Healing from numbness and apathy

[7luminaries]

Barnacle...good advice and sharing here. Your progress may or may not be as fast as Ilovecats -- but don't despair. Sometimes the path back to centre is longer and slower than you may have experienced in the past. Have faith...it may even take the better part of a year or two to fully reconnect from a different, healthier, and sustainable place. I have gone through something since last autumn, which in turn was building for at least a year prior (off and on small periods of numbness which continued back to back).

As background, there was a deep and beloved friendship in which I experienced a deep soul love but also great challenges...and lot of pain, made worse by my own serious need for grounded, personal connection which wasn't being met there. Bottom line, I overextended myself in the day-to-day communications for years, and it caught up with me really badly.

And now it's been another 3/4 of a year, to the day, I believe, when something literally just broke inside me and I had to step back. I spent the first few months releasing anger and then I came to the longest period of numbness I've ever experienced. After another 3 or 4 months, the physical pain and the emotional pain, together, began to be released...very slowly. It was ages before I could cry, and then just momentarily. The channels of my heart felt dry and cracked, as if I couldn't contain my pain and my emotion...it just ran through the cracks. I felt I broke inside again a few months back...because I had no other way to even release the pain. It was so embedded.

This period of painful release also took a few months. I had exactly those physical symptoms you describe -- all of them, along with real physical pain in and around the chest, the worst and most sustained I'd ever felt. All from repressed trauma. Letting it out was a slow, jagged, painful, and rather torturous process. Everything was new and strange this time, due to the duration and severity of emotional fracturing and numbness I'd experienced.

Finally, after 9 months of forced retreat and processing, I can feel that the fullness and depth of my emotions are beginning to return (for lack of a better expression). I had a dream in which I was mourning someone else's loss and talking with them, and I felt everything again, in all its richness and texture -- as usual. I woke up this morning realising that the progress I have made over the last few days is significant, like rounding the bend after months of climbing. There was a new depth to my core again and the fear and numbness didn't kick in so much...I am finding my way back to centre again from a differnt place, as a different person :). And you will too.

I will say that this is directly involved to my own intentions and concrete efforts regarding love and healing. Specifically, for me, reaching out to this beloved friend in spirit and in the waking world. Even though I've not heard back from them in the waking world, the purity of my intention has begun to built a bridge back to my centre and has released my emotions from their cage. They are caged for as long as we fear them or otherwise cannot hold them due to broken channels. I am still overcoming that residual fear that I could not trust myself...that I pushed myself too far and didn't respect my own needs for grounding. This is a fear that is new to me and that I'd never felt before. It's a real drag, LOL.

Extending love (in ways that respect and honour your boundaries and will not damage you) is your own way of showing yourself that you have faith in your own ability to carry and feel your emotions within. Extending love toward others (even if just in prayer and meditation but ideally also in person) and toward yourself are key. But the key is to be grounded first, in order to sustain your extension of love.

Some things that reliably help are yoga and walking, as well as regular in-person engagement and communication with others who treat you with courtesy and kindness -- and ideally sincere interest and caring, even. Yoga nidre and other gentle yoga are very good practices for grounding and sustaining extensions of love to self and others. Both yoga and walking are very grounding. It is nearly always a lack of grounding that results in what I call fractured or broken channels...of the heart. Pets can also provide this critical grounded love and heart healing, as can engaged service to others - of nearly any kind.

Don't give up on yourself. Continue to love and honour yourself and others in ways that are grounded, healthy, and sustainable for you. Continue to reach out and connect in ways that are grounded, healthy, and sustainable for you. If you honour your ingrained need for grounded, loving connection and communication -- if you honour and care for who you really are at core -- then you will once again be allowed back in to the fullness of your heart centre. Don't worry about how long it may take...know that you are learning so much about precisely how to better honour and care for that heart centre of yours going forward. And that is worth all of it

Peace & blessings
7L

[masterdojo]

Originally Posted by Barnacle

I'm experiencing the most extreme emotional detachment (inability to feel anything) I have ever experienced in my life lately. Its occuring alongside apathy, anhedonia, lack of awareness (not very aware of my surroundings or self, like being drunk or sedated), no desires or will, no sex drive, trouble breathing. And theres this sense that under the numbness there is something wrong. It feels like being drained of life force.

