act like a complete 4 year old, with some I pour my heart out, with others I do both, its an actual relationship with a real person. I think sometime we have an inbuilt belief that God isnt maybe there,we pray and he says nothing. When really, He is the most real relationship we will ever have, He is the best definition of a friend. You can have an actual, real, functioning relationship with your creator, and that gift came at a high cost, the highest cost. It cost God everything to give us that. We search for Him in the only way we know how, and then feel forgotten all because we based it on a feeling, when really, He is more real than ever.
The change started for me with new habits. Get out your bible, don't expect a big pop -up version of Jesus to come out and braide your hair :) , just read it! As if it were me writing you a letter, read it as the truth that it is, in faith. Read it because Jesus said we will find Him there. Dont do what I did for years and close your eyes and point and wonder if God led your finger. Chose a part, believe it as truth, ask Jesus to reveal himself to you in His way. Hold Him to the promises he makes. I promise that you will start to see Him work in ways you never imagined. It is not always a slap in the face, you might find someone texts you an encouragement or you have an out of the ordinary conversation, or someone gives you a book. Just dont tell God how He is supposed to show up. He knows what He is doing. You have everything you need right now to have a beautiful functioning relationship with your creator. He could smite us oh mighty smiter, He could remove Himself from our lives and with it remove hope for all mankind, but he freeeeeely gives it, allllllllllll the time :) I spent a lot of time looking for proof, that I missed Him altogether. It took me until really recently to grasp this as truth and it changed me, when I stopped telling God how to do His job.
Finally after 4 year of complete agony and hopelessess in what felt and can feel like the pit of hell, instead of screaming that He had forgotten me, when I finally layed on the floor in fetal position crying and letting go...He came. Let Jesus show himself to you in ways you dont understand and havent been taught. It will set your spirit free.
Love You Guys. xo
So I thought it was way overdue for me to say g'day and give an update on life. Thanks so much for being interested in my journey and for your ongoing encouragement, Im sorry for the delay in posts.
Before I get into it, a big fat shout out to my girl Bec Sara, and her equally beautiful and precious sister Kathy . You girls are gorgeous and an absolute delight to share life with. So finally here is your blog ;)
Phew where do I start. Ok the reason for the delay in time was actually purposeful. It was something I needed to do for my own progress and state of mind. Ok firstly, if you are reading this and have come across it somehow from searching posts on depersonalisation here is what you have been looking for :
There is a cure...
If you google the disorder or ask your doctor they will tell you that it is a coping mechanism that your brain is using to protect you from trauma, and there is...no cure. I have been told this for 4 years. BUT There is so much help out there. Please go to http://www.dpmanual.com/. I dont know the author but his manual will change your life, it is the best 40 bucks you will ever spend. It is a story of recovery and specifically how to re train your brain out of this state. I also came across http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk/. The book on this site actually changed my life. I am not recovered, but believe I am on the track to recovery. Paul, the author took the time to contact me and email me personally about my journey, so much help and such an awesome person. So please, I beg of you, get a hold of this material. It will literally change you from the second you read it. There is hope!!!!
So basically here it is, depersonalisation is, as they say, a defense mechanism that the brain uses in intense trauma. Everyone actually uses this system in trauma, the brain goes numb, out of body, robotic eg if you lose a family member, or suffer a car accident and injuries etc. There are heaps of different triggers and reasons for it. Depersonalistion is something maybe we can all recall having at some point. The disorder takes place when the sufferer at some point focuses on the feelings associated and then develops anxiety around them., the brain learns a pathway of anxiety that actually keeps those sensations present and functioning. Without the constant analysis and worry about the weird feelings, they brain begins to heal and the symptoms lessen and eventually leave. In my case, and in many, I was uneducated and until a month ago, had no idea what my brain was doing or why and I was just making it all worse. I was analysing,worrying, comparing, becoming obsessed with the symptoms of depersonalisaton and all that time it was only continuing to make it stay/ actually get worse! I have been continuing this bad thought habit for 4 years! So I am on a long journey of retraining my brain out of habits that are almost engrained in me now. Hence why I havent been on here aimlessly trying to figure out and wonder what it wrong, I have been trying to distract my mind and not give attention to my symptoms anymore. I urge any readers who suffer, pleeease get the books,it will change you.
