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This topic contains 6 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by 
Blake Barton 7 years, 10 months ago.
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August 5, 2017 at 3:48 am #2090
Hello everyone,
For the last few years I’ve been having slight episodes of derealisation in my daily life. For those who are not familiar the term, this is a change in your visual perception where everything looks a little unreal or unrecognizable. For me it is never too strong, but has led to some anxiety around it in the past. Typically it is stronger in anxious or stressful periods of my life but it is a slight chicken and egg situation as it can also cause a lot stress and anxiety for me.
Anyway, I recently rekindled my meditation practise with a lot of zeal and have been more or less enjoying it. Some sits I find very difficult with the amount of restlessness I have but when I can settle down I can often cultivate a lot of joy and it becomes quite pleasurable. This has led to quite a few benefits in my daily life. I would say I am somewhere between stage 1 and 3.
What I have noticed, however, is that when I do have good sits and I can really get into the swing of things, when I get up out of meditation a lot of fear can come up. This is often coupled with a feeling of oversensitivity (e.g all stimulus seems a little loud) and occasionally some derealisation . I’ve been working with the fear and it is getting a little easier to handle however sometimes it can really get quite strong. When this has happened in the past before it has been really disruptive to my practise so I am keen to work through it and not let it derail my practise again.
Does anyone know why this might be? Could this be some kind of purification process? If so I am wondering why it’s happening at this early stage and not in my actually sit? Also have any of you dealt with fear in your practise, any recommendations of ways to deal with it?
Thanks!August 5, 2017 at 8:57 am #2093Hello, Ali
I’m glad to hear how meditation is bringing you joy and that you have found your practice again.
Yes, fear can be considered a purification, and not all purifications happen on the cushion so that you could be having this as you get up and contrast to a non-meditating worldview. How do you come out of your meditation? If you use an alarm and quickly get up when it rings, perhaps come back to a larger awareness before getting up. You could even reverse the 4-step process of bringing attention to the breath so that you move out from the sensations of breath at the nostrils and then of breathing, then the body, then everything in conscious awareness, slowly bringing the mind out from the focused attention of the practice. Stretch, smile and look around before getting up, all to ease the transition.
I cannot personally speak to experiences of derealisation, sorry. But I have worked through some fear.
It helps to have confidence in the practice, the technique, and the teacher, and that with this trust I could feel confident that this was a good thing for me to do and would not harm me so that when fear arose I could logically see the irrationality of it. The mind can be habituated to this confidence and away from fear with time and practice. As you develop more mindfulness you will see fear arise before it takes over and when you do see it arise you can counter it with this confidence to ward it off.
You don’t directly mention if you know what is causing the fear or what you are fearing. If you do know what the fears are you can try some release methods (such as Sedona Method etc.) on them.
If you aren’t quite sure what the fear is, eventually, you will gain insight into the source of the fear and you can work directly on that, but that will be for you to realize through mindfulness practice, which means you have to do the practice (and deal with some fear) in order to get the tools to resolve the source of the fear. It may be like going through the fire to gain the safety on the other side.
Hopefully, you will continue to practice.
Regards
Michael Dunn
Dharma Treasure teacher-in-trainingAugust 5, 2017 at 11:09 am #2099Dear Ali,
Have you had any treatment for derealization? Did the derealization start after you started meditating? Some of the insights you have along the spiritual path could be similar to derealization. I recommend proceeding with caution, because meditation can make certain conditions worse. If in doubt, please contact a mental health professional.
You said you rekindled your meditation practice with a lot of zeal. You might consider backing off on your practice slightly until you can find a level that is more stable for you. A gradual increase in meditation time is generally a smoother process.
Does the fear after meditation have a cause of which you are aware? If not, this could be piti. Some aspects of piti can feel pretty similar to anxiety. You might want to read about piti in The Mind Illuminated. In the early days of my practice, the piti tended to arise after my meditation. Particularly, if I did something that required concentration.
Since you mention that joy is arising in your meditation you could be experiencing piti earlier than expected.
I recommend having the intention to develop more peripheral awareness during you meditation. Notice if there is any fear, anxiety, or piti arising during your meditation. When the fear or anxiety comes up after meditation, the following technique could be helpful to allow you to work with it in a mindful manner.
Emotions are made up of self talk or mental images combined with sensations in the body. For example, most of us have felt “butterflies” in the stomach when nervous or a constriction in the body when angry.
The feeling in the body and the thoughts associated with those emotions tend to multiply, and this can totally overwhelm us. When you are examining emotions it helps to get curious, and to try to be objective (using a mental label can help keep us more objective). For example, when you feel an emotion in your body, is the sensation constant or does it change. Is it a tingling, burning or constricted sensation. When the thoughts arise, label them as “thinking”. If you start to get overwhelmed you can actually say the label out loud.
If the emotion gets too overwhelming to stay with mindfully, you can move your attention to the breath for awhile, and consciously relax on each exhale.
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher
August 9, 2017 at 3:47 am #2122Thank you both for your replies. Yes, perhaps some more detail might be useful. This might be a little long so bear with me..
So I’ve been practising for about 5 years. Maybe 2 years in, often after sitting I would notice a slight shift in my perception where everything seemed slightly hyper-real and a little unrecognizable, nothing too crazy, more of an annoyance. These experiences would come and go and occasionally pop up in my daily life too. I wasn’t sitting for particularly long, (20-30 minutes max) nor getting that concentrated (maybe stage 2-4 in the TMI model). I wondered if it was anything meditation related so I asked a few dharma teachers on retreats but no one recognized it as such. I also had a few experience taking psychedelics the previous summer and wondered if it might be related to haven taken LSD..
