Hey, thanks much for giving so much detail about your experiences. That always helps. I am glad you got past all the panic attacks and agoraphobia. And good luck with the new emotional work you are doing now.

I'll write a lot too now lol, you don't need to respond to all of it!, I just want to get it out of my head because you helped me think about it.

And glad you found the container description interesting, and I like your image too about the fireworks , I do sometimes try to see/observe stuff in my mind, so yeah I see how it would be a bit of mindfulness.

I just have one last specific question. The irrational obsessive thoughts, when you did the method, did they just go away when you were sitting with the feelings, lying down on the floor and whatnot? Nothing else was needed for that? Did you need any mental processing or did you just simply have to keep doing that, being with the feelings?

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So to answer your post... You asked if maybe my intense feelings are panic attacks. I am not sure, as I don't have bodily symptoms like breathing trouble or heart racing. When I took Xanax to be able to sleep under high stress and didn't like side effects and decided to withdraw from it a bit too quickly, that is when I had a LSA for 1-2 days. LSA = limited symptom panic attack, with fewer symptoms than a full panic attack. I would say Xanax withdrawal did intensify some of the very unpleasant feelings and sensations and I had more intense emotions too.

So I don't know if it's panic, I just have the intense emotion(s) for a second before I back away from them. Or other unpleasant sensations. I'm sure labelling or otherwise identifying them would be a big step for me though. (Other than, "distress", "pain" or "terror" or "doom", sometimes I can identify those.) Or at least somehow being able to see that these are just whatever emotions that were shut down before (like they were for you) and that they don't really matter. I'm sure if I could convince myself about that, that would help with decreasing their intensity. I don't know if I need more mental processing before I could see it that way even if this is the truth.

The biggest problem for me with all that is that I can't even distract myself with something useful, some problem to take care of or anything. It'll be too much emotion and too much pain so I put off a lot of tasks because of that actually.

So to be able to start doing all these tasks, I just get obsessive trying to figure out what's inside me that makes me have these intense emotions. I journal a lot for that reason. I would say I've been dealing with this for years now and it's got a bit better, maybe thanks to the journalling and psychoeducation I received/sought out, I don't know. But it's still interfering with my days. And medication did nothing either.

So I'll see if I can try getting into the emotions more, I think I'm just concerned about having to tolerate emotional thoughts coming up if I went into feeling all this stuff. I get it that I could somehow just let those thoughts be but it's kind of hard if they are like so strong as to be really "loud" (not literally loud).

I know you said for you what worked was lying down and enduring the feelings that way, but I think the only way for me to get into these emotions if I keep active, and not shut down, so like I'm going to try and focus on how I don't have to do tasks or work so fast, because it's already its own big job and effort if I have to keep tolerating these emotions while keeping active with work and other tasks to be done. I think this thought helps. So I've already tried to do work last evening with this attitude after reading your earlier post and I kind of liked it even if it was very painful too.

You described some of your earlier anxious thoughts and that was interesting too. Because those strongly emotional thoughts, when they do come out, they are just as irrational. They may not always be about anxious what if's about whether x will happen, but they are similarly irrational. I've been trying to practice noticing that quality about them and telling myself with confidence that no matter how loud or extremely convincing these emotional thoughts try to be, it's still all bull****. It's helped a bit too already, but I did have to learn to notice that quality first. Kind of like you get the feeling that they are absurd, and too strongly negative so it cannot be real. Make any sense?

Where you mention that these feelings and sensations won't kill you so you welcome them to beat you up.... I think I totally understand what you mean, but for me I have this problem that some of the sensations are so intense that they are half numbed out, and I have a problem with recognising them as of emotional origin at all. The intense emotions are actually easier for me than these half numbed out sensations, because actual emotions are less unpleasant to me. When they are not numbed out then I am fine and feel grounded with the sensations, then my only problem is if they are too intense/strong.

But the half numbed out sensations, they are actually scary because of how I have trouble reading the sensations themselves. I'm observing there too over time how some of them are fluctuating, randomly on/off or showing up in different, random places, so they can't be physical problems. I do get bad thoughts lol, about them possibly being physical even if I know some of these thoughts are irrational. Anyway where I do have the biggest problem is when they feel extremely unpleasant like it's a numbed out feeling of searing or sharp pain or stuff like that. That's when I really really don't like the stuff. And maybe it is not sharp or other pain and maybe I just have trouble recognising the sensation because of the numbing, I don't know. Or maybe it is actually pain. God only knows.

And I recently noticed if I can accept some emotional feeling I'm trying to block out so hard, then (some of) these sensations can start flowing and become actual sensation and not so numbed out and then it doesn't feel like pain so much, and not so extremely unpleasant, much more tolerable. But I have to get realllly lucky to find such feelings to accept. This is a long story, I had some bad things happen to me, and some of these feelings get intrusive even if other people would naturally find them enjoyable.

(When I mean they get flowing I mean that they are no longer blocked so they are able to come and go away, it's hard to explain, but when they are blocked and get in my way, that's when it's a problem for me. When they are flowing and not blocked, I still just see glimpses on/off but I can see that they are not blocked or cause too much pain.)

I don't know if that made sense. Maybe you or someone else can comment on it, or maybe the descriptions and observations are useful to someone else.

I totally understood your rag doll description and it was interesting. I think even if I get as far as you with staying with the feelings (while doing something else, I think just lying down or sitting passively wouldn't have these emotions moving enough, just how I seem to work), I'll probably imagine it like I'm standing my ground and the emotions just being around or trying to attack me and me having to hold them at least a little. That's how I've tried it a little bit before. I do seem to need to feel that I remain in control and active. With the numbed sensations I don't know what I can do, though. For now, those are too blocked to get them going.

As for listening in, thanks, I think I understand that too, I think I'm more like I just totally avoid. That's where I recognise the tension the book talked about, trying to get away from the emotions and trying to keep them under control to the extreme. But for me the tension is entirely about avoiding, it seems. A lot of this stuff is extremely blocked out for me like I said.

It was encouraging that for you it was only 2 weeks for the worst part. And I do have free hours in my days to spend on this. If I manage to practice all this while doing some task, I hope it won't take me too long either to have all the horribly strong emotions and sensations reduced to a tolerable level. And reducing their unpleasant quality too, I guess.

Just feeling like, I don't know how I'll be able to find and accept some feelings inside that make those numbed out sensations less numbed, more readable as "normal" sensations, and more naturally flowing. I don't know how I'll get them going and not blocked at all. They are a bit better since I stopped Xanax though, while doing Xanax withdrawal that made them worse for sure. No longer need Xanax anyway as I dropped & solved some of the stress too, thank god.

All in all... yeah I think you are right that everyone is different and that I have to work out my own approach with how I can actually spend time with emotions. Keeping active and feeling in control does seem to allow them to come up more so I can just decide to give more space to them while doing tasks, like try to slow down and relax a bit while working, doing tasks, so that'll be part of my approach.