“I am going crazy!”
“I am terrified I am going to lose my mind!”
“AM I going crazy?”
“Is it Kundalini or is it crazy?”
These are big questions that I hear commonly from students, from clients, from people commenting on my blog posts.
Kundalini, especially in the early phases can make us feel like we are going crazy, and put our psychological structure and our mind under enormous pressure.
You are presented with a large amount of internal phenomena, both physical and energetic, as well as often a lot of psychological turbulence caused by rapid emotional release, trauma processing and general upheaval.
None of this makes sense in terms of our mainstream education about who we are as human beings, and about what makes us a human.
Our mainstream understanding of ourselves is that “I” am the only thing in my body. I am completely in charge of myself. And if something comes along to disrupt that state of affairs “I” can feel like I am losing control, and/or losing my mind.
The sense of going crazy is most common at the start of a Kundalini awakening especially if it is volatile, violent, or driven by psychedelics. Or perhaps if Kundalini has been activated by external circumstances that cause her to surge heavily through your systems.
All these kinds of Kundalini awakenings force a lot of excess energy into your system, your nerves, your brain. The more kundalini energy that is released in your body, the more intense or extreme the amount of processing and the speed of processing of your personal history will be.
When Kundalini is surging or processing at a fast rate it can be terrifying especially if you are not aware that you are going through a kundalini awakening! This will cause people to feel like they are losing their mind.
The other problem is that there is only so much processing a nervous system and a brain can manage at one time, especially at the beginning of an awakening journey when the body is just learning to process personal history, discharge energy and release the past. It has training wheels on, and does not have skills to deal with this surge, yet Kundalini will push the body beyond its capacity – especially if she has been activated in a difficult way.
This process and experience can bring up all sorts of terror, fear, anxiety, panic, trauma, vulnerability and sometimes collapse. This is why it is so important, as quickly as possible, to stabilize your Kundalini and calm it down.
So if you feel like you are going crazy, or reading this and you remember being there, know that it is incredibly normal to feel that way. The amount of pressure on your psyche, the speed of change being asked of you, the incredible volume of sensation and feelings and energy change in your body, can all lead to feelings of inadequacy.
Kundalini awakening has another surprise, with the challenging and the sudden experience that you are not the only one in charge of your life any more. Not only is there the distinct impression that there is something else alive in you that feels both ‘you’ and not you at the same time, but in fact this other influence can sometimes be using bodily sensations to communicate with you so intensely that it can feel like you are losing control.
So this ‘something’ new requires you to begin to come into a relationship with it even though, prior to awakening, you had no idea that it was there or even existed.
The fear of going crazy can be especially frightening if you had had mental health struggles in the past, or have a vulnerability around mental health diagnoses, PTSD, have struggled with anxiety or depression, or unprocessed trauma – for those of us who have suffered from any of these things we carry a vulnerability or fear of them coming back again. I write this wanting you to know that this is completely understandable, can even be seen as ‘normal’ within an extraordinary situation.
Mental health challenges, finding our way through them and out the other side, are an enormous accomplishment. We do everything we can not to return there again, or we find ourselves in situations where we have needed or continue to need medications to function in the world, and lead good lives.
As I have written before, there is a very important place for medication in awakening and you can read about that here.
For those of you reading this who have such histories, I hold you in my heart because this was also me. Me and my complex PTSD. Me and my Panic. Me and my Wild Anxiety. Me and my Trauma Volcano bringing up multitudes of flashbacks – which then intersected with Kundalini a year later.
So, how to work with this?
Firstly, it is enormously helpful to begin creating a psychological perspective on our experiences. To create a supportive and loving friendliness to what we are going through.
It is really important to build a correct understanding and a clear attitude about what is happening to you because this can act as the container for our mind when it is terrified, for our body when it is shaking. For our system when it is being broken down as part of purification and for the things we cannot easily explain in the moment.
We need to become our own coach, and/or find a safe community, teacher, or guide who can hold space for you and help you to build correct insight an understanding about what is happening to you
I find when people are given a correct map of where they are and what is happening, the mind calms down a lot. We can see where we are in the process and what is happening to us, and this abates where we are, correctly labels the experiences and processes of Kundalini, and helps us realize that instead of being crazy we actually make sense.
We are making sense of ourselves inside a constantly changing process, a mysterious process, and something that we cannot easily control.
I call this ‘finding and building ground’, building fundamental ground for hosting a stronger relationship with your Kundalini process.
Reassurance is also really important. In the early phases when we are going through so much change and everything feels crazy, having reassurance from those who are further down the path, from a loving community or guide who can help you to feel safe, or find safety inside the process is very calming, and it can help to begin to build confidence that you are OK and that things are going to be OK, even if at the time things are still very hard.
If you have a lot of trauma content coming up it is extremely helpful to get support from a trained therapist, psychologist or trauma worker who can help you to process, unpack and unfold the content that is surfacing that needs to be addressed. This can bring huge relief and bring healing to our psyche as we begin to make sense of things we have not thought about recently.
Those who have done therapy and work on their trauma will find that this prior work will be a deep resource for them – as it brings structure, skills and ability to work with and hold down what is going on. It also holds the knowledge that trauma can be understood, healed and completed.
Again, if you feel that you are not coping and find support from your medication, know that medication can be very helpful to help you stabilize and give you valuable space to build your psychological capacity to meet the process occurring inside you. Medication supports you to build your confidence in these experiences, and with that confidence, can allow you to titrate off medication as you recover.
The most important thing to know, and if needed, to cling to is the knowledge that it won’t always be like this. At some point it will stabilize and the more she does that the more your confidence and well-being will return, and you will feel more in charge of your life again, though of course not entirely.
I have seen people and spoken to people in all levels of psychological distress, in psychiatric wards, in extremely fiery Kundalini states, deeply dissociated from psychedelics; I have worked with people on extensive psychiatric medication and they all emerged out the other side. They all stabilized and transformed, and they were able to slowly soften into their own awakening journey with more confidence and ease. Each one of them has found their own peace, returned to careers old or new, rebuilt wellbeing and reconnected with life with a fresh, generous perspective. And you can too!
Has Kundalini made you feel like you are going crazy, too?
Please share your thoughts below, we love hearing and learning from you!
