the mind can manifest all sorts of fear.
just remember that it’s your mind that is doing it.
You are doing it.
we each create illusions in our mind both happy and terrible.
It depends on what we believe, what we fear and so on.
But spj has said this already more or less.
a Chan/zen story:
there was a general that defended the country well with least loss of lives or not fighting unnecessary wars.
one day he asked the Chan monk, “will I be going to the heaven or the hell in the afterlife?”
the monk said Hell, you are nothing but a butcher of 3000 thousand men.
the general was so upset and said What I am going to kill you!
the monk said the door to the hell is now open.
the general muted, blushed and said I am sorry. I was only very upset.
the monk then said the door to the heaven is now open.
in the old time, you have to “kyll” a certain number of enemy before you are promoted to the next rank.
–
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the consensus.
Most people are giving their own two bits of cod meditation philosophy and rehashed tao/buddhism as usual on this forum when anybody has a problem and asks for advice.
The OP said he has seen demons while meditating. Seeing (or ‘meeting’) things which are not there is not a philosophical/practical meditational problem, this is a form of psychosis.
So, everyone giving meditational wisdom should shut the **** up and go and meditate on why they feel the need to express their egos in this way on a forum to a possibly seriously disturbed individual.
And the thread starter should:
[b]1) Stop meditating.
Indeed. People seem to be addressing this as though these “demons” are metaphorical or an expected part of practice. Either psychosis is widespread on these forums, or a lot of people here are full of sh!t.
Talking about how demons are just a manifestation of your mind is, by the way, not at all helpful. The hallucinations and delusions of a schizophrenic are manifestations of his or her mind, but a person suffering from schizophrenia cannot think their way out of the disease, and any attempt to do so simply delays getting the treatment that is needed.
I’ve had a couple of incidents of sleep paralysis before too. What’s intriguing is that you never hear reports of people haveing a good dream during the event. Instead of a shadowy figure over you, etc. why can’t it be Adriana Lima? It’s interesting to me that all the reports are of evil and frightful feeleings and all of them are amazingly similar. I wonder why?
Well, I think it shouldn’t be surprising under the circumstances. By definition in sleep paralysis you have limited awareness and no intentional muscular control. Your brain is still partly in a dream state, having not been able to move through the full transition from REM sleep to waking, so your consciousness is, in a sense, compromised (you can’t fully count on the reality of your perceptions).
It has been speculated that, in the old days, accounts of experiences with incubi and succubi were possibly related to sleep paralysis, as are more modern accounts of encounters with aliens. If you think about it, the way people describe alien encounters really meshes well with sleep paralysis - waking to sensing presences in the room, not being able to move, etc…
Anyway, if I ever have a sleep paralysis hallucination, I’d much rather mine be a sex demon than an alien.
I think the reason no one has happy dreams during sleep paralysis would be that it is an inherently frightening experience, so the fear manifests in these bad visions.
Supposedly sleep paralysis can lead to astral projection, if the fear can be conquered.
and if you believe in that. otherwise I guess it would lead to psychotic hallucinations. :rolleyes:
As far as the medical profession and mental illness go, I’ll just say i don’t put a lot of stock in their ability to “treat” it at all. Putting people on Zombie Meds is not making them well, it is making them addicted to Zombie Meds.
but then in the case of someone who has descended into madness to the depth of becoming dangerous to themselves and/or others, what else are we to do?
I guess chemical lobotomies are better than the icepick variety.
I do have a question for you followers of the psychiatry faith…
what would you recommend to someone having recurring nightmares?
would you be as quick to say that they are likely very disturbed and in need of treatment?
if someone enters a deep meditative state then their brainwaves can mimic that of deep sleep.
I’m sure you see where I’m going with this…
If this person is seeing “demons” in regular waking life, sure that’s probably psychosis.
but to jump to that in meditation is a bit of a leap. don’t you think?
is it maybe just possible he is having semi-waking dreams (nightmares) here?
ok, now for my ego’s 2 cents (the “medical advice” was in no way ego stroking though, was it guys? :rolleyes: are you practicing pyschiatrists?)
STOP MEDITATING
Go to a park, get some fresh air.
Maybe go to a museum or something relaxing.
If hallucinations persist follow advice of the medical professionals.
Try not to get hooked on Zombie Meds. Its bad stuff.
i am a little long winded today
lol well put Dwid. There are those that have a condition called a slow wave sleep disorder and are very “active” sleepers but they are the exception. In the majority od people the muscles paralyze as the brain waves speed up during the REM cycle (except, of course the involuntary mucles). There is a segment of the population that instead of the brain waves speeding up they slow down allowing the voluntary muscles to move. The condition usually isn’t serious. but i used to date this girl for a bunch of years that had it. She used to sleep with her eyes open, sleep walk, sleep talk, but more alarming sleep punch. mostly the walls but sometimes me. (at least she said she was sleeping lol). but it was weird. she also had a tendency to scratch herself.
