I've recovered (it's long-term and complete)

[Guest guest]

Hey, everyone, it's me again. I just thought I'd update everyone on the status

of my

recovery. If you don't remember, I'm the guy who theorized about the link

between social

dominance, SSRIs and PSSD. You can search the list using my user name for links

to these

discussions if you missed them.

It's been more than a year since I started taking the steps that I believe led

to my recovery

from PSSD. In that time I went from having full-blown PSSD of the worst kind, to

being

completely recovered. My symptoms included:

• Total lack of response to visual stimuli

• Inability to achieve an erection without aggressive and constant physical

stimulation

• Orgasms were very difficult to obtain

• Almost complete inability to feel romantic feelings of attraction

• Feeling of disconnectedness from my penis

• Almost complete penile anesthesia much of the time

I can now:

• Get very aroused by visual stimuli.

• I get erections very quickly. It's even been mentioned that I get them

unusually quickly.

It doesn't take much more than 15-20 seconds to get 100%

• I orgasm as easily as I did pre-SSRI

• I can feel romantic feelings again

• The feeling of disconnectedness still crops up once in awhile, but it doesn't

cause any

harm and is getting better and better as the months pass

• I fairly consistently have 100% of the feeling to my penis.

By almost every measure I am cured.

I don't know how applicable my methods are to other people, but I certainly

think it's

worth exploring whether or not they can be of some use. I wrote about them

extensively

in my other two threads, and I encourage you to read through them. I will

summarize

them here. I realize that this approach may seem strange, but it seems to have

worked for

me. It's also not going to be easy. But if recovery was as easy as popping a

pill, we'd all be

cured by now...

The first thing I did was take steps to eliminate my extremely severe anxiety

and

depression. I started this process years before I recovered, and was finally

fully successful

about a year ago. At this point many of you are probably thinking that this

won't be

possible for you. You think that your depression or anxiety are just too strong

and cannot

be dealt with by any method besides medications. Maybe you've been depressed for

years

or maybe you feel that there is something organically wrong with your brain, and

it cannot

be reversed. You might be right. I don't know. But I can say that I had very

debilitating

anxiety and depression possible almost from birth, but I recovered from in

completely. I

can just barely remember a time in my life when I wasn't constantly sick from

anxiety and

in a lethargic, depressed daze. At it's worst I could barely drive because I was

so

depressed that I couldn't will myself to switch my foot from the brake to the

gas pedal at a

stop sign. It was not good.

I'll go over what I did to get over my problems in a minute. But I'm really not

sure they are

applicable to the majority of people. I think the best bet for most is to seek

cognitive-

behavioral therapy. A good therapist can focus on eliminating those maladaptive

behaviors

and thought patterns that perpetuate the cycle of depression or anxiety. It

takes a long

time to recover, but it is statistically at least as effective as medication,

and has a lower

relapse rate. Plus it won't maim your personality or cause lasting side-effects

like drugs

can often can. In my case, I didn't see a therapist, but instead discovered the

root causes

of my anxiety and depression on my own. This was very hard to do, because the

anxiety

and depression would persist for a long time after I removed the causes. They

had become

ingrained in my way of being. One of the factors that helped sustain my poor

mental

health was dehydration. I was so depressed, that I lost my ability to

distinguish specific

human urges from general anxiety. I wouldn't feel thirsty, I would feel anxious.

I wouldn't

feel hungry, I would feel anxious (and somewhat hungry). I wouldn't feel sleepy,

I would

just feel very, very anxious (and groggy, but not truly tired). I think a root

cause of the

anxiety was my poor eating and water drinking habits. When I decided to eat and

drink

water more regularly, the effects weren't immediate. It would take days to feel

a

difference, and it was hard to tell cause and effect. In effect, my

anxiety+depression

button was stuck in the ON position out of habit or momentum. But eventually,

improving

my sleeping, eating and drinking schedule relieved my anxiety a little. I still

had a lot left

over. I think this is because my brain had come to associate almost everything

with

anxiety. Everywhere I had been, both publicly and privately, was associated with

such

painful anxiety, that being anywhere triggered panic reactions. This was the

hardest thing

for me to fix. I had to decondition my brain to react negatively to these

stimuli, but since I

was still having panic reactions to absolutely everything, the reinforcement

continued, and

I was stuck in a very nasty cycle. Intellectually I knew there was nothing

anxiety provoking

about these situations, but my unconscious brain didn't agree.

The trick to beating this was conceptually simple, but hard to implement.

