A New Phase…

As I have written elsewhere, I think on Facebook, a very difficult situation is drawing to a close for me. As it comes to a happy end, paperwork and all, I have felt a ridiculously huge amount of stress lift off my shoulders. I felt a sudden ten percent jump (approximately) in functioning! So so much stress was suddenly gone, and now I feel a new shift in myself. I feel like I came to a turning point, was suddenly placed back in the driver’s wheel of my life, and some decisions were made. Namely, I’m going to be delving back into my spiritual practice and trying to recenter. I want to return to my roots as a pagan and Buddhist, and to feel myself grow.

So! I got myself a new sketchbook to make into a BOS, I made some concrete weight loss and spiritual practice goals (including taking a buddhist meditation class from a local Tibetan nun!) And I am trying to be gentler and more mindful of myself in my day to day experience. Oh, and yoga. I have been doing yoga twice a day now for a week, following short “yoga with Adrienne ” videos. I have to say I’m really enjoying her videos, and feel very pleased with myself for doing them!

And yet I find myself looking to my fresh new book of shadows and wondering… what shall I put in there? What would you counsel, friends and new readers? I am thinking of revisiting the elder futhark, but beyond that and buddhist meditations, I feel a little lost as to what to do with my shiny new notebook. Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

As always, I wish you all the best! Have you recently had any spiritual turn around? Let me know what you did, or what you’d advise to do!

Mental Health Advice from a Buddhist Nun

Hey everyone! I haven’t been active lately, at all. I’ve been very busy taking care of myself and living life, which, is apparently full of stressful appointments.

But one lovely thing happened this weekend. I met a Buddhist nun for advice regarding meditation and my mental health/illness.

And you know what? She was just so nice and kind and logical. When I brought up my hallucinations, she advised focusing on the reality, not on the hallucination. A thing that, I think, would help reinforce reality instead of the hallucination. And really, why did no one ever mention this to me before?

It was so counter to all the advice I had ever gotten from the esoteric crowd. Instead of telling me to indulge in the hallucination, to go deeper into it, to try and find its meaning, it was rather to focus on reality. Wow. For me, that was ground breaking.

Furthermore, she advised me to lay off psychic activities until I feel better. Another thing that esoteric people won’t tell you to do: lay off the psychic. Wow!

Honestly, it was just so nice and refreshing to be told these things, because they felt true and they resonated so much with me. They didn’t feel dopey or about self-inflation. Rather, it was all just so logical (that was my one biggest impression of her. Logic and kindness.).

So yes, that was my lovely encounter this weekend. Other than that I’ve been working on the next birdie coloring book and haven’t been writing one bit at all. I’ve been knitting, working on Christmas gifts, and they haven’t been coming out totally well, haha. One sock was just so small I had to undo the whole thing. But I’m trying.

So anyways, hopefully I will find more time soon to keep writing and posting! Lots of love to you all, and I wish you the very best. ❤

 

Psychosis and Meditation

So I’m not sure how to write this. Part of me wants to retell you my story, about how I used to meditate so much. Part of me wants to just dive in with my revelation of the morning.

Let’s start with my history then. I used to meditate a LOT. In my teens, I used to do (unsupervised) meditations where I could push myself into ecstasy, could feel the chemistry changing in my brain, could push myself into euphoria, and generally felt enlightened. Then, around age 18, I had what I refer to as my first psychotic break. While lying in bed and doing nothing particular, I was suddenly euphoric, on pink and blue fluffy clouds. In the following few days I became convinced my best friend was possessed by a demon, and got lost in familiar places.

Well, in the ensuing shit-storm that was my life for the next few years, I kept trying to meditate. It often inexplicably made things worse. Like just a few months ago, I tried meditating five times a day and inexplicably started having what I believe are psychotic symptoms again (feeling oneness with the divine, seeing ‘patterns’ everywhere, illogical thoughts, etc).

Now here’s the thing -> Meditation can cause brief psychotic episodes.

WHAT?!

I know, right? But after speaking with my psychiatrist who told me that meditation seemed to be a trigger for my derealization and recently wanting to meditate again, I did a little bit of googling this morning.

“Meditation can act as a stressor in vulnerable patients who may develop a transient psychosis with polymorphic symptomatology.”

“In fact, unguided meditation practices can be harmful for people with a diagnosis of a psychotic disorder and have indeed been documented as worsening the psychotic symptoms of some individuals.”

And here I was, trying to ‘meditate my way’ out of it, believing that meditation could only help. Well no!

I’ve linked the articles in my quotes above, but the jist is that unsupervised meditation can cause temporay psychotic symptoms in people who’ve had the symptoms before.

The key things here seem to be ‘unguided’ meditation, wherein the person goes into deep trances unsupervised. I’m guessing that these states can be triggers for the derealization and other symptoms. At least that’s how I experienced it.

Furthermore, the good news is that these symptoms are temporary. My psychotic symptoms after intense meditation went away on their own. They were short term. So the good news is that if you get fresh symptoms after meditating, chances are they will go away.

The bad news is that my long-term symptoms never went away in my periods of low meditation. They still need medication, but are very well controlled.

Anyways, I’m not a doctor nor am I trying to frighten anyone. But please, please, be cautious about meditating if you already have experienced psychotic symptoms. It may bring them back, and even if you don’t have psychotic symptoms, I still urge caution!