Birdie
Peer Supporter
Hi!
Since a few months I do meditation/relaxation on a daily basis. Sometimes, during a guided meditation where I imagine a coloured energy, rising up through my feet, through the body, up to my head and in front of my body down to the feet again I do some kind of breathing in a circle (skipping the pauses between I breath in and out, but not hyperventilation!). But I do this kind of breathing only for a few minutes a day.
Since a few weeks I notice an increasing in fear and anxiety. But not during the meditation but when I come to rest or during sleep. Sometimes only a light form of anxiety and sometimes it's a panic attack. I first thought it has something to do with the "circle-breathing" (that's also the kind of breathing advised in the "presence process" bringing some repressed stuff to the surface), but it also occures after a normal mindfulness meditation.
I can still handle the anxietey, staying as calm and relaxed and breathing deep and normal (read C. Weekes, really helpful). Usually after a few minutes everything is fine again and the anxiety slowly decreases.
There's no improvement in pain during the anxietey attacks or in common.
Is this because the mind chattering calms down a bit and I am more aware of my body that the fear arrises?
I also noticed some changing in one thing that was bothering me very much as long as I can think: chronic feelings of boredom, emptiness, senseless- and meaningless... making me look like a human being but feel like a zombie. For a clearer understanding: that was what I posted in the other tms-forum in winter last year:
"since I can remember I suffer from a feeling (or "non-feeling") of chronic inner emptiness and senselessness/meaningless/boredom. This feeling is really hard to describe: it feels like being not at home in myself, being strange to myself, everything feels a bit superficial, like a bottomless pit, like not being me and playing a role, like an alien. I feel a lack of something, it's like a hole where should be a "core" or whatever. I often feel chased and driven, probably to avoid these feelings of emptiness (there are many typical things of avoidance like shopping, working, internet, tv, eating, addictions....pain?).
I am sure these feelings have something to do with beeing abandoned (emotionally or real, I think that's not such a big difference), I lost my biological mother and my stepmother when I was a baby and there were further traumatic experiences like my very agressive and alcoholic father (repressing emotions may addictionally “produce” emptiness)
I remember these feelings of meaningless when I was a child: I watched other kids playing enviously because I wasn't able to play, it seemed to be boring and senseless, a prick was a prick and not a gun, the doll was a dead piece of cloth and plastic and not a baby, what the heck were these other kids doing there?"
In psychoanalysis this feeling is often explained by a lack of "object constancy" due to early losses or traumatic experiences. Others blame an extreme supression of feelings (negative & positive ones) for this condition.
Well it's not the case that I completely feel like a real human being (although I know I must be one
), really alive and so on. But the emptiness is not as extreme as it was (still a bit sceptical about that but also feeling very grateful and full of hope that something I'd never considered as possible seems to change!).
Ok, long story short: perhaps there's a lot of anxiety and dread behind all this dead emptiness which once was necessary to survive?
Wow...can meditation do this?
Since a few months I do meditation/relaxation on a daily basis. Sometimes, during a guided meditation where I imagine a coloured energy, rising up through my feet, through the body, up to my head and in front of my body down to the feet again I do some kind of breathing in a circle (skipping the pauses between I breath in and out, but not hyperventilation!). But I do this kind of breathing only for a few minutes a day.
Since a few weeks I notice an increasing in fear and anxiety. But not during the meditation but when I come to rest or during sleep. Sometimes only a light form of anxiety and sometimes it's a panic attack. I first thought it has something to do with the "circle-breathing" (that's also the kind of breathing advised in the "presence process" bringing some repressed stuff to the surface), but it also occures after a normal mindfulness meditation.
I can still handle the anxietey, staying as calm and relaxed and breathing deep and normal (read C. Weekes, really helpful). Usually after a few minutes everything is fine again and the anxiety slowly decreases.
There's no improvement in pain during the anxietey attacks or in common.
Is this because the mind chattering calms down a bit and I am more aware of my body that the fear arrises?
I also noticed some changing in one thing that was bothering me very much as long as I can think: chronic feelings of boredom, emptiness, senseless- and meaningless... making me look like a human being but feel like a zombie. For a clearer understanding: that was what I posted in the other tms-forum in winter last year:
"since I can remember I suffer from a feeling (or "non-feeling") of chronic inner emptiness and senselessness/meaningless/boredom. This feeling is really hard to describe: it feels like being not at home in myself, being strange to myself, everything feels a bit superficial, like a bottomless pit, like not being me and playing a role, like an alien. I feel a lack of something, it's like a hole where should be a "core" or whatever. I often feel chased and driven, probably to avoid these feelings of emptiness (there are many typical things of avoidance like shopping, working, internet, tv, eating, addictions....pain?).
I am sure these feelings have something to do with beeing abandoned (emotionally or real, I think that's not such a big difference), I lost my biological mother and my stepmother when I was a baby and there were further traumatic experiences like my very agressive and alcoholic father (repressing emotions may addictionally “produce” emptiness)
I remember these feelings of meaningless when I was a child: I watched other kids playing enviously because I wasn't able to play, it seemed to be boring and senseless, a prick was a prick and not a gun, the doll was a dead piece of cloth and plastic and not a baby, what the heck were these other kids doing there?"
In psychoanalysis this feeling is often explained by a lack of "object constancy" due to early losses or traumatic experiences. Others blame an extreme supression of feelings (negative & positive ones) for this condition.
Well it's not the case that I completely feel like a real human being (although I know I must be one
), really alive and so on. But the emptiness is not as extreme as it was (still a bit sceptical about that but also feeling very grateful and full of hope that something I'd never considered as possible seems to change!).Ok, long story short: perhaps there's a lot of anxiety and dread behind all this dead emptiness which once was necessary to survive?
Wow...can meditation do this?
