Losing my mind… in public

Sensitive Seekers! Graham here.

I had a real moment of panic the other day.

In the middle of a day-long meditation retreat no less. 

Impressive.

I was lying on a cushioned mat in a cavernous church hall, covered in my fluffiest blanket. Surrounding me were thirty other meditators (also in fluffy blankets).  

It was the end of a full day of restful meditation.

And I was not at all prepared for what happened next. 

Comrades

‘Imagine the air around you is friendly,’ our teacher had said earlier that day, in the first guided meditation. 

‘What would it be like if your skin could soften to the world?’

I’d been playing with this all day. Feeling into the idea that all those strangers in this room were my fellow seekers. Friendly souls on the path. 

It was such a departure from my usual default setting, that the world is a dangerous place. That strangers are not to be trusted.     

As the day went on, my body started to really feel this camaraderie. A feeling of being at home in the world, which I often find so elusive.

Letting go

So when the final meditation of the day began, I was in a state of quiet openness, defences down. Ready for a relaxing finish to a big day.

But I was in for a wild ride. 

The teacher’s words floated over me, lying on the meditation mat. I felt a surge of wellbeing, as if I could not only soften the boundary between myself and the world, but let it go completely. 

My mind was spacious, my awareness resting deep in my body as it continued to let go, melting into the shared space between me and those other fellow seekers.

Then a simple thought.

‘Don’t let go too much.’

And a sudden burst of fear.

The thought that I was losing control, and there would be consequences... 

The thing is, my mind can go to some intense places

Some context. Since my early 20s, I’ve been susceptible to unexpected altered states. 

It started with one bad drug experience, at age 23. A single time smoking pot that, for whatever reason, really left its mark.

Since then, I have occasional flashbacks that are often just like being high again, except there’s no drugs involved. Experiences where time and space seem to fall apart and I’m filled with terror, out of nowhere.

Sometimes this lasts a few minutes. Sometimes it lasts a few hours. 

The first time it happened, at age 23, it lasted for months on end. 

(Well, that sounds fun.)

There’s no real rhyme or reason to what sets me off. In the early days it could be anything. A whiff of someone else smoking pot. Or, in one case, a particularly trippy Christopher Nolan film.

(Good movie. Terrifying post-credits sequence... for me at least.)

Always watchful

These days, these altered states happen less often, but they can still pack a real punch.

So there’s a part of me that’s always watchful, always vigilant for any signs it might be happening again. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as any out-of-the-ordinary mind-state can cause a panicked spiral into that strange, scary headspace. 

Back in February last year, I discovered these experiences could be brought on by meditation alone. A single meditation left me in that time-and-space-less place for three whole days (ending with me making really good friends with a local tree).

So... why did I not consider this possibility when signing up to a meditation retreat?

The funny thing is, it didn’t even cross my mind that this could happen in a hall surrounded by thirty people. 

This past year has been so crazy, I’d kind of forgotten that meditation alone could do this to me.

Plus, I meditate every day, and it’s usually my safe space. 

The only other meditation retreat I’ve been on left me feeling more at peace than I had felt for years. So I’d signed up for this latest one without thinking twice.

Comrades no more

And now here I was in that church hall, in the middle of the day-retreat’s last guided meditation, convinced I was losing my grip on reality again.

That whisper in my mind:

‘Don’t let go too much.’

The self-vigilance returning in full force (far too late to be useful). The legacy of all those other times my mind had opened too much. A kind of PTSD for my own brain.

That one, simple thought. ‘Don’t let go too much.’ It was enough to flip my whole experience from relaxing, harmonious, full-bodied warmth, to….

‘Oh shit I’m about to go to the scary place again, surrounded by thirty total strangers.’

Suddenly these fellow meditators weren’t my comrades at all, they were spectators to my imminent unraveling. Thirty witnesses who could soon attest to the fact that I am an actual lunatic.

‘I can’t leave,’ I thought in my panicked state, ‘because then they’ll all know what’s happening.’

(This made sense at the time. Don’t ask me how.)

But I couldn’t keep feeling this way either. I had to stop the spiral.

The ground is my friend

I did the only thing I could think of in that heightened moment. I stopped listening to the guided meditation instructions, and instead focused on the feeling of the ground underneath me. 

The simple weight of my body.

It helped, a little. The spiral slowed.

I was still filled with fear, but at least it was no longer accelerating.

Unexpected honesty 

The meditation finished, and the teacher invited people to share how it was for them. 

‘Not a chance,’ I thought. 

I was feeling so many feelings at this point - far too many to name in public. Confusion. Fear that it wasn’t over yet. And now, crashing in on top of them all, shame, that I was the only one having such a big reaction to a simple meditation exercise. 

Someone else put their hand up to share, describing how they’d felt so relaxed they’d almost fallen asleep. This only strengthened my resolve not to share.

But then the teacher said something that changed my mind. 

