MarioWorldGamer

 

A person could have mixed feelings about a blissful experience after it concludes but not likely while it's ongoing. If a person experiences an negative NDE at the conclusion of a blissful NDE experience, then that person is essentially having a nightmare likely due to the trauma arising from his current life and death circumstance. If a negative NDE occurs after a blissful NDE, this indicates that the brain is beginning to function properly and is no longer in distress. You are clearly fearful of a potential mental experience that you likely will not suffer. It should be exceedingly clear by now that nothing we discuss here will alleviate your fear unless alleviation isn't what you are seeking. It is likely that the therapy you are already receiving will provide you with all the answers you seek and require. I strongly suggest that you adhere to the regimen your therapist suggests rather than rely on any peripheral perspective you receive from Internet sources.

I don't even think therapy can resolve something like this. That depression in my nightmares was beyond anything imaginable and any therapy to try and help me not worry about experiencing that again during an nde might not work. It is too much for me to not be worried and troubled by for any possible therapy to help. If that depression wasn't all that bad and was nothing more than just something very unpleasant, then therapy would help and I would no longer be worried.

I don't know where to turn to. I am traumatized and very troubled by this. The idea that I could possibly be fully conscious and experience that is the worst thing imaginable to me. I don't know for sure if you are fully conscious during negative ndes or not like you said. I have no definite proof. Not knowing the definite answer has me troubled by the possibility that I could be fully conscious and experience that level of depression.

So that is why I am instead trying desperately to ease my mind here. You say that the negative experiences happen after the blissful experiences and are not mixed in. But I don't think this is true. For example, when someone has a blissful and peaceful nde in which they go through a tunnel into a heavenly realm, they then have a life review and experience painful emotions as painful flashbacks are witnessed during the life review.

After which, the person will experience bliss afterwards again and more unpleasant feelings mixed in as well.

 

NDEs are considered fringe science, so you won't find any irrefutable studies on this topic. You'd fair better with source exploring the effects and treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Whether or not you believe negative NDEs are essentially nightmares, you will find that PTSD studies and research addresses concerns like yours. PTSD, as you may know, involves the continual, iterative psychological effects of traumatic and stressful experiences. You appear to have extreme anxiety and fear regarding a traumatic experience you have never had, which may have roots in prior trauma. It's clear from your responses that no amount of legitimate research contrary to your fears and concerns will alleviate those issues. I agree, as you have previously conceded, these issues should remain in the hands of your therapist.

My concern was with the negative ndes which you said were nightmares. You come to this conclusion based on the fact that the brain produces endorphins in the near death state and that it is impossible to experience unpleasant feelings such as depression and misery. But I'm not sure you should come to such a simple conclusion because people have mixed experiences during their blissful ndes. They experience pain and misery during their blissful ndes. So maybe there are brief moments where the endorphin release stops since painful experiences are obviously getting through somehow. Something is allowing these painful experiences to get through.

 

I think what dimreepr is saying is that bad dreams do not cause PTSD; however, PTSD can cause bad dreams. Therefore, you should not expect to suffer any adverse mental effects as a result of a negative NDE because those experiences are merely symptoms rather than causes of some traumatic mental disorder.

Now there are people who have ndes just from knowing that they are about to die and there are those fully conscious who have them just from severe stress in their lives. So I don't think that they would be dream states in these situations. Also, does neuroscience say for sure that ndes are lucid dreams and not conscious waking states? If so, could you link me to the website that says this?

 

 

A dream doesn't, AFAIK, result in PTSD.

So you are agreeing with me that ndes are not dream states since people who have distressing ones sometimes end up with PTSD.

Your destiny on the matter is in your own hands. I don't think there's anymore than has already been said.

I tried my best to ease my mind here, but this is now in a therapist's hands.

 

What a person says is entirely different from real physical evidence. You may either choose to believe anecdotal reports or the physical science and evidence you can research for yourself. If in your research you find that a dying brain consistently secrete neurochemicals that produces a euphoric state, then it would be entirely irrational to continue to believe that a negative experience could emerge from such a blissful state. Your only alternative then would be to recognized negative NDEs as not the product of a near-death brain. Once you realized that negative NDEs are not products of a dying brain, your only recourse is to then consider negative NDEs as mental phenomena produced by other types of neurochemical influences on brain function. At that point, you would have to research the neurochemistry known to produce experiences that approximate negative NDEs within a state that approximate the NDE state. This will lead you to nightmares, which is where you should then dismiss concerns or other ideas that negative NDEs are anything more than just bad dreams. If you're going to rely on any information you receive about this topic, that information should be rooted in the science of brain function rather than anecdotal horror stories. Research the science.

