Ok, im not sure how to start this so ill just start somewhere. From a very young age ive been very very very.... quite, i would not speak to anyone outside my immediate family and some close friends (who id talk to normally) My existence in primary school was that of a mute unless i was forced to read a book for the class like the other kids had to, as per normal. Secondary school i broke out of my shell a bit and had a somewhat bit of a character, but i would still not talk to certain folks, certain groups or individuals depending on how i ranked them in my head... if they were 'better' than me i would turn into a quite, dorky, wimp and totally quite to the point i was weird, if i was 'better' than them my confidence was through the roof. A million different things happened between when i finished secondary (high) school and now, im 24. But i did learn Transcendental Meditation about 6 months ago and like anyone that meditates you know how it can change you, maybe.. hmm, ok am im not sure how to describe this but only a few months into TM and my awareness of how things work grew so much, and my intellectual skills got so much better, the cloudiness is gone, so much so that i was able to slow down and analyze myself and through that and some accidentally stumbled upon info on the net i realized that i am now (to a very less extent) and have always been the way i was especially as a kid in school, as in totally quite and weird/different scared to talk to people ect is because i have (SA) Social Anxiety Disorder or Phobia and to give you some wiki info on that here... ''Generalized social anxiety disorder typically involves a persistent, intense, and chronic fear of being judged by others and of potentially being embarrassed or humiliated by one's own actions. These fears can be triggered by perceived or actual scrutiny by others. While the fear of social interaction may be recognized by the person as excessive or unreasonable, considerable difficulty can be encountered overcoming it.'' So as you can see it sucks alot and it took me allot to overcome, im 90% there its still though but i put so much of getting past this down to my meditation! But something in the last 2 months has crept up on me which is far more scarier, and to be honest sometimes its terrifying and its getting worse, i now have (which is totally normal for anyone with anxiety disorders) Depersonalization disorder, and for more wiki info... ''Depersonalization (or depersonalisation) is a malfunction or anomaly of the mechanism by which an individual has self awareness. It is a feeling of watching oneself act, while having no control over a situation.[1] It can be considered desirable, such as in the use of recreational drugs, but it usually refers to the severe form found in anxiety and, in the most intense cases, panic attacks. A sufferer feels they have changed and the world has become less real, vague, dreamlike, or lacking in significance. It can sometimes be a rather disturbing experience, since many feel that, indeed, they are living in a "dream". Depersonalization is a subjective experience of unreality in one's sense of self, while derealization is unreality of the outside world. Although most authors currently regard depersonalization (self) and derealization (surroundings) as independent constructs, many do not want to separate derealization from depersonalization.[2] The main reason for this is nosological, because these symptoms often co-occur, but there is another reason of great philosophical importance, namely, that the phenomenological experience of self, others, and world is one continuous whole. Thus, feelings of unreality may blend in and the person may puzzle over whether it is the self or the world that feels unreal. Individuals who experience depersonalization feel divorced from their own personal physicality by sensing their body sensations, feelings, emotions and behaviors as not belonging to the same person or identity.[3] Often a person who has experienced depersonalization claims that life "feels like a movie" or things seem unreal or hazy. Also, a recognition of self breaks down (hence the name). Depersonalization can result in very high anxiety levels, which further increase these perceptions.[4] One way to describe the physical manifestation of the feeling is to compare it to a film technique called the vertigo shot or dolly zoom. In this technique, the subject of the picture stays fixed within the shot while the surrounding background is pulled away, providing a sense of vertigo or detachment. People may perceive this feeling in a cyclical manner, where the feeling is experienced back-to-back in succession.'' So as you can see, this again sucks...very much! Now, the reason why ive shared all this with you besides me being as open as i am and not really caring what anyone thinks is... why is this happening to me? for someone that is meditating every day x2, doesnt meditation kill anxiety? which is the root cause of DP! It dosnt make any sense? I duno :S the only reason i think this might be happening even with meditation is because of the meditation and the fact im connecting with myself and looking at myself consciously and unconsciously, maybe ive slowed down to the point where all this stress ive bottled up is all coming off me... in this extreme fashion? by getting through this storm of bottled up emotions and experiences. Anyway, if anyone has any comment on this, please share because im confused, but i feel relaxed about it
Some meditation can kill your sense of personnality while others can strenghten it. In your case I strongly recommend you stay away from concepts such as ''detachement from the ego'' and ''slowing your mind'', etc. You see in meditation you have the opportunity to witness who you are, and if you kill some parts of yourself (such the anxiety) you will never be at home with yourself, wich is logical, if you think about it. DON'T BOTTLE IT UP. Accept the stress, accept the anxiety, love yourself. You might wanna read this. http://www.lorinroche.com/page8/page25/page25.html http://www.lorinroche.com/page8/page49/page49.html http://www.lorinroche.com/page8/page92/page92.html http://www.lorinroche.com/page8/page146/page146.html
O i am accepting everything, now i am, before the old me did not but the new me is open and accepting everything which is why this is confusing to me, i am calm but there is anxiety with me and i cant figure out why, if i could i would tackle it
you sound like you have hypochondria. don't "diagnose" yourself with conditions that you don't fully understand. If you feel you may really be suffering from it you should talk to an actual physician.
