Seeking psychological explaination for scary feeling

Hello everyone

I’ll try my best to explain the feeling as detailed as possible that I currently can because it’s a very vague feeling.

People often think with images in their head, we have the ability to compose an image without seeing it. We even think with images most of the time and ofcourse, so do I.

But sometimes the images in my head are very different than the images I usually have and it's automatically linked with this eerie feeling. The inside world completely changes and it feels like I lose direct contact with the outside world and that people talk to me but I don't feel spoken to. I see and hear everything but I don't feel like being very aware of it, I'm only aware of what's going on inside me, and still, even that is very vague.

It's like an electrical feeling through my brain, I don't know why I chose the word "electrical", I don't know why it comes up in my mind because it's not like I feel electrical shocks but the feeling makes me think of electricity.

The images lack of colour, they have basic colours and are very contrasted. The objects and the people in the images have a high luminosity (comparable to images in movies when someone thinks about the past, the luminosity is often very high and you hear echoed voices), except without the echoed voices.

The rest of the image is very dark, that's why it's so contrasted. Often the images have strange proportions or change of proportion constantly (I also have those images when I'm very tired and close my eyes, it's like the last image caught on the retina changes of proportion all the time or all images you think about change of proportion constantly.) If someone would be so patient to explain that as wel, I would appreciate it.

Anyways, the images are comparable to those psychological horror movies with very contrasted and zoomed in objects, notably scary dolls with their scary shapes and lines. Or those images from paranormal stories told on TV where you see lonely people and the vision is a bit distorted, noisy (TV static noise, not sound noise) and monocoloured, sometimes zoomed in. With those monotone background noises (those soundwave noises, a bit electrical, if you understand what I mean). Also those kind of sounds sometimes play in my head as well. Maybe a good example of those empty spaced, scary and absurd out of proportion images are the images of the ps1 game "LSD" (lovely sweet dream), I find them a bit scary because they look a bit like the images in my thoughts when I have that strange feeling.

As for the feeling, I feel very abstained from the outside world. I feel no joy but also no intense sadness, I definitely don't feel melancholic. I feel very basic but scared, I feel anxious but it's different than being scared of something, it's being scared because you don't know what overcomes you (I think).

Images are often greyish, the feeling of love and joy are gone. It's like there are empty spaces in your brain while when I feel joyful and feel love toward nature and towards the world it feels like my head is filled with a "good atmosphere" while with this feeling there's lack of this "good and warm atmosphere" instead it's cold and it lacks of any atmosphere, even a bad one. (Ofcourse there are no holes in my head, it's just the feeling).

What's even more obvious is the lack of feeling of security, it's only hate and fear, like some black and white contrasted evil creature is laughing at you, at your misery you are currently going through, it's also part of the feeling. I don't feel safety, I don't even remember what it is like. Those thoughts are often linked with thoughts of chained people. Also that's the reason modern art sometimes disturbs me because in modern art you often find yourself in very empty spaces with only one piece of art that is very abstracted, out of proportion and so on.

One more thing. Sometimes I can just switch between connection with the world, love and colour and the thing I just tried to describe. What I want is to be lose the ability to switch to that anxious world. I only want the other one, the one with love and connection, it's so peaceful.

I tried to describe it, I hope you understood it a bit because I know it's very chaotic but so are the thoughts and I currently find no better way to describe it.

(a few other comparisons are those black and white video images of clown heads that come out of a box attached to a spring. But not a normal clown box, a clown box that is a hundred times as large as a human being and the clown being very high and looking down on you. I think I ever saw that a long time ago in fairly odd parents. Also, fairly odd parents is a good example of several of those images. Like the episode with the imaginary friend of Timmy Turner and with the box full of teletubbies, those kind of images are comparable because the objects are very scary, there's something that's much bigger than you and that's also scary and for the rest there's nothing but an empty space. I know it sounds idiotic to refer to a cartoon but I find some images distrubing in that cartoon and that' s not the only episode).

I found your description very interesting. While I am want to provide an "explanation" of what you're experiencing, I certainly have some thoughts / reactions which hopefully will give you a model to work with.

For starters, your brain/body has certain "modes" (not to be confused with "moods", though they are certainly correlated. One example of switching modes is when you go into "fight or flight" mode. This stress reaction is characterized by biomarkers such as elevated blood cortisol levels, decreased heart rate variability, and increased Beta waves in your EEG profile. We don't have to get into the details, but I think it's safe to say that when you report: "sometimes the images in my head are very different than the images I usually have", it's suggests that you're entering a physiologically, as well as psychologically distinct state. If I were you, I would record my during that state and compare to baseline (heart rate and heart rate variability being the easiest, as you can use free apps).

The next question is regarding the psychological explanation vis-a-vis your subjective experience of this altered state. This is obviously a messy issue, since subjective consciousness is so poorly understood (and also why psychiatry is moving away from psychoanalysis and towards neuroimaging). That said, if we work under the assumption that the phenomena that you experience are directly related to the underlying biological substrate (aka your brain) then we can reason about:

a) the external stimuli that you take in via the 5 senses
b) the forms of cognitive processing that you apply to these stimuli (combined with memories)
c) the ways in which (a) and (b) map onto your consciousness experience.

When you enter an altered state, all three of the variables mentioned above are altered basically by definition. It's reasonable that when in a fight-or-flight type of mode our brain might prioritize certain types of input of others, for examples certain threatening shapes or movements might be prioritized over color differentiation. That last sentence is pure speculation, but I think you get the idea. Let me know if that makes sense or if you want me to speculate further.

Cheers, and again thanks for sharing.

Thank you very much for your reply! I was aware that we can enter different modes but you certainly specified it and I was thinking about describing it a little more and then I came to the conclusion that one of the words to describe my feeling is lugubrious. Because you can portray lugubrious images as "contrasted" and very big or very unlogical and shapes that are out of proportion. Even though lugubriousness is associated with melancholy, I experience them seperately.

To my comprehension melancholy has an atmosphere and you enter a very thoughtful state, you feel bad but sometimes inspired and it's often caused by long term depression while the lugubriousness I experience lacks of any atmosphere it's just a very empty feeling I also don't get into a thoughtful state at all and though the roots of this feeling are very old, the feeling itself occurs at random moments and not in the run of a despression (it can also occur then but not exclusively).

Thank you for the tips you gave me about recording the two different modes. Do you, besides this, know how to diminish the feeling?