Do other neuroscientists say that negative ndes are not nightmares and that they are waking states more wakeful than conscious reality? If so, I would have to remain unsure as to whether what you say is true or if what they are saying is true. I can read and study all I want, but I will always remain agnostic both on this issue as well as the issue of the afterlife/paranormal.

 

If what you describe is true, then these were most likely dream-like experiences rather than those of a dying brain in distress. These individuals likely received such continuous medical attention throughout their cardiac events that their brain never became bereft of blood flow, which continued to carry life sustain support to their brain function. What they most likely experienced were the unconscious residual neurological effects of the stress preceding or precipitating their cardiac events. Their negative near-death experiences were most likely the effects of stress, which associates their NDEs with nightmares. As a type of lucid dream experience, you should be no more concern with negative NDEs than you would be with a bad dream. You should be able to endure and recover from a negative NDE as you might have done with nightmares you have likely experienced before. True NDEs involve a brain suffused with stress relieving neurochemicals that produce good vibes or euphoria. Negative NDEs are merely bad dreams likely caused by mental stress rather than physiological distress. One positive, a negative NDE would be a certain indication that your brain is not in distress and you would most likely survive the experience. If you're unafraid of bad dreams, you should be unafraid of negative NDEs.

People will say different things. Some would say what you said while others would say that it really was a conscious state greater than waking life and not a lucid dream. If that is the case, then to experience that horrible depression that is as powerful as my nightmares while fully awake, then that is the worst thing imaginable to me and I can't stop worrying about it. I am open to what you said, but remain open to what others say as well.

I am even open to the idea that the soul leaves the body and visits other realms in a hyper conscious state. If I knew for an absolute fact that I have nothing to worry about and that it would all be nothing more than like one of my bad nightmares, then I wouldn't worry. But since I remain open to other interpretations, then I remain worried since this means that the possibility that I am worried and troubled by could be true.

 

You have to ask yourself if what your hearing actually involved people under brain distress at the time of their NDE. The fact that they survived to convey their story suggests that what they experienced may have been more dream-like than an actual experience caused by a dying brain. What actually were the physiological circumstances of those persons who reported intensely negative NDEs? Also, what was the precise nature of their negative NDEs? Did their NDEs involve reliving negative life experiences? I've never heard of an NDE that involve reliving some painful experience in one's life; therefore, NDEs must be about something else that the dying brain is experiencing that doesn't involve opening old emotional or mental wounds. It seems to me that what concerns you appears to involve reported experiences that only have importance if you survive and not die. If you survive a NDE that is obviously a good thing. If you don't, then what would it matter because you would be no longer alive and suffering. Unless you have some concern about an afterlife, which is something I don't think anyone can confidently or competently address. If you're thinking about NDEs, then you're thinking about surviving. If so, your thoughts should be focusing on the recovery process. To move your mind beyond a fixed negative position, as you believe you might experience through an NDE, you will have to focus your thoughts beyond that position to a point of positive recovery. Fixating on the negative will surely prolong your negative experience and recovery from it. Fixate on recovery.

These were people under cardiac arrest. They say they were in hell or an empty void in which they felt torment and despair worse than their nightmares. They say it was more wakeful than normal waking life. Some do report reliving negative life experiences whether it be through a life review or a flashback. Also, what I am concerned about is experiencing depression at the level I did in my nightmares during an nde.

I am concerned about experiencing that all over again just as bad or even worse than my nightmares. I was also really concerned whether ndes were waking experiences more wakeful than normal waking life as people claim them to be because if they are, then to experience that level of depression I did in my nightmares while fully awake and aware of this horrible experience would be the worst thing imaginable to me which is why I cannot just let it go and not worry about it.

Nightmares are likely more intense than NDE because nightmares generally don't involve a brain in aerobic and metabolic distress. A dying brain secretes a series of neurochemicals (dopamine and endorphins) that produce soothing and euphoric effects. This doesn't happen during nightmares because the dreaming brain isn't actively engaged in life sustaining efforts. Soothing and euphoria inducing brain chemistry produced near-death emphasizes a low-intensity distinction in NDEs from nightmares.

That's strange because I heard that people who have had hellish or distressing ndes say that negative emotions were more intense than their worst nightmares.

 

NDEs are produced by brain function and are not independent or separated from the functions that produce your awareness of the experience. Your awareness and the NDE would occupy the same canvass painted by the same functional artist. Whatever the power or effect an NDE might have would be equivalent to the measure of your mentality within that experience. What people are reporting with NDEs are their recollections of a lofty experience from the seemingly less lofty conscious state of the after experience, which is why the former seemed more intense.

 

Precisely!

I have another question. How much more intense are negative emotions such as hopelessness during a hellish or distressing near death experience than what is experienced in a nightmare?