Around that time I started to read a lot by Daniel Ingram and found lots of references to similar experiences in relation to dark nights and the path. I spoke to one teacher in that tradition who suggested it might be in fact a dark night. Given how little information I gave him and the fact that my practise had never been that deep I was quite sceptical. Nevertheless, it instilled a little fear in me around the path and where it could take me.
After a few years of a cautious and slightly lazy meditation practise where these experiences would come and go, I decided to sit for a little longer, around 45 minutes, twice a day. I found the experiences suddenly got considerably more intense and consequently I got quite panicked. I immediately stopped practising but the fear and experiences continued for quite sometime. I went to see a doctor to check about the anxiety and these altered states and he immediately recognised my description as derealisation and basically told me that it is highly correlated with anxiety and depression but for some people it becomes more of a persistent issue.
Since then I have been working a lot with the fear and trying to accept it as I am very aware that fear of fear is the one thing that keeps it going. I also found a few people online posting similar experiences of increased derealisation through practise and they said that once they accepted it seemed to go. This seems to somewhat correlate with my experience. However there is a still some doubt about whether it could be something dharma related and still a lot of holding back in my practise as a result.
With regards to what I am fearing when I get up from my sits, sometimes it is from these slight changes in my perception, but more often it is just a general sense of anxiety in my body and mind. It feels like I am over-sensitized and there is a rawness to my experience. I wonder if it could come up due to previous fears of practise or simply that I have had a lot of anxiety in my life that I have not really engaged with and now I am settling down it is coming back up.
August 9, 2017 at 3:47 am #2123With regards to the specifics of what I am doing with my meditation practise this leads to a question I was going to post separately but I will post it here as I think it is relevant…
Yes, I have got a little piti in my practise before but since starting the TMI this is not the direction I have been taking, nor can I get it consistently (I am still at stage 2-3ish). For a long time I was simply following my breath at the nostrils, trying to make it clear as possible, however I then discovered I could really work on calming the body and sweetening the experience (if that make sense) by a range of techniques such as whole body awareness, listening to sounds to calm my thoughts, incorporating some metta or loving-awareness then once the good feelings got going I could focus on them. This was my primary practise for a while and I felt was really useful for my anxiety as these good feelings would remain for a while once I got up from my sit. I could also occasionally tap into them in my daily life. The downside of this practise was I would sometimes get a little bit confused about where to place my attention, especially if there was restlessness around (which is a recurrent problem or me) which would then lead to a little monkey mindedness and doubt. Also, sometimes I would also end up in a slight fuzzy pleasant haze without too much clarity.
TMI appealed to me as it is quite structured and made me realise how much I needed to work on stable attention. It also appealed to me that Culadasa really emphasises joy in practise. Working through the stages I am however finding it a little difficult to follow the TMI method without it getting a little dry.
Basically, I can get a little joy going in the first 2 steps of the 4 step transition by using the aforementioned techniques, but I find as soon transition to the nostrils I get a lot more clarity to the experience but this joy diminishes. That is not to say that it is unpleasant to follow the breath at the nostrils, especially if I work on keeping my awareness wide, but it certainly isn’t calming like my previous practise.
I wonder if I should spend more time on the 4 point transition to make sure my body and mind is really calm before moving to the nostrils and then try and maintain these feelings in my peripheral awareness? or should i simply see it as a separate practise. I hope this all makes sense! Thanks
August 11, 2017 at 11:02 am #2131Hi Ali,
This is in reply to your follow-up post about derealization. It sounds like it could be a result of your meditation practice and/or taking LSD. Psychedelics and meditation can accelerate each other, which can cause difficulties for some people. One effect of meditation is to alter the way that we view reality. When our view of reality changes it can be scary, especially if it happens before we have developed powerful mindfulness and samatha.
You downplay your meditation time and level, but some people are just much more sensitive to meditation than others.
Please see Appendix F in TMI for a discussion of the Dark Night. You can decide for yourself if this resonates with your experience. One key to working with the Dark Night is to continue practicing and developing your mindfulness even though it may be difficult. However, as I mentioned in my previous post you want to find a level of practice that is not overwhelming.
I will respond to your other post separately.
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher
August 13, 2017 at 10:23 am #2133Dear Ali,
Working with joy could be helpful for you when working with anxiety. As you have seen, a joyful mind is not typically anxious. I recommend spending time in the first four steps cultivating the pleasant, including joy. It may not continue when you go to the breath at the nostrils, and that is OK. You don’t really have control over that. I would be careful with “trying” to keep the joy going.
However, as you noted, if you keep a more spacious awareness it is more likely that you will be aware of pleasant sensations. Especially if you have that intention. Being aware of pleasant sensations can make the mind more joyful.
Developing attentional stability is important, but it is perhaps more important to develop the awareness capabilities of your mind. When working with difficult emotions our attention often gets hijacked by them.
I recommend regularly incorporating loving-kindness meditation into your routine. It is detailed in Appendix C of TMI. Culadasa has guided meditations on loving-kindness and developing joy available here. http://feeds.feedburner.com/Culadasa
He also has a series of talks and meditations from a retreat entitled Joy and Meditation which are available in the same location.
Please feel free to keep us informed about your practice.
Blake – Dharma Treasure Teacher
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