OP, sounds like you are locking yourself up in a tiny part of your head. The rest of you (and the rest of the world) is still there, but your intellect is trying to lock all that out. This may superficially seem to help to avert being overwhelmed by difficult emotions, but it doesn't really help. The emotions and feelings are still there and causing the feelings of despair and the chaotic thought patterns.
Intellectualizing doesn't work, it will only further lock you up into that tiny part of your head. What does work is to become all of you again, all of your spirit and all of your body. The difficulty is that this will make you experience the emotional states again that made you flee into your head in the first place. You can, it is safe to do so now.
This is the only part where intellect is required in the path to healing: you have to learn your intellect to acutely reflect on itself. Every time you retreat away from the complete self into that tiny part of your head, the intellect must signal that there and then and immediately replace the focus to the whole you and the whole situation, outside of the merely intellectual domain.
The intellect is very good at focusing in. But you must learn again to focus out too. It is like breathing: if you forget to breathe out, things go bad. I believe that there is a close relation between breathing and mental processes.
To help you focusing out, you could breathe out gently and slowly while feeling every part of body participating in this movement. Let all parts of your body that are tense relax and loosen up. Let all the stuck thought patterns melt away and flow out of your mind as the breath flows out of your body.
This only works if your awareness is with the body, because if your awareness is with the mind the thought patterns stay stuck. So never mind your thoughts while you are breathing out. Let them be, so they can melt and flow away. Keep pointing your awareness at your body that is breathing out and releasing tensions.
Keep breathing out until it is done and you have let the last bit of breath out of your belly. At first, this can be a bit difficult, especially if your diaphragm is still very tense. If you keep practicing, it will noticeably improve until in the end your breath movement reaches the holy grail: the pelvic floor.
When you have fully breathed out, the spontaneous urge arises in your body to breathe in. Allow your body to do this. The spontaneous breathing in is sudden, swift and free flowing. If breathing in is mechanical, that is a sign that your intellect is controlling the breath movement and that you did not fully breathe out. The intellect has the ability to create an image of your body. It cannot control the body but it can control the image. However, this image is a robot, it is not alive with a heart.
Let your living body do the breathing. That's the spirit.
You will notice that in order to breathe freely, you need to open up the frontal part of your torso. You need to open your heart, so to say. When you do this, you can let your shoulders fall back. On the lower side, you can tilt your hip and stop pulling your tail between your legs. You will feel like a different person.
Finally, there is a nice exercise to go along with this. Listen to your heart. There is nothing else to do (except breathing of course). Just feel the beating of your heart, not only in the chest cavity, but everywhere in your body. Keep listening and if you get distracted by thoughts, don't worry and get carried away by it, just switch the channel back to your heart. Again and again and again. And keep breathing out and letting go.
After a little practice, you can do these exercises while you do, well anything. Or you can do them in a specially created moment of stillness, a moment especially for you. For the latter it doesn't even matter if you are physically isolated from others or in the midst of a bustling crowd.
These exercises are not some yogic techniques, not some mechanical postures, nor are they meditation. If they are, they will not work, because those are all constructs of the intellect. They only work if they are a spontaneous expression of your vital essence, flowing through you and out of you. You can only use these methods to discover that it is already there in you since birth.
Intellectualizing doesn't work, it will only further lock you up into that tiny part of your head. What does work is to become all of you again, all of your spirit and all of your body. The difficulty is that this will make you experience the emotional states again that made you flee into your head in the first place. You can, it is safe to do so now.
This is the only part where intellect is required in the path to healing: you have to learn your intellect to acutely reflect on itself. Every time you retreat away from the complete self into that tiny part of your head, the intellect must signal that there and then and immediately replace the focus to the whole you and the whole situation, outside of the merely intellectual domain.
The intellect is very good at focusing in. But you must learn again to focus out too. It is like breathing: if you forget to breathe out, things go bad. I believe that there is a close relation between breathing and mental processes.
To help you focusing out, you could breathe out gently and slowly while feeling every part of body participating in this movement. Let all parts of your body that are tense relax and loosen up. Let all the stuck thought patterns melt away and flow out of your mind as the breath flows out of your body.
This only works if your awareness is with the body, because if your awareness is with the mind the thought patterns stay stuck. So never mind your thoughts while you are breathing out. Let them be, so they can melt and flow away. Keep pointing your awareness at your body that is breathing out and releasing tensions.
Keep breathing out until it is done and you have let the last bit of breath out of your belly. At first, this can be a bit difficult, especially if your diaphragm is still very tense. If you keep practicing, it will noticeably improve until in the end your breath movement reaches the holy grail: the pelvic floor.
When you have fully breathed out, the spontaneous urge arises in your body to breathe in. Allow your body to do this. The spontaneous breathing in is sudden, swift and free flowing. If breathing in is mechanical, that is a sign that your intellect is controlling the breath movement and that you did not fully breathe out. The intellect has the ability to create an image of your body. It cannot control the body but it can control the image. However, this image is a robot, it is not alive with a heart.
Let your living body do the breathing. That's the spirit.
You will notice that in order to breathe freely, you need to open up the frontal part of your torso. You need to open your heart, so to say. When you do this, you can let your shoulders fall back. On the lower side, you can tilt your hip and stop pulling your tail between your legs. You will feel like a different person.
Finally, there is a nice exercise to go along with this. Listen to your heart. There is nothing else to do (except breathing of course). Just feel the beating of your heart, not only in the chest cavity, but everywhere in your body. Keep listening and if you get distracted by thoughts, don't worry and get carried away by it, just switch the channel back to your heart. Again and again and again. And keep breathing out and letting go.
After a little practice, you can do these exercises while you do, well anything. Or you can do them in a specially created moment of stillness, a moment especially for you. For the latter it doesn't even matter if you are physically isolated from others or in the midst of a bustling crowd.
These exercises are not some yogic techniques, not some mechanical postures, nor are they meditation. If they are, they will not work, because those are all constructs of the intellect. They only work if they are a spontaneous expression of your vital essence, flowing through you and out of you. You can only use these methods to discover that it is already there in you since birth.