So Ive been an quite a rollercoaster lately. But there have been some major adjustments that have taken place in my life and the main being how I view God. After the last blog I wrote, I just fell apart and instead of yelling out to God and wondering why He didnt yell back, I just sat in silence. One night, I just sat. I asked Him to sit with me. I didnt feel Him rock up, He didnt beam himself into my lounge room through a bolt of lightening, but He came and met me, and I didnt even realise it. Instead of questioning Him and expecting Him to jump out infront of me, I asked God to reveal himself to me in His own way even if I didnt understand it. Like I said, Jesus didnt appear infront of me that night, infact nothing physically happened. But the next night I felt like researching my disorder, something I hadnt done for a long time, and I came across the dpmanual, a manual of a recoverer and a step by step guide out of the disorder. The words I had never heard before- you can and will recover! The next tuesday I went to my doctor, and he handed me a piece of paper and said that he had researched the disorder and wanted to give me the info 3 weeks before but didnt feel like I was ready. He had found and printed the first chapter of the exact same book that I had found. At this point I began to realise, maybe God had never forgotten me, I had closed my ears. I expected Him to work a certain way, and in doing so, I had missed what He wanted to do all along. I then went away and while I was away a friend contacted me with a vision they had of me, and it was exactly the same as what the book was telling me my healing would look like. My faith began to build. Then over the next few weeks, quotes, tweets, verses...God was talking to me all the time. Seriously, it was like nothing I had experienced. When I allowed Him to work how He wanted, I found Him everywhere, and it wasnt a feeling. Then the big one, I visited an anxiety recovery site and after visiting, the author contacted me saying that he had found my blog, was a recoverer from depersonalisation , and wanted to give me a free copy of his book! I live by that book now, daily. Not only that, as I said, the author has taken the time to personally email me and answers questions that I struggle with along the way. So my path has been set, and people dont even realise they are answering prayers as they help. I still find on a daily basis that I have a conversation, or see a quote and I just know that Jesus is confirming the path I am on.
Something huge began to happen to me. All my life I had searched for God and felt like He never rocked up.I had asked, begged, pleaded for proof that he is real. Being a Pastors Kid I feel I can say that churched kids from my generation tend to have 2 wrong core beliefs that send us bitter and angry at God;
1) I cant feel God, therefore God isnt real.
2) We dont physically know how to have a relationship with God because our parents have always done it for us.
Ok, to the first one, I was bitter.I sat on that couch and claimed to Jas that I was forgotten, hard done by, abandoned. Jas looked at me and said, babe- you are spoilt. After the initial shock and me saying a few words that I wont repeat ;), I realised he was right. Jas didnt grow up with Jesus. He got saved at 16 and his life completely changed. I never had that moment. I said to him- how do you just know that God is with you if you dont feel Him, how do you trust Him and know him?
Jas's reply will stay with me for life. He said- babe that is like me being completely immersed and under water, and you asking me what it would feel like if you flicked water in my face. Im always in it, regardless of how it feels. It is always with me.
I realised then that my perception was all wrong, and it always has been, all my life. I saw God through my eyes and through my understanding and through what I had been taught, and I had missed Him all along because of my own ignorance,and then blamed HIM for it all. When the whole time he has been screaming at me, and I havent been listening, instead filtering my own wrong perception of God and believing it, creating a life long cycle of rejection and disillusionment. The thing is, so many of my friends who have a similar upbringing feel the same, they know God is real, but cant seem to really find Him for themselves. Its like we have been waiting for something else, some feeling, or event. Our up bringing has meant that our parents are our access to God and that is our relationship to Him, not their fault, but an issues all the same. Why would we need God when he have them? It leaves us with NO answers because we have been ''in the ocean" our whole lives, so we have the need to look for something more. A sign , word, proof, when really, we have all that we need right now, and we are almost immuned to it. I sat on the couch saying- God where are you, show up!