‘Whatever’s happening for you after that meditation,’ she told the class as a whole, ‘it can help to speak from that place. It’s one way to integrate the experience.’

I pictured myself leaving the church hall in a few minutes time, when the retreat was over. The thought of leaving this place, still feeling as overwhelmed and raw as I was feeling right that moment. This was an even scarier thought than speaking up. 

So I raised my hand.

And with a shaky voice I told the room what was happening for me. 

‘I feel very… overwhelmed.’

I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, even the teacher. But I was honest.

I described the fear, the shame. The feeling that this experience might keep spiralling into something bigger after I left the retreat, as it has for me before.

Unexpected comforts

‘How do you feel now?’ the teacher asked, when I was done talking.

‘Vulnerable,’ I replied, truthfully. 

I felt extremely exposed. 

The teacher stood up and grabbed two heavy, sand-filled meditation cushions, and brought them to me. ‘Put these on your legs,’ she said, ‘and just hold them to you. It sounds weird but it’ll help.’

It did sound weird. And it did help. 

Again, the weightiness. The unexpected comforts of gravity. 

But also, a feeling like I at least had some armour to hold against me, to cover me up in this exposed state.

Comrades again

More people were invited to share their experience, and thank god for the next person that spoke. 

She’d been sitting right behind me, and raised her hand to say, ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but because you said you’re feeling vulnerable… I felt really overwhelmed in that meditation too.’

That’s all she wanted to say.

I managed to steal a furtive glance at her, our eyes meeting. A moment cutting through the shame and overwhelm. 

Minutes earlier, when the panic had first set in, I’d lost all sense of camaraderie with anyone else in the room. I’d reverted to that familiar feeling of lonely desperation (‘it’s me against the world’). This is a painful shift. I know I am a particularly sensitive human, but it hurts to be reminded of it so forcefully.

And yet, just one person saying, ‘oh, me too’… It was so important, in that oh-so-vulnerable moment. 

We had one last break before the final wrap up of the day. I went and found that woman to say a shy thank you. To say how helpful it had been to hear from her. 

She said the same thing in return.

Gareth

The retreat ended, and I drove home still feeling quite overwhelmed. 

What do I do when I’m a raw nerve, feeling every emotion at once? 

I call my mate Gareth. 

Walking by the creek, I told him what happened. And in speaking to him, I realised there was one feeling I hadn’t articulated in the room, one feeling that had felt inadmissible. 

Anger. 

I was pissed. 

I was pissed that here I was doing something supposedly good for my state of mind - a nice, relaxing meditation retreat - and it left me feeling even more overwhelmed than before. 

But underneath that was an older anger. Echoes of well-worn experience. 

Of being the most sensitive kid in the class. Of being overwhelmed by big, scary experiences in my twenties, that no one seemed to know how to help with.

That old familiar thought.

‘They don’t know how to look after me.’

And it pissed me off. 

‘Where was the warning label?’ I ask Gareth, incredulously. ‘How do these meditation retreats not have more supports in place for if someone has that kind of reaction??’

‘Well they do have a warning label,’ Gareth reminds me, gently. 

‘These things always say something like, “if you experience altered states, you need to be careful with meditation retreats”.’ 

He’s right, I concede. 

‘Yeah... But those warnings also piss me off’, I say, and we both just laugh.

I am the fruitcake

‘It just hurts’, I tell him. ‘I feel like even in a room full of people seeking something, a room full of people in pain, when it comes down to it I’m still the fruitcake.’ 

‘Yeah. You are!’ here says, with a smile in his voice.

We laugh again.

I can’t do this alone

That night, and the next few days, I feel very tender. I take it easy, at Gareth’s insistence. 

And I feel strangely like I’ve accomplished something. As if I’ve run a marathon or something, instead of just freaked out at a meditation retreat. 

I know there’s something in these big, overwhelming experiences for me. It’s part of the reason I keep having them. I could have quit meditation for good after the first time this happened, but I haven’t.

So the question for me becomes, how do I continue searching for the gold, without just completely overwhelming myself?

And I think the answer lies in finding other people who can help me make space for these experiences. Not necessarily guides who can tell me what the hell they mean, but fellow travellers who can remind me: there’s nothing wrong with being overwhelmed sometimes.

Fellow fruitcakes

It’s Gareth, on the phone for a much-needed chat.

It’s another friend who I text the whole saga to the next day, and we end up just riffing on who’s the bigger fruitcake. 

(I think it ended in a tie.)

I don’t have many of these people in my life. Other souls who, like me, feel like they’re usually the most sensitive person in the room.

Friends like that can take years to find. And even longer to be fully, truly honest with. 

But god do they help, when things get weird. 

So whether you’ve found yours or not yet, here’s to our fellow fruitcakes. Like the woman behind me at the meditation retreat, just knowing they’re out there can mean so much.

And you know what? That’s why we started this wee club for people with big feelings - so even if you haven’t found your fellow fruitcakes yet, you can know we’re out there.

Proudly weirding up the place.

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