Petu- Lexapro,other meds, stress, kundalini and confused

[Petu]

Thank you everyone for your very warm welcome to this forum. I'll write more and answer questions that were asked when I'm feeling up to it, having a bad wave at the moment, I seem to be 'processing' a lot of old trauma and its taking all my energy.

Sending calm, healing thoughts to everyone.

[Petu]

wow, what a journey, Im so glad you found out what was happening to you, how did you find out? I know you were on SA, were you googling?

Thanks Iggy, I can't remember how I realized part of my problem was withdrawal, it must have been from reading about it online and then connecting it with my symptoms. It wasn't a light bulb moment, I had been reading posts on SA for about a week and the more I read, the more it seemed to fit, so I stopped 'messing around' with little bits of various medications.

I'm glad you have been feeling a bit better for a couple of days.

[Petu]

Ha! As Caroline says -- a gal right up my alley. Petu, you have been through so much. My hat’s off to you.

I don’t think you need to choose between a Kundalini awakening, psychological stress from all you’ve been through over the last many years, and physical disruption from the many meds. It can be all three things at the same time.


What are you doing that helps you?

Do you have a sense of what you are “supposed” to do with your gifts when you feel better? Are you still interested in the chi-ball?

Did you see this little essay on SA? –

http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.c...-recovery.html

Thank you Sheila for the much needed validation, support and the links. I had actually read your essay before, and found it comforting that someone else saw the connections I did.

I'm still feeling awful at the moment, my brain wont cooperate and its difficult to string words together to form meaningful sentences. I know what I want to say, but I don't seem to have the cognitive energy to make it happen.

Nothing I'm doing seems to be helping to speed this process up or even make me feel better. No matter what I do or don't do, I wake up feeling like I'm being tortured (like other people have mentioned). At some point in the day, usually mid-afternoon to evening, it starts to subside. Wearing a sleep mask and ear plugs to sleep, keeps me asleep a bit longer in the mornings, but sometimes I have to get up early.

I sometimes sit outside in the sun, I sometimes go for a walk around the park, I sometimes walk to buy groceries, I sometimes take a warm bath. Sometimes it makes me feel slightly better, sometimes just serves as a distraction and sometimes makes me feel worse.

The memory of how things have made me feel worse in the past make me nervous to do them again, its like I'm constantly being re-traumatized by trying to do things which are supposed to help, and the unpredictable nature of it all doesn't help.

I'm in a really dark and lonely place at the moment. It feels exactly like descriptions of going through a dark night of the soul experience, so I have no concept of having any gifts or what my future purpose in life might be. Even though there has been some improvement physically, I'm still struggling to find the motivation each day to stay alive and keep hoping.

Chi-ball was one of the parts of my life which has fallen away. I have tried to do it at home by myself a few times, but each time, it has made be feel worse, even more ungrounded than I already am. Its impossible to find anything I'm still interested in, and I used to be interested in almost everything in one way or another.

I'm torn down the middle between thinking this is pathological depersonalization and believing its evolutionary ego dissolution. Swinging back and forth between these two perspectives is difficult. I don't see how I can see it as both though. One of them needs to be 'fixed' and the other one needs to be accepted and allowed.

The few people who remain in my life see me as needing to be fixed or changed. They are waiting for me to 'get better', which is supportive in some ways, but in another way it pulls me from my attempts at acceptance of the current reality.

I listen to a lot of Adyashanti and other spiritual teachers, seems to help to keep me calm, especially in the evenings, when I can allow myself to fall completely into a spiritual perspective, and trust, then its easier to stop the rising terror which comes from seeing myself as being sick and out of control and beyond hope or help.

You wrote that everything is happening together for a reason. I so much want to believe that. But something else which has fallen away is all my beliefs. They used to comfort me, but now I see beliefs and ideas as creations of a mind trying to hold onto an illusion of control. No matter what I think these days, I find myself caught between a rock and a hard place with no way out

It seems that writing helps, now that I've got started, I'm afraid I might never stop. Perhaps it keeps me in my head and distracted from the reality of what I'm actually experiencing. According to some spiritual teachers, being in our heads all the time is not good, we need to be in our hearts...live from feelings rather than thinking. But what if our feelings are neuro-emotions?

I journal, but some of the time even that seems pointless and a distraction from something else I'm 'supposed' to be doing, if I could figure out what that was.

I think I had better stop writing now.

[Moui]

I think it might be harder for those closest to us to see us suffer because they get distressed themselves. Maybe because they are unable to make things better it causes them to feel helpless and frustrated.
Just one thought through the confusion is that you have improved on the path you have been on. Or apparent confusion, because I'm not sure how much difference there is. I'm not knowledgeable in the kundalini, but from what I've gathered reading dp&dr forum and self help books not wrestling with the thoughts and sensations is part of it. I'm no expert on nothing, but I do think that drug induced dissociation (especially WD, maybe not a bad LSD-trip) can be a bit trickier than one triggered in a war veteran, and we need to be more accepting that things will linger around regardless.