I looked beside me and saw the bible, His word that he fought hard to give us, His spirit that cost Him everything to give us , The cross that bridged any gap and made him accessable all the time. He gave us His word as a manual to daily live our lives with, a step by step guide to life. He gave us His Son so we are free from our screw ups and now He gives us His spirit to be with us all the time, and we do nothing to deserve it. what more do we need? !!! He covered all bases. And I sit there, with all that at my feet and say, excuse me- where are you? I see no evidence of You..
Its the way we view it and percieve it that leaves us needing more or questioning what we have. To Jas, he lived without those things, so when he read the bible and received the spirit, it was life altering. But for us, it just always has been. Those times we feel God are nice and rare and special but not what we should base our belief of God on, or what we base our relationship with him on. This needing a feeling from Him is engrained in us and it is wrong. By looking for that,we are missing the simple truth, we have never lived without God, so we havent experienced that hopelessness that comes with not knowing there is a creator. We are spoilt, well I know atleast I was.
How did I really get to know God? I had to go through hell. I had to be somewhere that only He could save me from, and He did. He is. I was sure he had forgotten me, based on what I knew, and I hated Him for it. I thought He was sick for watching me suffer. I realised I had been the one who was far away, I had closed myself off from the way God wanted to speak, I had told Him how to talk to me, and when He didnt do it my way, I claimed He had failed me.
So heres what I have started doing, I chose to sit down and read the bible regardless of how it makes me feel, even if it feels like im reading nothing, I chose in faith to just set time aside to read it. When I pray it feels completely like Im talking to myself, but I just chose to believe Jesus can hear me. I find that when I do that, an author will contact me, or my doctor will give me the exact same thing I found, its like a path forms and its is undeniably God. He shows me what is next in ways I never expected.
For the pastors kids-churched kid, these could be the 3 most cliche, over used words youve heard: 'relationship with God. ' Its because somewhere along the way, we have percieved that it means that we sit quietly and read the bible, because we have to, and wait for God to speak ,and he never ever does. It has been something that we must do, and must be done a certain way, and a system that has failed us. Somewhere along the line we missed it !! When I break down what a relationship is, I realise how far from it I was. I have all different kinds of relationships, with some people I act like a complete 4 year old, with some I pour my heart out, with others I do both, its an actual relationship with a real person. I think sometime we have an inbuilt belief that God isnt maybe there,we pray and he says nothing. When really, He is the most real relationship we will ever have, He is the best definition of a friend. You can have an actual, real, functioning relationship with your creator, and that gift came at a high cost, the highest cost. It cost God everything to give us that. We search for Him in the only way we know how, and then feel forgotten all because we based it on a feeling, when really, He is more real than ever.
The change started for me with new habits. Get out your bible, don't expect a big pop -up version of Jesus to come out and braide your hair :) , just read it! As if it were me writing you a letter, read it as the truth that it is, in faith. Read it because Jesus said we will find Him there. Dont do what I did for years and close your eyes and point and wonder if God led your finger. Chose a part, believe it as truth, ask Jesus to reveal himself to you in His way. Hold Him to the promises he makes. I promise that you will start to see Him work in ways you never imagined. It is not always a slap in the face, you might find someone texts you an encouragement or you have an out of the ordinary conversation, or someone gives you a book. Just dont tell God how He is supposed to show up. He knows what He is doing. You have everything you need right now to have a beautiful functioning relationship with your creator. He could smite us oh mighty smiter, He could remove Himself from our lives and with it remove hope for all mankind, but he freeeeeely gives it, allllllllllll the time :) I spent a lot of time looking for proof, that I missed Him altogether. It took me until really recently to grasp this as truth and it changed me, when I stopped telling God how to do His job.
Finally after 4 year of complete agony and hopelessess in what felt and can feel like the pit of hell, instead of screaming that He had forgotten me, when I finally layed on the floor in fetal position crying and letting go...He came. Let Jesus show himself to you in ways you dont understand and havent been taught. It will set your spirit free.
Love You Guys. xo
this is wonderful. Thank you for your encouragement. i needed that. :) love you cuz.
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