[yesemina]

So, I don't get nervous/anxious lately until I start thinking about and retracing what happened when I got my DP experience from meditation, with panic heavily involved.

Basically I think partly what it is that I got afraid of (besides the anxiety itself), is how big the mind is. I get freaked out because I feel there is no firm ground of knowledge for me to stand on - I am so unsure of everything that nothing really makes sense and it's like I can't fully involve myself in an explanation of anything.

My very existence baffles me, as does the existence of everything. It always has I guess, just not to this degree until now. Once I get into this mode I feel truly weird, like that I will start going insane, because I just don't understand anything, and I'm so confused because there are so many different states of being and I can't make sense of any of it. It's like everything is just thrown up in the air and I can't put it together right. Meditation really made it like this I think because I experienced another state of being and then IDENTIFIED with it. Now I feel I pretty much understand it - I'm pretty sure the problem is that my mind easily retraces back to the insane terror I felt right after the whole thing happened and I had my first panic attack, then anything I feel is associated with it freaks me out. I remember just feeling like I was lost in my mind and that it was bigger than me. Like through the meditation, I had altered my consciousness purposely and then got lost along the way.

At this time, things bug me that normally wouldn't - like being alone too much, going out into nature alone like I used to love doing, people talking about spirituality, then I get the confused and anxious feeling and feel I'm going insane. I guess it's harder too because I feel it's always in my nature to find deep meaning in everything I do, and easy to withdraw into my mind - so I am always looking to find a clearer, happier, more peaceful, and wise way to be, and more importantly, think.

Also once I get into this mode is when I frequent these boards and I can't stop thinking about the entire thing. Then I am nervous almost 24/7, which I just HATE.

Has anyone experienced this, understand it, or whatever? I guess I just need re-affirmation. For a few days I'm fine and I just leave things as is, but then I can easily get sucked back into thinking about it, and it's almost like my mind wants me to do that.

 

[Sojourner]

Yes, I can identify with what you say, because there is a benign side to this experience that has a long history and has been written about a great deal throughout the ages.

I had the bad kind during panic attacks.

If you can address the issue that is triggering the panic, you can stop the DP. I'm one of those nutcases who thinks DP is just a subset of panic, not your garden-variety "anxiety."

I think most people here are going to say they know EXACTLY what you mean. By the way, you express this perception very beautifully.

Basically, it is benign -- it's "the human condition" seen for exactly what it is. What makes it threatening to us is the issue that is causing the panic.

Have you ever experienced the benign form of this phenomenon? The expansive and joyous identity with all of creation and the vastness and unknowability of our own being?

There is a benign, even holy, side to this, so don't eschew the whole experience -- just try to discover consciously what is bothering your unconscious mind. That -- whatever it is -- is what is causing the panic.

It could even be a physical cause; in my case, it was the Zoloft. Trial and error is the only way to figure out what the cause is. If it's not something physical, get into therapy. You sound like you'd be a good candidate for psychoanalytic therapy, not CBT.

You have excellent rapport with your own feelings and talking with a sympathetic therapist who has studied the human mind and knows about the universal things we think are just our own "craziness" will help you. At least that's my opinion.

I've learned in the last two months that there is a great deal of truth to the notion that we can get to know some of the contents of our unconscious by trusting another person, talking freely, and being willing to be surprised.

 

[yesemina]

Basically, it is benign -- it's "the human condition" seen for exactly what it is. What makes it threatening to us is the issue that is causing the panic.

Have you ever experienced the benign form of this phenomenon? The expansive and joyous identity with all of creation and the vastness and unknowability of our own being?

There is a benign, even holy, side to this, so don't eschew the whole experience -- just try to discover consciously what is bothering your unconscious mind. That -- whatever it is -- is what is causing the panic.

YES! That was exactly what I was going for. And I have had experiences similar to this in the past, where I was so joyful at finding something I had been looking for for so long that I literally couldn't talk about it without crying.

To put it more clearly, I love it. And while I was experiencing it this recent time, I was walking around constantly out-of-body, for a while I felt it as a source of great love, and that finally I had found my purpose in life: to find this hidden meaning that I have been searching for for years. But then it would switch from a source of love to getting very worried about it.