 

Yes, a hyperconscious state would elevate your mentation relative to every experience you might have under normal circumstances. Consciousness involves a concert or confluence of brain function in response to the measure of stimuli. Enhanced stimuli equals enhanced functional responses to that stimuli.

But assuming they aren't conscious experiences, then any powerful negative emotions I might experience during a hellish or distressing nde should have a powerful effect on me like they do in my nightmares? As a matter of fact, I heard that emotional experiences during ndes are more powerful than what is experienced in dreams and nightmares. So considering this, if I ever have a hellish or distressing nde, then it should be worse than even my worst nightmares since the negative emotions will be far more powerful.

 

A hyperactive brain isn't necessarily a hyperconscious brain regardless of how those researchers have characterized their results. As a point of fact, our brain activity routinely reach levels above conscious activity whenever we dream. Enhanced activity doesn't equal enhanced consciousness relative to brain function especially when not confirmed by confluent conscious sensory perception. That enhanced activity we find near-death is the brain generating sufficient activity as to bring life sustaining blood flow into its structure. The researcher induced near-death in those test animals by cardiac arrest. What researchers are measuring is activity to regenerate blood flow to a dying brain in distress.

But let's assume for a moment that near death experiences really are conscious states greater than normal waking consciousness, if I were to have a hellish or distressing nde, then would I have that power and resistance against any powerful negative emotions experienced? I mentioned earlier how in my waking conscious state that I seem to have power over my feelings in such a way that they can't effect me as they did in my nightmares even if they were to somehow be just as intense in my waking life as in my nightmares.

Near-death, dreaming, and consciousness involve definitively different states of brain function. How the brain is activated amid each state is distinct. At near-death, the brain is in physiological distress, which is not the same as a nightmares. Nightmares arise amid those restorative metabolic processes of sleep that replenish our brain's energy reserves as I have described in prior discussions. Near-death, the brain is being energy and oxygen deprived as it struggles to maintain function, which is not a struggle the brain experiences amid nightmares. Amid nightmares, the brain is likely responding to elevated stress but not as what we might experience near-death, which may involve deprivation of essential reserves. Neither near-death nor nightmare experiences are equivalent to normal conscious experience because conscious brain function and focus is suffused with real physical/material sensory perceptions and experiences. Of the three (near-death, nightmares, and conscious) experiences, conscious experience is considerably more intense because it involves confluent mental and real physical perceptions that can become lasting memory and leave indelible psychological impressions. Intense near-death experiences in the form of reliving some prior life event cannot reach the level of true conscious experience because near-death experiences are not confluent with real sensory experiences. Near-death experiences do not involve full consciousness relative to brain function and the perception of real sensory experiences. NDE and consciousness are not the same.

But what about the rat studies which pointed out that rats had brain activity greater than waking consciousness:

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/08/12/211324316/brains-of-dying-rats-yield-clues-about-near-death-experiences

I don'rt think so, because you rationalise when you are awake and put things in perspective but in your dreams it's just pure unattenuated fear without the ability to be objective because dreaming is a purely subjective experience i.e. you can't look at yourself from the outside looking in, like you can when you are awake. That ability to be objective allows you to put a brake on your emotions.

But near death experiences are not like dream states. They are fully awake (conscious) states since people who have them report that things were more real than real (that they were more awake than normal wakefulness).

What you dream with and what you experience waking life with - your brain - is the same. The intensity of real-life experiences can potentially match those of dreams but, in real-life, you have self-awareness and can, therefore, consciously modulate or attenuate your feelings; you can't in a dream, unless you are lucid dreaming, which is not the normal state of dreaming. I don't think you will ever experience such intensity in real-life that which you experience in your dreams, for the reason just stated. I think your fear is unwarranted. You should let go of this anxiety and just be at peace with yourself, knowing that it's just a dream and that's all it will ever be..

But if I were to ever have a hellish or distressing near death experience in which those feelings will be just as powerful as in my nightmares, then will they still not effect me as they do in my nightmares since I would still be fully conscious during an nde? As long as I am conscious, then shouldn't those feelings, no matter how powerful they are, not effect me like they did in my nightmares?

 

 

We are aware of our conscious state "gogito ergo sum" ergo the answer is yes.

 

 

Edit/ replaced no with yes, doh

I'm not sure about this. I had a nightmare with horrible depression and that feeling lingered on in my waking life. Even if you were to go and intensity that feeling just as it was in that nightmare, I don't think it would be as bad as it was in that nightmare. Me being fully awake and conscious somehow gives me power over my feelings so that they don't have such an effect on me as they do in nightmares even if they were to be just as strong in my waking life as in my nightmares.