anyway as for the actual topic of this forum i have been debating whether i wanted to weigh in. Just because a person hallucinates does not mean they are schizophrenic, though it is one of the most obvious clinical signs. There are 4 symptoms that constitute schizophrenia, flattened or inappropriate affect (emotion), hallucinations (almost always auditory but occasionally visual), delusions (paranoia, grandeur, persecution being the most common themes), and and unexplanable incommunicability (either they don’t make any sense when they talk or they can’t process what they are hearing). Now any of these individual symptoms can be explained by other circumstances (perhaps head trauma, a tumor, brain lesion, etc). what really sets a schizophrenic apart is the idea of insight into their illness. a schizophrenic does not realize what they are experiencing isn’t real. even when they are told that. so jumping to a conclusion as significant as that is risky. also there is a condition known as schizophreneform (spell check) disorder which looks a lot like schizophrenia but unlike schizophrenia isn’t a permanent disorder. it usually lasts about 6 months to a year. i guess its the difference between being chronic and accute.
now whether this individual is able to discern that the hallucinations are real or not could go a long way to determine what is going on. whether the demons are real is a religious/ philosophical debate i have no intention of even touching.
so with all of that said the only person that is going to be able to determine the mental well being (or not so well being) is a qualified physician. sure somethings are able to be dealt with on a faith base but other things need professional consultation. this does not mean this person is “crazy” it just means there is someone more qualified that can assist him/her.
sorry for being long winded.
Well, I’m a long-time student of psychology/psychiatric medicine who is also a buddhist/meditates. Believe it or not, I think mindfulness meditation can actually help people with even the most severe of psych diagnoses (like schizophrenia). However, it needs to be taught in a way that is appropriate to the patient and takes account of the problems inherent in such an illness. There is good research out there on mindfulness-based approaches to the treatment of a variety of psychiatric illnesses.
Regarding the stuff on zombie meds, I do not intend to offend, but it sounds like the kind of stuff often spouted by people who have limited (if any) experience with working with people suffering from psychiatric illness. The atypical (newer) antipsychotic meds, when titrated appropriately to a patient, can often achieve therapeutic effects without the extreme side effects of the older meds. For some people, it is indeed a balancing act, in which the effects of the meds are only slightly better than the effects of the illness.
Regarding the ego of the “psychiatry faith,” it’s really not the case. First, I believe meds are way overprescribed, and would rather rely on other treatment methods when at all possible. This is a problem both of patients and doctors. Patients want a quick fix just as badly as doctors want to have a billable patient that they only have to see for 15 minutes every three months to adjust dosages. I would much rather see a patient empowered to own their own recovery, so to speak. If there is faith to what I think regarding psych, it is faith in basic science - evidence based research in practice. Using anything else as a guideline for treating illness is simply fumbling in the dark.
Maybe the dude could describe the experience more completely? If for no other reason that to satisfy our curiosity.
Judge Pen
I’ve had a couple of incidents of sleep paralysis before too. What’s intriguing is that you never hear reports of people having a good dream during the event. Instead of a shadowy figure over you, etc. why can’t it be Adriana Lima? It’s interesting to me that all the reports are of evil and frightful feelings and all of them are amazingly similar. I wonder why?
Yeah, what Dwid and Crushing Fist said, not being able to move is scary. But evil succubi sex demon is my kind of scary. Some people pay for that kind of stuff. As long as there is sex with a hot girl involved, (and sometimes even the ugly ones too) it’s a good dream.
Are you a follower of the Acceptance-Commitment Therapy school of thought? Your last post certainly leads me to think that.
Acceptance-commitment has some good aspects. Hayes (its principal developer) is a radical behaviorist, though, which brings with it certain dogma. Also, I think in some respects, ACT is unnecessarily complex. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, which is rooted in work by Jon Kabat-Zinn, is a lot simpler, and therefore probably easier to conceive of as implementable on a more widespread scale. Generally, I follow any decent research I can find on mindfulness based approaches to therapy, but I also don’t see them as the holy grail. Often, the patient determines the therapy, and some patients just wouldn’t be willing or able to get on board with a mindfulness based therapy.
I guess in this sense I’m an advocate of eclecticism, but with the major caveat that it has to be an intelligent eclecticism. In other words, I’m not going to just randomly grab this or that therapy and see if it works. I look to the research to see what is most likely/more likely to be effective and go from there.
dwid -
it sounds like you are one of the good ones
one of the few good ones I would say
Most of my experience with said “zombie meds” is not in anti-psychotics but rather anti-depressents, particularly SSNRI’s and such.
My experience with these is through more than one girlfriend being given these awful substances by people who in my opinion have no business practicing medicine at any capacity.
The first one had hallucintations and severe depression (diagnosed as Borderline Personality Disorder) and she weighed around 90 lbs.
she was being prescribed 800mg of Effexor a day, which was apparently the legal limit.
I could tell you all kinds of stories about faked suicide attempts etc. but I’ll spare you the gruesome details. Lets just say it left me with a bad impression of this drug.