Fortunately there

were times when I was less anxious than at other times. I found running would

relieve my

anxiety somewhat. So I would approach particularly anxiety provoking situations

only

when I was more relaxed than average. The average person would still find the

anxiety felt

in these situations to be agonizingly painful, but since it was an improvement

over what I

was used to, my anxiety began to slowly get extinguished. I would move to a new

baseline

anxiety level and on my good days (or hours, really), I would expose myself to

anxiety

provoking situations, find some success in dealing with them, and further

extinguish my

anxiety. This took years to do fully, but I am now generally almost anxiety

free. I've been

told by several friends that I am one of the most confident people they know. I

should also

mention that dressing better helped improve my confidence. I wish it wasn't so,

but

looking good is certainly a good morale booster.

So that took care of the anxiety. Now what about the depression? That was a

little easier

for me. The anxiety caused a good chunk of the depression. Being wracked by

unbearably

painful anxiety was very depressing, needless to say. I did have some issues

that weren't

related to the anxiety. The change in diet helped a lot. So did sleep and

getting enough

water. Making really great friends helped too. I may be unique here, but the

biggest

trigger for depression in me is laziness. I NEED to accomplish stuff every

single day or my

mood goes down the drain. Accomplishing tasks and setting ambitious goals for

myself

helps me stay depression free. I am now probably one of the happiest people most

people

have met. It is such a joy to be living my life for the first time, without the

disabilities that

dragged me down before. I travel the world, meet wonderful people, climb

mountains and

try new things all the time that would have been impossible to enjoy before I

got better.

But unfortunately for a long time I was doing these things under the burden of

PSSD. I

could finally attract women, but now I was unable to enjoy that fact. In fact, I

was tortured

by it. PSSD SUCKS. You all know what I'm talking about here... Life was still

great, but

obviously I was missing something very important.

So I did my research. I went the drug route. Nothing helped. I lived with PSSD

for years.

At this point, I probably wasn't the coolest person on earth. In the past I

could barely even

talk because the anxiety made me stammer so much. Needless to say, my social

skills

were sub-par. My social skills has been slowly improving over the years of my

recovery

from anxiety, but they weren't great. I had friends, some good, but I was never

the leader

of the group, I never walked in the middle of the pack, I was always on the

outside, not

quite fully an equal...

Then I met a new group of friends. One was neurotic, the other kinda boring and

the other

a huge dork. But we were all interested in the same scientific topics. So we

became friends

and got along well. But unlike my previous relationships, I was the center of

the group. I

brought them together. And since my anxiety was quickly getting better, I was

getting

more and more confident. And BOOM. I was the ALPHA MALE! This was when I first

started

to see some recovery. I had a short lived relationship with a member of the

growing

group, and sexually, I started to regain a little pleasure. Sex was alright, not

impossible or completely unsatisfying. It still wasn't great, but there was some

improvement. It was

almost worth having, but not much better than the joy experienced from eating a

tasty

meal.

Eventually the shit hit the fan with that group. Long story, but it was done.

Shortly after

that I started a new group of friends. I started to hang out with a couple guys

I hung out

with in the past before I moved away. Before they were a bit cooler, a bit more

socially

dominant, but now the tables were turned. I was much more socially adept and

charming

at this point, and I became the center of a new group. Quickly, it became quite

large and

wonderful. I am still great friends with all these people now, and they are

amazing people.

Best of all I felt a sense of belonging...and a sense of power and control. I

was the hub of

the group, and was naturally well respected. Not because I was controlling or

anything,

just because they respected me a lot. The same way I respected the people in the

groups

back when I had my anxiety issues. Shortly after that I met a beautiful girl.

She was the

first attractive girl I was able to date, because my anxiety and depression

didn't make me

very datable before. I did try and hook up with a few before, but the PSSD

stopped me

from being able to get it up, and the numbness made it unworkable. This new

relationship

helped me recover more. She was understanding of my condition, and very

attractive. I

think it was the rise in dominance that I experienced that helped me regain some

of my

ability to get aroused. I could start to feel emotional attachment again. I

started neglecting

my friends a bit because of the new girlfriend, and it wasn't long before things

started to

go downhill again. I wasn't getting my dominance fix. When I threw a party and

started

hanging out with them more, thing got much better again. This may sound weird,

but they

were especially good right when I was hanging out with my friends. My girlfriend

and I

would constantly sneak away to have sex, because this is when I was most

arousable. The

progress of my recovery seemed to correlate directly with my social status and

success. I

moved to a different city for a time, and I regressed. When I came back, I

recovered more,

and now after being back for a few months and being a dominant member of my

group, I

can say that I have fully recovered.

In short, I think that biological feelings of social dominance can help relieve

and reverse

the symptoms of PSSD. I explained the theory for why this might be in a previous

thread.

Basically I think it caused my brain to reverse the " fall-from-dominance-like "

impact that

the abrupt discontinuation of my SSRIs may have had on our brains.

I apologize if my writing is hard to understand, as it is almost 4 in the

morning now, and

I'm very tired. I hope this is of some use to somebody.