Stay strong.

[Sheila]

You're doing just great at stringing words together, but I believe you that it feels hard and not your normal.

For a long time in early w/d it felt like nothing I did helped. And it was so chaotic, I couldn't tell when things were helping or harming. As I got better, more things started to be helpful.

Don't worry at all about not knowing your mission yet. You might find this essay useful at some point. It's about having to tolerate a long time of nothing working and not knowing as part of the process of a descent experience that is creating something very new.

Ugh -- I'm strugging with a new computer and I can't copy the link -- it's the 9 Jan 13 post called The Descent Experience and the Tertium Non Datur on the blog.

Is it something that has to be fixed or allowed? You know the serenity prayer? I believe you should do what you can within reason to support your healing. But, there's going to be a limit to what you can do, and then you have to accept that. As part of a Kundalini awakening, there is a lot of transient pathology. As you know, the theory is that physical and psychological traumas are being purged. You don't want to go overboard and encourage more purge -- you don't seem to have that tendency. And you do want to do what you can to keep yourself as safe and comfortable as possible during it.

It does sound like your spiritual lectures are helping you feel calm and hope, and that's very healing. Lastly, being a highly emotional person myself, I found it life-saving to move into my head a lot during this.

[Petu]

I think it might be harder for those closest to us to see us suffer because they get distressed themselves. Maybe because they are unable to make things better it causes them to feel helpless and frustrated.

Yes, I see this happening, but more than that, I seem to feel this fear and frustration from them like as if it was my own and so it magnifies my own emotions which then increases my own stress, its like a cycle and I just want to avoid some people who are trying to help, who's help I often do need, but for no fault of their own, they cause more harm.

My family is emotionally dysfunctional anyway, my parents are in their 80's, my one sister has her own physical and emotional problems and takes a lot of medication, we used to be close, but over the last few years she has distanced herself from the family and has a new partner.

I've been abandoned a lot through my life, both emotionally and physically, from a young age, so I've got used to being fairly independent in one way, but on a deeper level, there has always been a kind of void which I've been searching to have someone or something fill. But now I've realized very deeply that there is nothing outside of myself which can fill that void.

Thank you for your comments Moui, it really helps to have people to share with who understand.

[Petu]

Ugh -- I'm strugging with a new computer and I can't copy the link -- it's the 9 Jan 13 post called The Descent Experience and the Tertium Non Datur on the blog.

Thank you Sheila, for your comments and the link. I have found the blog post and am about to read it. I hope you get your new computer sorted out soon, technology is great, but it seems to make life more complex and stressful, rather than easier.

How long into your recovery was it before you really started to know that you were improving and going to be ok?

[Sheila]

Petu -- In a way, ignorance was bliss for me. At the start of my w/d it never occurred to me that I wouldn't recover. I don't tend to hypochondria, I had never had a fear of being very sick, so I just assumed I would get better.

As time dragged on, I worried more. But things were always changing, and there were always little improvements, and I immersed myself in research, and it just seemed very, very likely I would recover.

One does have to tolerate a boatload of frustration and not knowing, though. This does take some time for some people (some people turn the corner much quicker) and there is still much we don't know.

What helped me the most was holding it as the modern iteration of the shamanic initiatory illness or the trauma-induced K. awakening -- phenomena which have existed throughout human experience -- and from which people always recover.

[Petu]

Thank you Sheila and everyone who has commented on my thread here. Like many others, I'm feeling very upset about this site closing.

I'm on SA and just made an account with the new forum started by theelt.

link: http://ssriandbenzowdhelp.freeforums.net/

I hope that everyone here can stay in touch and keep supporting each other in some way because I think this forum has a unique kind of understanding and acceptance which seems to go beyond that of other support sites and this is rare with online communities.

I know I haven't written much and only just joined, but I've read so much of the stories here and follow threads, this forum has become like my home and I feel like I know most people who post regularly, like my family, sometimes even more than my real family.

Sheila recently wrote in my thread that everything is happening together to me 'for a reason'. Is the closing of this forum to be added to that list of things happening for a reason? Trying so hard to accept losing all the things in life which provided a sense of security and predictability.

I don't know what else to write. Feeling lost, alone and sad.

[Sheila]

Petu -- You *have* had an undue amount of abandonment in your life. It's been a very hard road. It *is* sort of uncanny that you finally decide to invest in the forum, and it shortly closes. Somehow, the Tao is shoving you in a certain direction. I don't know what it is exactly. I certainly do *not* think you're supposed to be alone and unsupported your whole life and just accept that. It's likely to be more something like *you* having to build the right home / tribe for yourself. I believe you've already done this with raising your children, right? I don't mean you have to do it today, I know you're still very sick. But, somehow, you're being forced to look at what's really important to you and what you really want. You should feel really proud of what you've already done on this front. Did you look at the Tertium essay yet?