I'm not sure how to explain this. Perhaps certain brain regions are turned off during the dream state. These would be the brain regions that allow me to be resistant to feelings so that they don't have such an impact. So maybe when I am fully conscious, those brain regions are turned on and I have far more resistance to those feelings. So that being the case, would I also have this sense of power over my feelings during a hellish or distressing near death experience as well since I would also be fully conscious during these experiences? Or would my feelings have power over me as they do in my nightmares?

 

 

I think the subtext is now clear; don't look to others to solve your problems, the solution is yours, alone, to find.

 

I'm not trying to be harsh but no-one owes you shit so don't expect the cavalry, that's not to say you shouldn't ask for help; but it's up to you, ask and you will probably be helped, don't ask and you might (but probably not) be helped.

Thank you. I will see a mental health professional for help. The reason I came here was to ask the question if being fully aware of the experience would be worse than being less aware during a nightmare. I was wondering if having full awareness somehow makes the experience worse. It is a scientific question which is why I came to this science forum.

........you will feel absolutely elated to have survived it.

 

Or totally unmoved because you're a bit of a psychopath. Or a bit guilty because you made it and others didn't.

 

You won't know until you've been there.

 

One thing is for sure. Tormenting yourself with the thought of the possibility is (I was about to say 'really stupid') irrational. It will happen one day, but maybe only once, and you may not be aware of it. If you are, the pain will probably be fleeting, followed by everlasting peace. Why spoil the precious time we all have between now and then worrying about an eventual certainty. Immortality probably gets a bit boring after a while anyway.

The reason this worry has completely taken my life away from me is because I can't let it go. I absolutely cannot let this go since that depression I experienced in those nightmares was beyond anything imaginable and to experience that again fully conscious and aware during a hellish or distressing near death experience has completely troubled me. There is no way I can let something like that go and just enjoy this life. I am thinking that being fully aware and conscious of the experience during a near death experience would obviously be far worse than being less aware of it during a nightmare. That is something that has completely and seriously troubled me. I can hardly function in life.

I have had horrible depression in my nightmares and if I ever have a hellish or distressing near death experience someday, I could experience that same level of depression while fully awake since people who have near death experiences are fully conscious during these experiences. I am seriously troubled by this because I wonder if being fully conscious (aware) of that horrible depression during a near death experience would be worse than being less conscious (aware) of the experience as in during a nightmare.

My own experience is that emotions in dreams are much more intense and fearsome than when awake; it's like everything is turned up full volume. There is no tempering of them, like in waking life.

I am talking about near death experiences in which people are fully conscious during these experiences and experience negative emotions just as intense as they would in their nightmares. My question is, if these are the exact same emotional experiences (one from a nightmare and another during the near death experience) and they are both just as intense, then would it be worse during the near death experience since the person is fully conscious (aware) of the experience? Does being fully aware of the experience make it worse? Or would it be just as bad as during a nightmare even though there is less awareness during a nightmare?

I also have another question. If you have a horrible emotional experience in a nightmare, you are not fully aware of that experience since you were not fully conscious. But it was still obviously a horrible experience. But if you were to be fully awake and have that exact same emotional experience just as you did in that nightmare (both the same type of feeling and the same intensity level), would that experience be worse since you are fully aware of it? Or would it be just as bad as what you experienced in your nightmare? I ask this question because I wonder if being fully aware (conscious) makes the experience worse since you are fully aware of that experience.

Is it worse to experience an intense negative emotion in a nightmare or to experience that same emotion at the same intensity while awake? Does being fully conscious somehow make the emotional experience worse? Or would both emotional experiences be just as bad?

 

Nightmares may appear more intense because they are created by and envelope the same mental environment that creates and envelopes your consciousness within that experience. Conscious experiences are dissimilar in that your conscious environment also envelopes your physical/material perception of true reality, which can dilute your conscious mental focus and emotional experiences. Nightmares and NDEs are alike in that they are transitory unconscious mental experiences, not reality. Reality--that which has a real physical/material impact on our survival--should be our focus above any experience without substantive consequences such as NDEs. Your concerns about NDEs will likely not abate with any answers provided other than those obtained through a face-to-face focused discussion with a specialist familiar your type of concerns or obsession. I strongly suggest that you consider seeking such a specialist should your concerns remain unabated. I hope this helps.

That was a bit hard for me to understand. So could you answer this question I am about to ask here with a yes or a no? Negative emotions (such as hopelessness) are said to be powerful and intense just as they are in nightmares. But the difference here is that you are not fully conscious during a nightmare while you are fully conscious during a near death experience. So does the fact that a person is fully conscious during a near death experience somehow make the experience of depression not as bad as it would in a nightmare even though the depression is just as powerful of an experience in a nightmare as it is in a near death experience?