Month: May 2015

Empathy and an Anxiety Disorder

by Liz B

Lately I have had a lot of weird physical symptoms (abdominal and pelvic bloating for a month that gets worse at night, major fatigue on and off, along with some other things). Once I got into my head that it could be something serious, I instantly freaked out thinking “what if it’s ovarian cancer?”. This thought wasn’t as pronounced as the thought/feeling I had that FELT like a “gut feeling” that something was wrong. But I couldn’t tell whether it was a gut feeling or anxiety. I hadn’t actually had anything like this before in regards to health, so it’s a slightly different manifestation of anxiety I’m used to dealing with.

Life Off Prozac

I can see now that my mind’s thoughts instantly becomes much more obsessive now that I am off of antidepressants (prozac is also prescribed for OCD, which is a form of anxiety, and it completely makes sense). This is the second time something has happened that led me from normal mode to WTF SURVIVAL MODE quickly. The last one was a few months ago when some unknown dolt left a note on my car implying that he had been spying on me and also left a fake number which implied he was trying to fuck with me, and I had no idea what he or they were planning to do.

Give me a situation where there is vast deep space of possibilities that could be happening and a possible threat of something serious, and my brain will run wild, imagine the worst, and go to great lengths to prepare against it, instantly.

At any rate, the thought of potentially having terminal disease led my mind into an array of thoughts that created a perception and feeling of how I might really feel if that were a reality. In the last week or so I have almost lived it as though it were true. And I unearthed a deep appreciation for everyone and everything close to me. There’s someone very close to me that is one of the most pure people I know, still, even in adulthood. What stands out about him is that he has a massive heart, and it’s to the point where he has a difficult time living among other less sensitive people in this world. He’s very balanced and able to do so, but what he is capable of feeling and experiencing is on a different level than most since he simply has less mental debris in the way holding him down from higher self-realization and general awareness.

The Big Picture

Anyway, I felt the massiveness of his love in my experience of living out the perception of a terminal illness. It’s like it is continuously showing me the big picture. You know every day when you have interactions with others and they vary in their dynamics, some more tense, some less tense, but overall you are just having your daily experiences with others like normal. But then when you look back at the big picture, at the overarching energy that a person has, it gives off a certain consistent quality depending on what kind of person they are; what they’re made of. Well, the overarching energy of this person was so much love and sweetness. The same thing I feel normally on a daily basis, only on a much more massive, big-picture scale. This is different than just simply being over-emotional, because believe me, I know the difference. But many people may not believe what I’m saying if they aren’t spiritually aware – only because they may not be aware of higher vibrations and awareness or higher sensitivity, and what that can feel like.

This unfortunately made me even more sad at the thought of having a life cut short to not be able to spend extra years with him, and all of this I felt similarly to everyone else close to me. I looked at my mom’s overarching energy (which I typically do anyway, because she is a rare, extremely giving and compassionate person) and felt so much empathy in regards to her, her life, getting older, and also a sad feeling of not being able to spend more time with her.

I don’t know what this is or why it’s happening – if it’s just a result of my thoughts putting me in the mental framework that I might have in facing such a reality, or if there is any specific reason for it that I am not aware of yet. But due to this influencing me to see the big picture in everything and recognize my deep appreciation for others in my life and life in general, it almost feels like a new realization.

Extraordinary Empathy

I have always been an empathetic person, but it is reaching to new heights now. This in itself I blame in part due to coming off of antidepressants that I was on for about ten years. The other day there was a fruit fly in our sink, and I put some water on it to drown it down the sink. But I instantly thought about how that fruit fly might be feeling (even if it was a very robotic fight-or-flight response compared to what we might feel), or maybe more accurately I empathized with the idea of how it was dying and felt really bad.

Wired for Anxiety: Fear of Loss, and Loss of Control

I am also accompanied with some obvious fear of loss feelings, because this may have been what all of this stemmed from. Which I may have to work a bit on confronting. I have recognized in me that some of the most higher-vibrational feelings and experiences I’ve had have incited fear in me. Anxiety programming is something I have had since I was a child, definitely not something I have developed in response to a modern-day lifestyle (though that could possibly make it worse, but in my case I really feel this isn’t so). My brain is wired for anxiety, and while I don’t have it too badly on a day-to-day basis, specific things can kick it in instantly. I believe it is linked with my epilepsy and has come as a fun package of neurological disorder.

Not to say that you can’t work on managing anxiety that your brain is “wired” for, as that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life, and have done pretty well at it (no alcohol or harmful drugs involved). But it is difficult to explain to people who don’t have a disorder, because they don’t realize the extent to which it is difficult to control. That’s why it’s a disorder, and not just regular anxiety. You instantly perceive things a certain way when anxiety is in control, and the idea is not to try to stop anxiety altogether, but rather be aware of what anxious thoughts/perceptions look like when they come and how they manifest (which is in very different ways at times and can easily trick your brain). But once you can realize it, you can use your toolbox (those new to anxiety probably don’t have one yet) to manage it properly so it doesn’t develop into something more.

Anyway, in general I realize the great feelings of love and appreciation that I feel equally make me fear losing those things, or fear something about them in general. Maybe they threaten my ego (well, they do — that’s what fear is anyway). This concept in itself I think however is somewhat normal, but I would prefer to of course be able to not have feelings of fear accompany the greater, expansive experiences in my life.

From an article I just found…

by Liz B

I googled “ego, sense of control” because many times I feel like I have a wall up that is generated by my ego as a result of either fear, sensitivity, or vulnerability of some sort. I did it just for fun and because I’m a dork, but upon googling that I found an interesting article/site. Can’t wait to read more of it later, I like how the guy writes. I’m always fascinated with subjects on the ego and our perception of control.

“Ego is not entirely false. To say that “ego dies” really means, more precisely, that the cognitive structure labelled ‘ego’, and the egoic mental model of the world, are systematically re-conceived, just like the components of Newtonian physics were systematically re-conceived to form the new system of Einsteinian physics. Ego death means that the mind no longer centrally identifies with the ego. The locus of control or origin of control is no longer seriously taken to be the ego. The transcendent mind knows that there is a source of control underlying the ego, and that ego’s power of control is an epiphenomenon.

Imagine yourself as a Godlike entity — an ultimate controller. Like Kurt Vonnegut, you create a character in a novel, a figure in a cartoon, or an agent in a virtual world shown on a computer screen. You have the power to make this entity shake his fist at you and rebel. You can make him act as though he creates himself and steers his own actions, unrestrained by you. But ultimately, you are the real, higher or underlying source of his every decision. On strong doses of LSD, you feel yourself to be like such a character, awakened to his complete dependence on a higher, prior, hidden author: his God, his real controller. This awakening into the illusory aspect of ego’s power-to-control is a powerful feeling of cancellation of the heart of ego. This is the experience of ego death, the essence of religious rapture — the sense of the heart of your control being raped and trumped by an underlying, hidden source of control that must exist prior to, or giving rise to, your every act.”

http://www.egodeath.com/egodeath.htm