This really got bad after a series of ayahuasca ceremonies, I was numb through the last ceremonies but my body went into convulsions and screamed and cried like there was something really painful and scary under the numbness. I had dreams which warned me of this coming, when I started feeling the numbness coming on I thought it was DEEP-REST-ion, that it was something okay, and in a dream I saw an image of a chasm, at the bottom of the chasm there wasn't a chair (which would symbolise deep rest), there was a coffin. This told me that its not deep rest, its death. I saw in my dreams often this theme of impending death.

For a year, I was experiencing some of the highest highs of my life (and also the lowest lows), and lately I just flatlined. Theres a paranoia there that the shaman I drank ayahuasca might be a bad shaman and targeted me since I was in a vulnerable place. And other paranoias involving entities and energy vampirism.

Is there a way to recover from this? Its been difficult to meditate lately due to the numbness.

Sounds like you're in a bad place. I would tell any negative energies to leave your body now in the name of jesus

[enforcer]

Originally Posted by Crystal Ambassador

I've noticed you've been putting out a lot of threads lately, many of them referring to the same situation. I'm a bit curious as to why this is, since it seems to be that each time you open another thread, you add a little more description to your situation. I'm trying to understand why you keep starting threads, instead of trying out the suggestions from other people for a while first?

A troubled soul and very good advice from you.
he cant hit back he is conditioned to take punches,he wants instant fix super glue,he doesnt understand the sword is heated and beaten to shape before quenching to form hard steel a weapon against the darkest of beings,the darkest ever imaginable.or alternatively .....................that blank you fill without naivety.
what does one do who would not have access to shamans,crystals ayuhasca energy workers all other tools but your faith,he doesnt understand punishment from dark beings not fitting in their agenda.theres stuff coming ,even i dont understand if i will be ready but then again faith is all i have to hold on to,like my heart beats without me thinking about it its catered for,he also doesnt understand it takes many to bring him down.yet he still standing.
in this sentence there is a key of being shaped and finally being cooled down.what goes down must come up be a ball,when hit down bounce back up,hit down bounce back up hit down bounce back up.be a ball,you are hit down bounce back up.
Let me give you my perspective,a syrian refugee offered you grapes,you felt darkness(darkness does not like unity and love shown) why,because maybe he sensed darkness offered you grapes(your hesitancy is understood from experience and not being naive in accepting food from strangers)then a woman starts shouting help me and runs away from you not toward you(distraction),you felt like helping but not being helped by the syrian refugee?
do demons think an exorcist or anyone who shows love to you is bad?
is soda good for your health and its marketed and cheaper than water.what is good water or soda?yet we are tricked to go for the soda!!!!
think about people in worse off conditions and environments than you much worse,what about child soldiers what about children in warzones,what about child trafficking or children whose body parts are harvested.Use that anger to bounce backup,stand against the bullies but not consumed by it,forget what i told you about anger,use it to be motivated.what about buying food for the homeless and sharing a meal with them,have a smile a chat a few jokes.
maybe il post my situation i cant grasp and you can give me fresh perspective horse.we all got the pieces of the puzzle,some hold more the greedy ones.
How about you offer me some grapes hahahaha or someone .Thats a right hook delivered by you to dark beings more than most exorcist can deliver in one sitting.i like the red grapes non gmo organic hahahahahhaha,any will do im hungry,theres that person who needs the grapes offered by a stranger,go find them.

[7luminaries]

Horse...are you still posting here? How are you doing these days with healing from your numbness and apathy?

Peace & blessings
7L