Felt Presence - Powerful sense of a hostile supernatural presence nearby

[ags1]

Since I was small I have had a powerful sense of a hostile supernatural presence nearby. Alone, or in the dark, the terror was unbearable and I thought my mind would break. "Mind would break" wasn't just words, the fear was so bad that on a few occasions I have literally "seen" the presence with my minds eye - nothing visual but the force of its awareness of me was as undeniable as if I was staring into the sun. These moments are accompanied by paranoid thoughts that I am about to be killed, that the world is not real, that my body is not real, that there is a higher reality that I am just beginning to glimpse. It's like living in a world where you have seen God, and God hates you. And knowing simultaneously that the undeniable experiences are not real, and that you are crazy.

Antipsychotics help dull these feelings and I mostly get by these days with a bit of fear and no more than slight panic at times.

I'm sure the perceptions come from the deep isolation and trauma of my childhood, combined with a vulnerability I inherited from my schizophrenic mother. The perceptions bring their own trauma of course. A key part of my trauma script is a conviction of my inferiority, and I am sure that comes in part from living for decades in the shadow of an overwhelming hostile presence.

 

[arfie]

Since I was small I have had a powerful sense of a hostile supernatural presence nearby.

50 years of psychotherapy have yet to rid me of this sensation. at 71, the sensation is stronger than ever. the piece that psychotherapy helped with tremendously is the "hostile." in my childhood trauma, the physical world hostility was tangibly real, to the point where i felt hostility everywhere, at all times. it was an exhausting phenom.

in therapy, we call that piece, "hyper-vigilance." since i have learned how to recognize and manage the hyper-vigilance, that supernatural presence no longer feels purely hostile. without the hyper-vigilance, that presence is diverse beyond what my hyper-vigilance allowed. in hyper-vigilant mode, i am verily blind to all beauty while i look for hostility everywhere.

 

[ags1]

I can only get through my encounters with the presence by dissociating. I feel the encounters can do real damage to me. After one bad encounter I was psychotic for months.

I do feel that my terror comes from trauma and my fear of "madness" (even though that train left the station long ago!) more than from the presence itself. I feel if I could accept this side of myself, the fear might subside.

Maybe one thing to say to myself is that I have been psychotic before. It's not pleasant, but I survived it. If the worst happens, and the presence breaks my mind, I just need patience and an increased dose of antipsychotics. It's just something my mind does, and it's not the end of the world.

 

[captain jigglypuff]

I’m sort of a pro when it comes to supernatural forces. Question, does this force often make the room feel cold or chilly and you feel a breeze surrounding your body even when you aren’t near a window or fan? If you said yes, then there’s a malevolent spirit in the room and you need to go and get some safe and burn it to cleanse the room. Fresh sage has the most effective result. If you feel pretty warm then it’s a friendly spirit and it will leave you alone. I sense spirits all the time and they are what most people would call ghosts but ghosts are a different type of spirit all together

 

[ags1]

I try to think in terms of simple materialism, so I feel the experiences I have are the product of my mind. This can mean a negative pattern of dismissing my feelings as merely crazy, so i am trying to find a less rigid / richer way of thinking about this stuff.

 

[Torch]

I try to think in terms of simple materialism, so I feel the experiences I have are the product of my mind. This can mean a negative pattern of dismissing my feelings as merely crazy, so i am trying to find a less rigid / richer way of thinking about this stuff.

I want to say a T or someone with mental health background once told me that something like this can be a result of a parent or caregiver being aggressive or an otherwise overstepping/dominating force in a person's childhood. Something to do with parents basically 'being like a god' and having a lot of control over a child when the child is so young... coupling this with moments of aggressive, dominating, or otherwise overstepping boundaries instead of compassionate parenting... This point towards that sense of a hostile, omnipresent, omnipotent nearby force.

Could it be possible that you've had a brutal or otherwise harmful experience with a caregiver when you were a child?

 

[ags1]

My mom was schizophrenic. Sometimes the psychiatrists were trying to kill me, sometimes I was a Nazi spy, sometimes mom was just angry about nothing, sometimes I was the center of the universe. I believe the worst damage was done before I could even talk - maybe that's why my Presences are silent. Her flips could also explain why comforting presences can turn nasty in an instant.

Mom left me with a deep trauma about mental health. I saw a cycle of suicide attempts, forced treatment, electroshocks, overmedication... You can imagine my horror when I started showing signs of similar mental problems. I had to hide the problems from everyone, as I expected my mom would be suicidal if she ever found out. I think this is a major reason why my Presences are so negative - I try to repress the experiences, which is impossible, so they feel invasive.

 

[Lost in the Woods]

It sounds like we had very similar childhoods. What I developed was a 6th sense about mental illness. I often can feel it in the room when I am with others. It isn’t a presence like a spirit, it is like a sense of danger. I pay attention when I experience it.

 

[shimmerz]

Thanks for posting this. I had this years ago and it was absolutely terrifying. I have no idea what brought it on but it drove me out of my home and it was the first time I slept in my car. It was so real. I didn't realize this was a thing. I appreciate your bringing this up. Going to process this over the next few days.

 

[Paladin_141]

I used to have that.

Turned out it wasn't me; the house was just haunted.

 

[saffronstuffie]

I'm just curious if it's much like my own "presences" where I feel like I have to rush to my room, or just away from the presence at night, or else a little voice in my brain shouts at me "IT'S GETTING CLOSER, IT'S GONNA HURT US IF IT GETS US", like it's a big monster in a horror game chasing me.. I wish my brain didn't enter this useless fight / flight / freeze response whenever it's late at night, I do occasionally get this feeling when I'm in a dim room or area during the day, but it's always worse at night.. I will cry in the bathroom at night sometimes, because I forgot to turn on the hallway light, or also forget my phone, ( light is the only "weakness" I've noticed these things have.. ) because I feel there's something waiting just outside of the bathroom, wanting to rip out my guts and eat them.. I might also have Schizotypal Personality Disorder, haven't been officially diagnosed yet, but my symptoms all seem to align with this disorder.. ( Schizotypal and Schizophrenia are not the same condition, Stypal is similar in symptom to Sphrenia, the main difference being hallucination severity.. I know the prescence is there, but I cannot actually SEE it. I do not have full-vision hallucinations, most that happen to me are out of the corner of my eyes.. ) You're not alone, or crazy, no matter how much your brain might feel it is!
Do you have someone who lives with you, that you can tell about this presence?? Telling my husband "i'm hallucinating", is all he usually needs to know, in order to start helping me ground myself a bit, but I think telling him "I feel a presence of something wanting to hurt me" sounds more "realistic" to me! And would add the severity/direness to describe my hallucinations, that I feel he needs to understand they're at, because they do make it harder to do anything after a certain time for me.. usually 7PM..

 

[ags1]

Yes @saffronstuffie it's like that for me, but sometimes the "thing" has been front of me and I have definitely psychically seen it (it's hard to describe). At other times I have seen nice angels who were kind to me. The experiences are so real ordinary life seems unreal, and I also have experienced where I feel on the verge of falling into the "real" world, which I sense is a very bad place.