Okay, I did TM for 25 years and depersonalization is a common side effwect, one which I also experienced. I learned to deal with it by limiting my TM (because I still liked it) to once a day for maybe ten minutes, (instead of my hours long sidhis program) and also by studying Buddhism alongside TM which explains quite alot about mental gymnastics of a meditator. Don't worry yourself to death. If you ended up studying psychiatry you would find you had every neurosis - we all do - potentially. None of them need be permanent. Also the mind is based in body, so work on the physical to change the mental. Ie, exercise to balance. Try ballroom and Jazz dances.
Hi! I am meditating also with a mantra, with a meditation that is carried out like TM is.. And experiencing maybe what you are.. To me it feels like I am at a certain "point" (?) where I watch everything that is going on-sensations, actions.. and I feel like a really bad thing can happen, and I may cry or act, or feel depressed but inside there is this "point" where a certain (maybe greater) aspect of me is "watching" and absolutely silent and calm like still water.. Is this what you are experiencing? When you say that you're experiencing anxiety, but you are calm, maybe there's this place inside you that is watching the anxiety and is calm.. This is in my opinion how equanimity and detachment develops, where you connect to that place with meditation and begin to experience it on your daily life. Check this site out (if you want), it has lessons on yoga and also on the "witness" quality that develops with meditation.. http://aypsite.com/
Don't overemphasize the witnessing thing. It's not all it's cracked out to be. I'm woth you all. I have BTDT! Life is to live. I would take all indications of varied states of awareness with a grain of salt and remember that naming such states is like naming a partial movement of the body, or that is to say, instead of walking one is calling it half swinging arms and one foot lifted with one resting, the point being that watching the process of living too closely is not healthy and is not the depth of perception that one is hoping to obtain through meditation. The whole process must occur smoothly or it will lead to more mental perturbations. Often, some forms of meditation, especially mantra mental meditations work very swiftly to break through discursiveness of the mind and release energy which can make some people very spacey, which Eastern teachers overlook due to their lack of understanding about Western societal necessities of staying focused. It's nothing to them for a person to drop out and go to a cave and spend the rest of their life in contemplation. So for us in the West where such things are simply not our dharma, we must adjust to our comfort, regardless of the so called vows and promises we made regarding our programs when we were ignorant. A step in the direction of enlightment necessitates recognition of our own limitations and pretenses and desires. We must not destroy ourselves for plagarized eastern ideals and spiritual goals which are very specious and profoundly unscientific. Moreover there are other meditation techniques from various systems which have various other spiritual returns. Ideally the best meditation is one which impacts ones manifest karma towards creating a better and more wholistic and happy karma. Ultimately the best yoga is a wholehearted positive intention towards all beings. If one has that then meditations are mere rest techniques, religions are mere verbalizing of ones natural state.
The disconcerting nature of your experience could be likened to a person who had lived in a cave and comes out into the light. The dark adjusted eye might find it painful. Why might things seem unreal? Because we had never seen them illuminated.