More recently we have Cymbalta (a newer fancier one) which was causing seizures in my current girlfriend. Since she didn’t remember them she didn’t believe they were happening (or at least claimed not to). Her “doctor” had put her on that and another one at the same time, while telling her that the other Anti-depressent was a “sleeping pill” (I looked it up, it wasn’t. but sleeping was one of its side-effects) and told her she could take as many of those as she wanted…
and this after telling the “doctor” that her mother had killed herself with sleeping pills.
and the “doctor” didn’t seem to take into account her thyroid disorder and that she is on synthroid, which there are warning about in the literature.
These drugs are bad news.
Did you hear the one about the college girl who was taking part in one of their studies for extra money? She had no history of any mental illness (she was in the “control group” or whatever). A couple of days after they switched her off of the stuff (I think this one was Cymbalta, but maybe it was another related drug) and onto a placibo, you know what happened?
she hung herself.
right there in their research lab.
now all their ads have that part about “see a physician if you have suicidal thoughts”
Once on that stuff, getting off is a real killer.
Interesting. I breifly dated an ACT therapist. I had difficulty wrapping my little mind around all of the concepts so I’m glad to hear your assesment that it is unecessarily complex. (makes me feel less dumb).
Yeah, antidepressants can be a big problem.
First, like I said above, there is the issue of overprescribing, which applies to doctors and patients.
Second, there is the issue of general practictioners/primary care providers prescribing these meds. Most general docs simply don’t know enough about psychiatric medicine to really have any business prescribing this stuff. I think part of it comes down to a basic problem where lots of MD’s just don’t respect psychiatric medicine as valid, so they think psych meds are no big deal. Then you end up with people getting terrible side effects that are made worse by the fact that they were never warned about them. A friend of mine took Welbutrin to quit smoking and had severe and persistent panic attacks starting about 30 minutes after he took the first pill. He had no idea what was happening and hadn’t been warned that this was a possible side effect. Pretty messed up.
Still, some people need antidepressents, and some of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have demonstrated significantly fewer side effects in most people than their predecessor drugs. The key is, if you don’t absolutely need drug therapy, don’t have it.
As far as the incidence of suicide, it’s well-established that the most dangerous time for a person with severe depression is when they’re starting to come out of the depressive episode. In the midst of a severe episode, most people lack the energy or drive to carry out a suicide attempt. However, as they start to feel a little better, the impulse might still be there coupled with the newfound capacity to act on it. In the case you described, obviously, there is something else going on, but it is plain irresponsible research to leave a patient unmonitored when coming off a relatively untested drug.
Yeah, I think it’s really a side effect of Hayes’ monster ego. Instead of reducing the therapy to its basic components and then maybe explaining it in terms of behaviorist theory, he had to tie it in to all this radical behaviorism stuff he had been developing over the years. To be fair, the guy is pretty much a genius, and a prolific researcher in clinical psych, but he’s also a bit of a douchebag.
yeah it was cymbalta…
I looked a bunch of this stuff when she was having the seizures
When the body of a 19-year-old student, Traci Johnson, was found hanging from a shower rod in the laboratories of pharmaceuticals giant Eli Lilly, US officials were quick to announce that the death could not be linked to a new anti-depressant drug she was helping to test.
During her stay at the hotel-cum-clinic in Indiana known as the Lilly Lab, Johnson had been taking part in trials for a secret new formula called Cymbalta, a chemical cousin of Prozac, which the company hoped would guarantee huge profits for years to come.
For the drugs giant, her death on 7 February last year was an “isolated tragedy” that did not prevent it from pressing ahead with the Cymbalta trials. It is now on sale in the US and - under another name - in Europe and the UK.
But for the scientific community it was another warning bell about a class of medicines already under scrutiny for possible ties to suicide. After all, Johnson was not depressed. Far from it. She enrolled in the clinical trial as a healthy volunteer in order to earn money to pay for her college tuition. Anyone with signs of depression was excluded.
Now, medical researchers attempting to establish the truth about Cymbalta are asking why her disturbing and very public suicide is completely absent from the official record, at least as it is released to academics and the public. According to an investigation by The Independent on Sunday, this and at least four other suicides by volunteers have been hidden by the US regulators, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
As the FDA admits, even a young woman’s death counts as a commercial secret in the world of pharmaceuticals.
sick.
just plain sick.
Yeah, that’s pretty effed up. No surprise that the pharm company would do its best to bury something like this, though.
Wow, and all that time I was told he could walk on water. 
When I was dating her, she went to one of the ACT retreats and was telling me about some of their excercises etc. Gotta admit, it soulded a little weird to me.
CF, where did you get the quote on cymbalta? It doesn’t sound like it was written by the AP. I may be in the minority here, but I don’t think pharm companies are evil. I think medicines are over used in situations, but the good thats come from medicines far out-weigh the bad.
And, back OT, I’m sure we could give all the demon see’ers a little pill to make the bifurcated tails go away.
I actually interviewed with him when I was applying to grad school. It was one of those experiences of extreme disillusionment, as about 2 minutes in I went from him being the top guy on my list to work with to being absolutely sure I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I kind of got the feeling you describe with this girl from his students that I talked to, and he has a really strong personality, so maybe some people just get really wrapped up in it. To be honest, given his interest in mindfulness and the perspectives on treatment in his writings, I expected him to be very humble and respectful of applied psychology - I found him to be neither.