Hi there,

I have been practicing for quite some years now. In the past two years, I focused heavily on therapy, hoping it would resolve some of my issues. However, things have only gotten stranger, and I am now seeking a suitable framework to work with.

A month ago, I shared something with my girlfriend that I had kept to myself for several years. After sharing it, I felt an intense wave of shame. Although my emotional reaction was strong, being seen and accepted by her quickly calmed me down. However, the next day, I woke up in physical agony, feeling fatigued and exhausted. This feeling persisted for a week before an overwhelming surge of emotions took over for ten days. During this time, I couldn't manage daily chores. When it finally subsided, I felt momentarily relieved, and my visual field became exceptionally clear and vibrant. Unfortunately, this clarity was short-lived, and I began spiraling again.

In the following days, I became more functional, but my inner life took on a peculiar quality. It felt as if someone had turned up a dial, amplifying my fantasies to an intrusive and unpleasant degree. Fortunately, this normalized after a few days. Since then, I sometimes feel like I am drowning in my own senses. I am extremely hypervigilant, sensitive, and vulnerable. My thoughts race and often don't make sense, feeling random, intrusive and OCD like at times. I started to get sever headaches and other strange physical symptoms that I know from adverse "spiritual events" in the past. I cannot make sense out of my experience though and that is something that I am struggling with a lot; not having a reliable and predictable framework. 

Looking forward to hearing some suggestions. 

I don't think there is a standard for normal weirdness but if meditation is making things uncomfortably weird, then the standard advice is to pause meditation (or switch to metta meditation or something gentle like that). I had a teacher who said that a bit of freaking out was OK but when we start freaking out about freaking out, it's time to pause. Muscling through when things are weird enough to disrupt daily life doesn't sound like a good idea. When things have gotten weird for me, I have stopped meditating and focused on exercise, socializing, heathy eating, etc. If you have a therapist or a doctor, you might also talk to them.  If you return to meditation when you are feeling better, you'll get more out of it with a steady mind.  

Time probably makes it all easier but it is many times possible to add resilience and normalcy in the strangeness. Martin had good suggestions. 

I don’t know what you are living through but it sounds like an
reactivated old trauma. At least I had similar experiences with old trauma resurfacing. The old trauma may  not have words (anymore and/or yet) but the symptoms sound like they could be reactions to trauma. One thing is that the old trauma is old - you already survived it. Other thing is that when wordless memories flood the sensory and emotional field with chaotic stuff, it may retraumatize us. But all experience is ok, or can be seen like that. Therapy may be necessary to integrate it all. At times the stuff circles and floods until at some point a word, image, a memory gives it an explanation and context. 

But explanation may not
be necessary for you to learn to be neutral or friendly to your strangeness. You are a whole being anyways, with or without words, with or without intense stress.

Polyvagal theory of trauma claims (if i remember correctly) that the emotional personality experiences but cannot verbalize, and to it time does not mean much: past feels now. The social person understands language but does not understand the emotional experience. Therapist would be the interpreter between the two. The emotions and symptoms may try to express something of yourself but the language is foreign to your adult person. 

So, these came to mind, but as i don’t know your life, these thoughts may miss the mark or hopefully give some useful impulse. 

It’ll be allright. 

Take care and be well!

What kind of practice have you been doing and how often have you been doing it? 

​​​​​​​When you've been having the sorts of issues you mention above how has practice been? 

Roger just made a cool video on stages of insight here

Roger who? My youtbe won't pop up?

Hi Martin, 

please excuse my late reply. Thank you very much for taking your time to share your reflections. I agree, just blindly pushing through and not testing out the waters does not seem like a good idea. For now I am taking it slow, may things settle again. 

Hi Kettu, thank you for taking your time to write all of this. Excuse my late reply please, I have been feeling sick the past week. Thank you for referencing Polyvagal Theory - I am a huge fan of it. I hope things will settle quickly and clarity will arise. 
​​​​​​​

"Emotions are like waves, watch them disappear into the distance."
~bhagwan das


You need to exercisea little will, bra, and not see your emotions as autonomous.

Take some responsibiity for "being normal."

95% of the time we have to conform to norms in order to live a social life with its normal satisfactions, obligations and perquisites. Metaxy. With this five per cent of weirdness that we can get away with we need to carefully select and fight the battles that are teetering on the edge of success.

One advances and retreats like a soldier.



from the article


https://www.worldhistory.org/article/75/heraclitus-life-is-flux/



Life is Conflict

For Heraclitus, conflict is necessary for the perpetuation of life. Heraclitus criticizes Homer (l. 8th century BCE) who wrote, “would that strife might perish from among gods and men” (Iliad 18.107) because, if that were to be, there would be no opportunity for change and growth. One cannot grow without striving toward some sort of goal, and strife is necessary in this process. Heraclitus, in fact, views conflict as a vital force in maintaining the world:

We must recognize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity. (DK22B80)

War is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some as men, who made some slaves and some freemen. (DK22B53)

Heraclitus rejected Anaximander's concept of the apeiron as a punishing force, creating and destroying, because of the negative connotation of punishment. To Heraclitus, the conflict of opposites is absolutely essential for the continuation of life as understood in the change of the seasons, night turning to day, young people growing old, and even in the living giving way to death. Everything is in constant motion, Heraclitus noted, and one only had to recognize and accept that fact in order to live in it. The Buddha recognized this just as clearly and, in their own ways, both philosophers advocated a compassionate means of accepting and living in a world of constant change when one most desires permanence.

read - 
https://www.mctb.org/mctb2/table-of-contents/

Then ask how much weirder can it possibly get....lol
You are kinda vague a bit....that is fine...
Good luck
​​​​​​​~D