First, what are you on medication for? Second, trying to solve, diagnose or alleviate your "condition" from a Western psychiatric perspective is like asking a third grader who's just learned multiplication to help you with your calculus homework- not really gonna do you much good. The basic understanding of mind, ego, Reality, etc. is not there. Third, you might try not using your TM mantra and instead focusing on trying to identify the part of you that is feeling distress. Focus on the very feeling of distress and try to find who is feeling it. You will eventually realize the cause and it will instantly resolve itself. You (the deeper you beyond ego) is just letting go of the ego, or sense of individuality. The cause of anxiety is that you haven't identified with God yet, and that you still believe there to be something, when in fact there is nothing. Since you're so used to you being the ego, when the ego goes away (or really in this case dissipates and thins out), it causes stress because what you thought was you is seeming to die, and your awareness still continues on. This is the same thing that happens with pychedelics, but in that context it's frequently referred to as "ego dissolution anxiety." It's a stressful time in personal evolution for just about everyone. Some people escape it, but many realized beings undergo a period of "craziness" for lack of a better word. It feels pretty much constantly un-nerving because part of you still identifies with you, but part of you knows there is absolutely nothing here. Eventually, through continued willpower and surrender to gain peace and love, the one side overcomes the other. Sometimes there is a very fine line between insanity and higher states of consciousness. In some cases the only difference between the two is the ability to integrate conditioned reality with the Real Reality, or both realize this as a dream and participate in the dream. Anyhow, there's nothing "wrong" with this experience. If you don't like it, stop meditating and maybe take a slower approach to calming the mind like mindfulness. Go on a 30 minute mindful walk instead of 30 minutes of meditation. Or take up bhakti (devotional) yoga for a while. Find a conceptualization of God, be it Jesus, Krishna, Mother Divine, Rama, Buddha, etc. and meditate and pray as whole-heartedly as you can on that until you feel love. Once you feel the love, you'll want more, and you'll be more devoted and focused, etc. However; if you have come to the point were you realize things in this world are meaningless repetition with no real gains or losses, then I would encourage you to read the Yoga Vasishta. That's the Truth and enough to cross to the other side if you're really ready. If you're not ready, you'll probably get bored of it and stop reading, or not understand it. Anyhow, happy trails, and best of luck uncovering all the love.
Hey, great post, im not taking any medication i never have never will, dont believe thats the way for me, im doing fine now, i mean the 'detachment' is still there but im not worrying about it now im just going with the flow i suppose, i had a look on amazon for Yoga Vasishta and there seems to be loads of different books, can you tell me which one your referring to?
Any of the translations by Swami Ventkatesananda are fine I would imagine. The "concise" version is whittled down a bit and removes some of the repetition; however, the repetition is part of the instruction as it shows the nature of the mind to get wrapped up in a story and forget where the story began and where it came from. That said the concise version is fine, but I would go with the very first translation (you'd have to check the publisher's info that is listed for which one that actually is) Anyhow, everything in moderation- try not to take yourself too seriously. A light heart is an invaluable tool in all this (and also one of the hardest things to cultivate). It helps to remember that if you're not really there, then your struggle to realize the Truth/enlightenment (if that's what you want) doesn't really matter either. Again, best of luck to you.
Meditation by itself does not solve these problems. You need disperse energy to use great force. You need to opposite of meditation to compliment it.
OP, I've got anxieties (mainly social anxiety) but also haven't been diagnosed. I've tried meditation before and it's never really killed it off... but I know exactly what that depersonalization shit is like. I honestly think you're just worrying too much. Don't worry so much about the labels maybe. Oh yeah, and don't look shit up on the internet... that will cause more anxiety than you need. Anyway good luck brah
TM, or any mantra meditation unfortunately doesn't give you insight into your own inner nature. It's interesting that the definition of depersonalization mentions body sensations: "Individuals...feel divorced from their own personal physicality by sensing their body sensations, feelings, emotions and behaviors as not belonging to the same person or identity" I would recommend learning a form of meditation, specifically insight meditation, that puts you in direct contact with you own inner nature, your breath and your body sensations. In my experience, being in direct contact with ones actual self in the present moment (breath and body sensations are always experienced "now") has had an extremely positive effect in connecting you directly with your true actual self in the present moment. It also has the effect of bringing "awareness" to your self consciousness, kind of like a pressure release valve. In other words, when you have these experiences of extreme self consciousness, you will have a higher awareness on top of that which can watch yourself watching yourself and realize that you are not in the present moment. At that point, becoming aware of your sensations will ground you back into reality. Another poster mentioned staying away from techniques that dissolve ego, and I would absolutely emphatically disagree with that. The very root of anxiety and self consciousness (social anxiety) comes from an over-active self-critical ego. And this needs to undergo deflation. You are taking yourself too seriously, over-identifying with how others perceive you by placing your very self-worth into their eyes, finding yourself paralyzed by this because you are terrified of tainting this image of yourself placed in your perception of how you "think" they perceive you. That is classic egoic self-perception. If you can deflate your ego, you will not take yourself so seriously because you'll realize the ultimate truth in all of this which is: There actually is no self, and who we think we are is constructed and ultimately illusory. When this if fully realized, and we can learn to be equanimous with "what is", then we can just calmly accept whatever version of reality our perception is giving us while not identifying with it, thus grounding us back to true reality, which is just "being" in the present. I hope this helps. Good luck in your search for a solution!