I think if anything what I was afraid of first was that the whole experience also made me nervous because I didn't know if I was playing with fire, or if I knew what I was doing in this other state of being. I remember thinking: this is too much for me to handle. And I think it was for me at the time. I was experiencing things spiritually that boggled my mind - like when I'd sit on the stairs and enjoy just feeling people walking around. I think I was also paying too much attention to the color sensations you would get by staring at an object long enough, and all the other sensory alterations that came along with it. Then it escalated to: what if I start viewing it the wrong way and my thinking mind becomes out of harmony with my higher state of being? what will happen then?

Well, that's what happened. My anxiety built up over a bunch of "what-ifs", so I don't think what i'm afraid of really goes deeper than that. It could, I guess, but I think what I really became afraid of was the anxiety itself, and at the time, I didn't know it was anxiety I was experiencing, so it was all very real to me. Besides the fact that my new state of being was a lot for me to handle - it was so BIG compared to what I was used to.

*Shrug*

I started taking zoloft shortly thereafter, by the way, 25 mg a day (and I refuse to go past that dose). So the zoloft made you more anxious? How?

I am going to talk to a psychologist soon to get a new prescription of zoloft. But I think I may find it worth it to try therapy or psychoanalysis like you said. I really find this stuff interesting, and believe in it, just hate the panic.

Thanks for your reply. Your posts have offered me great insight.

 

[Phill]

Basically I think partly what it is that I got afraid of (besides the anxiety itself), is how big the mind is. I get freaked out because I feel there is no firm ground of knowledge for me to stand on -
My very existence baffles me, as does the existence of everything

Yesemina all i can say that i used to have the problem of no firm ground of knowledge for me to stand on and my very existence and the existence
of everything used to baffle me.
I was so nervous and insecure about things i had to find a way out of my own mind.
Back in 1989 simply coming to have faith in my Creator and a bit of spiritual revelation on where i stand in the universe did it for me.

I aint preaching, just saying how my confusion with many issues was cleared. These days i just keep my thoughts simple and put the breaks on if i start thinking too deep. All thinking deep does for me is bring confusion. I'm naturally a sort of deep thinking bloke, but i've trained my
mind to keep things simple.

 

[yesemina]

Yesemina all i can say that i used to have the problem of no firm ground of knowledge for me to stand on and my very existence and the existence
of everything used to baffle me.
I was so nervous and insecure about things i had to find a way out of my own mind.
Back in 1989 simply coming to have faith in my Creator and a bit of spiritual revelation on where i stand in the universe did it for me.

Yeah, I didn't mention this, but I've had this problem before as well. Getting locked within the concept of reason or thoughts and not having a way out. That's when shortly thereafter I had my first "experience" of another world - a spiritual revelation.

This time it just came back again probably as a result of the anxiety. I shy away in my mind in the face of something bigger than what I'm used to, and the very face of what I see as where I stand in the universe scared me, so right now I'm just sort of lost in my own clenching and running away from something really neat.

 

[bright23]

My DP was heavily tied in with spiritual concerns.

The way I interpretid my catastrophic DP experience, 1.5 hours in length, was that I was seeing "reality" without my human "filter," or "frame."

Or what a baby sees when they come out of the womb (explain why I wrote "shole" right now instead of womb??? unconscious is a strange thing) and begins howling in confusion.

The only solid conviction I came to after my DP, since everything I thought I knew was hopelessly blasted to pieces in that hour and a half, was that it is possible to experience an entirely different state of consciousness than the human state.

In fact my onset on these DP symptoms in above experience was immediately preceded by an intense fear of my recent interest in God-spirituality. In my head I said "What are you doing with your life? God! That's not rational. That's completely crazy! What's happening to you?"

Then I opened my eyes and BAM. I had no idea what a hand was, or a chair, why two arms two legs. No idea. It could just as easily have been three arms and eyes. I still would have howled for a good half hour.

That was 11 years ago.

