One thing I have noticed about closet psychics is our extreme sensitivity to environmental influences, other peoples moods, stated or underlying can really effect us. For this reason many sensitives do not like crowded public places, where they might experience a lot of psychic noise or other input overload, creating restlessness or neurotic behaviors; While for others, like me, this kind of extreme over stimulation can become like white noise and help clear the slate, returning us to a neutral space where we can hear and feel our OWN thoughts and feelings again. Very useful after a few days of extreme closeness with small groups or one on one interactions.
We often experience other peoples moods or thought patterns as if they were our own, and with out training and a lot of compassion, or a lot of trial and error experience it can be tough to tell the difference in the first half of our lives. This can manifest as nervousness, extreme anxiety, depression, and a number of other psychoses. But the cause is over sensitivity to others. Maybe its autism, maybe its psychotic paranoid schizophrenia. However we do or do not get diagnosed, the cause is the same if we are indeed a closet psychic. We unintentionally feel and sense the emotions and thought process patterns of everyone around us indiscriminately! With out training we cannot shut it off.
So for some of us medication can help us to function in the rest of the world. It can lift the edge off the severe anxiety, help us focus instead of feeling scatterbrained, and allow us to actually follow verbal conversations without responding solely to the underlying emotional energy of the speaker or the room. In short, the right medications can help us gain some sense of control, over our own internal responses to our often, otherwise chaotic perceptions. The right counselor and med combination can see us through some deep turmoil, and land us in a place of feeling much less overwhelmed with everyday life and necessary contact.
So what happens if we don't take the medications, cant afford them or forget them? In my own case I notice with in about 12 to 15 hours. My mood and mental state will disintegrate back to old levels of inadequacy and feelings of being overwhelmed and unable to cope with basic daily interactions. My ability to focus disappears, and my compassion and empathy rule even when it might Not be in my own best interests. Without proper medications because of a propensity against them, or a denial of need for them, these people tend to self medicate. We have all done it. A good stiff drink or three, that soon becomes daily, chain smoking cigarettes to calm the mind or emotions, or smoking lots of marijuana away from the party. Some people get into more extreme things like LSD, mushrooms, peyote, or even methamphetamine’s, cocaine and PCP.
The list goes on, but for closet psychics the story and root cause is the same. Trying to cope with feeling way more then our own share of reality, or trying to drown out the cacophony of voices in our heads, terrified that if we tell someone they will call us crazy. Unfortunately many of these drugs increase ones sensitivity to others creating a physiologically positive feedback loop, that reinforces itself and is detrimental to the already overwhelmed closet psychic seeking escapism. The upside is that now one is not “crazy” for hearing other peoples thoughts, now one is merely a drug addict, and can write it all off as a “bad trip”.
But this is rarely the case. More and more people feel overwhelmed with modern life IF they are not completely, emotionally shut down to it all. Perhaps this increased sensitivity to one another is part of our human evolution. We can't keep killing each other when we hear the thoughts and feel the feelings of our fellow beings. At some point we must stop because it truly makes us crazy to continue any act of cruelty or violence, it rips the soul. And divides us from ourselves. For it has long been said we are all one. If we are one we must respect and preserve one another well being, and being a psychic will become so accepted and commonplace after 2012, that it will no longer have meaning.
So how do we handle the transition? First we must give due respect and due credit to those struggling with their own psychic or empathic abilities. We must create a safe space for people to explore and speak about these kinds of topics as they feel ready to open to it and seek support. While the average counselor psychiatrist and psychoanalyst will give their own negative-sounding labels to this phenomenon, and rush to medicate us, we must not allow these labels to become our identities, we must consider that these diagnosis are from very rigid, and old, limited schools of thought. While these singular opinions may be useful on the journey, they can also be detrimental to our self esteem if they overly identify with a Freudian philosophy. Seek instead a Jungian psychologist.
We must strive to support one another. If we are over whelmed we must seek mentoring from closet psychics who are further along in their coping skills then we are; those quiet individuals who still have heart and soul yet will speak about these subjects to our own comfort level. They can share their stories and recovery sequences with us, they can help us identify our selves in the cacophony of input that pours in, and most importantly they can share skills for shutting out or turning down the volume, so we can balance ourselves and tell the difference between our own emotions and those of others. It takes practice, but it is so necessary. Some of us learned the hard way, but are usually happy to help others with a sincere and earnest need for assistance. Just remember even with help you still have to learn your own lessons and experience your own circumstances. Boundaries help us all do this better.