 

[yesemina]

The only solid conviction I came to after my DP, since everything I thought I knew was hopelessly blasted to pieces in that hour and a half, was that it is possible to experience an entirely different state of consciousness than the human state.

In fact my onset on these DP symptoms in above experience was immediately preceded by an intense fear of my recent interest in God-spirituality. In my head I said "What are you doing with your life? God! That's not rational. That's completely crazy! What's happening to you?"

Then I opened my eyes and BAM. I had no idea what a hand was, or a chair, why two arms two legs. No idea. It could just as easily have been three arms and eyes. I still would have howled for a good half hour.

That was 11 years ago.

Yeah, isn't it great? I think for me this is what is causing the anxiety too though. I was walking around without my human frame (I like that way of expressing it, hehe) for a couple days because at first it didn't scare me.

I really felt I was coming alive, almost like I was awakening cells in my body that needed to be awakened. Hehe. Now, I still feel like I'm coming alive when I question everything around me - and personally, I love it. I love it when objects seem foreign to me like I've never seen them before.

I also frequently get a weird feeling in my forehead. Unfortunately, all this stuff also gave me anxiety for the fact that the information that I learned in those few days was too intense for my little being. I think this is why i'm still feeling anxiety. The anxiety really... sucks.

 

[bright23]

Are you seeing a therapist or psychiatrist?

At the time it was happening, is wasn't great at all. I thought my life was over, check into hospital and padded room. End of story.

But that wasn't it at all, just the beginning.

 

[Milan]

Yesemina,

I truly understand what you have written and I felt my body reacting as I was reading your post. It was very descriptive and an accurate account of my experience. So rest assured that you're not alone in this altered reality . I too got my DP from meditation and it was one of the most terrible experiences of my life.

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that things and concepts simply lose all meaning. I simply can't understand the human experience. The 'feeling state' that I have when I observe/experience reality is so different and it's like I've entered a new dimension or experience of reality. At these times the identity 'Milan' loses all ground and the fear and anxiety escalates.

Even whilst I'm writing this I can easily enter into that 'state' but I try not to focus my mind that way. As Phill said we need to keep things simple and put the brakes on hard before you delve too deep into your thoughts. Don't, and I repeat DON'T start asking questions with no answers - leave it for a time when you feel better. We must do what we did before even when we feel like everything makes no sense. My main goal each day is to stay in the normal trance as long as I can to recondition my mind to function like it once did before. I'm struggling but I got no choice - it's either that or stare blankly at reality trying figure out that something that can't be figured out. Nice to know there are others that experience the same thing.

 

[Sojourner]

There is nothing to be frightened of.

 

[Guest]

Wrong post, sorry

 

[yesemina]

Even whilst I'm writing this I can easily enter into that 'state' but I try not to focus my mind that way. As Phill said we need to keep things simple and put the brakes on hard before you delve too deep into your thoughts. Don't, and I repeat DON'T start asking questions with no answers - leave it for a time when you feel better. We must do what we did before even when we feel like everything makes no sense. My main goal each day is to stay in the normal trance as long as I can to recondition my mind to function like it once did before. I'm struggling but I got no choice - it's either that or stare blankly at reality trying figure out that something that can't be figured out. Nice to know there are others that experience the same thing.

Yep. I am with you 100%. Hehe. I need to do this too: just live my life normally even though right now it's the last thing I want to do. I got concerned though because I was starting to run away from this new awareness and just leave it behind and cry like a little child because it was something so big compared to what I was used to, and the more I think about it the more I get convinced that I just had a problem letting go. My identity didn't want to let go. It lost ground, and I freaked out. The problem for me is in how much I identified with the experience. I was walking around out-of-body for like days, and meanwhile thinking to myself, "well this is the new me, now - this is higher awareness, this is what you've wanted." Meanwhile the "new me" is in completely another dimension than it is used to. I was walking around for days being able to feel noises and feel people walking around, I felt some of the most mind-blowing things and I tried to take it all in at once and say "this is me, I am getting somewhere on my spiritual journey."

It's hard when your identity is just thrown up in the air. Nothing makes sense anymore, the universe or the way the human mind works seems too expanded to make any sense out of. We no longer have anything to hold on to. But do we need to make sense out of it? Probably not, that would only limit us. The anxiety for me came from how I interpreted the whole thing and how I was so involved with it, and then coming back down to a normal state of being is something I thought I couldn't do, because I had been raised up too high and that to come back down would only result in madness (what?). Yeah, it was the identity confusion that got me, and the anxiety was a way to fight what was going on. But I do believe that even in situations like that we need to learn to just let go. I believe that someone who can handle an experience like that needs to be able to be free from the ideas that come and enter their heads to try to interpret and control the experience. That's what got me, and it's something i've been doing with nearly everything in my life; grasping onto ideas and beliefs in order to make sense of the mystery.

But, trying to figure it out isn't getting me anywhere. That's a hard concept for me to conquer still.

There is nothing to be frightened of, it's my own head continually blowing this out of proportion. I too just have to abandon it and keep trying to refocus until I can do this without anxiety. I keep trying to master it, but it isn't working because then I analyze the experience too much.

 

[yesemina]

Are you seeing a therapist or psychiatrist?

At the time it was happening, is wasn't great at all. I thought my life was over, check into hospital and padded room. End of story.

But that wasn't it at all, just the beginning.

I'm not currently seeing a therapist or psychiatrist. And I don't know if I want to. I believe I can take care of it myself, as long as I get my mind off of it. I don't really have a problem with DP anymore (just a little I guess), but I feel now the problem is, and always has been, mostly anxiety.

I think what I liked about the experience is the meaning I found in it. I hate the anxiety, obviously, but I also just kept getting these feelings of wholesomeness and great love and like I was complete again, in between the nervousness. I thought it just meant I was really coming alive. And I still believe I was, even though in the midst of it most people would describe it as being more dead than ever.

It's REALLY weird, now when I get anxious and I start questioning things around me and looking at everything like it's foreign, I feel increased anxiety but also the increased 'coming alive' feeling, yet again. Like there's another world beckoning to me that's a source of great love and acceptance, because you can get past the confines of your own mind enough to realize the intensiveness of the big mystery you are in. But, I'm prone to anxiety and the fear of my own mind.

And it's nice to have you all to talk to, since so many of you deeply understand what's going on.

You'll have to tell me more about your experience. I'd like to hear about it.

 

[Milan]

My experience of it all is in the 'my stories' section called 'my reality'.

I just checked out your web page. Your only 21? Take it easy on the spiritual stuff - go out and enjoy yourself. The more fun you have the less you'll worry about the anxiety.

 

[yesemina]

My experience of it all is in the 'my stories' section called 'my reality'.

I just checked out your web page. Your only 21? Take it easy on the spiritual stuff - go out and enjoy yourself. The more fun you have the less you'll worry about the anxiety.

Oh I know, sorry, my last post (before this one) was in response to bright23. The one BEFORE that was my response to you - sorry for the mixup. Hehe.

Yes I'm 21. I am going to take it easy. Problem is I have a lot of time on my hands lately, and these past few years I have found nothing more intriguing than my spiritual journey. My intuition sort of just guided me to places. Time to change gears, though. I have constant anxiety now in my attempt to master whatever has gone on.

 

[Sojourner]

Let it Be - The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

 

[yesemina]

Thank you, Sojourner. Your posts always really help. These are lyrics perfectly relevant to my situation and just what needs to be done.

Well, I have to stop coming to these boards for a while, at least until my anxiety is much more tempered. Coming here is too much fun and while it offers me support, it also brings back my mind to the place where I need it not to be - thinking about it. Hehe.

I'm going to go out in a completely different direction and start establishing some stability in my life, which right now I have none of, or at least I feel I have none of. Not only is my identity thrown up in the air but so are my life circumstances. I'm in the middle of another move back up to where my mom lives (from new mexico to oregon), I just lost $1,200 due to being a "victim" of an internet scam, and in the middle of having to re-establish a new school, job, and friends.

Thanks all for your help, it has helped in an IMMENSE way.