The state of over-excitement is a sign of inner restlessness and instability. This imbalance becomes evident when you notice that the states of over-excitement always create the opposite states of a real downer (depression or frustration) as the next cycle.
Over-excitement pulls you to one extreme of light natured polarity. As result the next swing is towards the extreme of a dark natured polarity (like depression). If you want to continue experiencing life in an unstable manner, you can continue with this unconscious movement of swinging between extreme polarities.
However, if you want to experience inner stability you need to bring a balance to your mind and emotional momentum. Over-excitement is also a sign of a mind with a high momentum, such a mind is inherently a source of resistance towards allowing the seamless intelligence/wisdom of your life-stream to operate in your reality.
Some of the signs that are exhibited by people with an inclination towards over-excitement are as below:
(one need not exhibit all the signs, but the presence of even one of these signs is an indication towards a possible imbalance towards excitement).
- A tendency towards being overly talkative, or overly expressive with their body movements, to the extent of being incoherent, repetitive, over-zealous and draining to the listener.
- A tendency towards being awkward in a social situation instead of being relaxed. Awkward behavior includes being fidgety, exhibiting a restless body language, trying to please with nervous smiles etc. Basically these are indications of becoming overly excited in a social situation instead of maintaining an inner balance.
- A lack of conviction, with a tendency to vacillate between influences from the outside.
- Tendency to be unpredictable in their moods, swinging from high moods to low moods in an erratic manner.
- Exhibiting a strong tendency towards impatience. In some cases, it’s difficult for such a person to sit still even for a few minutes without wanting to fiddle with something.
- A constant engagement in entertainment, distraction and activity. It’s difficult to sense any real space of calm in such people, they are so constantly full of movement.
- An attitude of being purely driven by the need for excitement creating a sense of shallowness, surface-level thinking, insincerity, recklessness and insensitivity.
- A tendency towards becoming overly passionate to the point of losing oneself in the activity or experience. For example, losing oneself to anger to the extent of losing control of a sense of wisdom or losing oneself to joy to the extent of becoming reckless. (All signs of a mind with a high momentum, which is what over-excitement really is)
- A tendency to buy into promise of “extra ordinariness” and feel let down when reality shows itself in its polarities. (Read the post – light and dark nature of a desired reality)
- A constant tendency towards restlessness.
A mature mind (a mind that has a deeper understanding of life and has come to a conscious wholeness) is never attracted to excited states of being, it’s always rooted in a sense of balance.
The two polarities of over-excitement
Over-excitement can simply be termed as a state of high momentum in the mind.
This momentum can take any form – light natured and dark natured. When it takes the light natured form you feel over-exuberant or ecstatic and when it takes the dark natured form you feel over-anxious or depressed. They are both, actually, forms of excitement (or instability), only differing polarities.
The mind is bound to swing into both polarities, you can’t avoid that, and the momentum of your mind will play out in each polarity – higher the momentum, higher the swing.
You can see how an over-excited “anxiety” state can cause you to take frantic actions in the hope of getting back to an exuberant state. You soon become a person craving the high states (or states of relief) to the extent of taking reckless actions to fuel this craving, and looking for different forms of pseudo-security from the outside.
This is natural, because the over-excited states of dark polarity are far more difficult to handle, causing the need for immediate relief. It’s common for such people to take up addictions like alcoholism, drugs or even adrenaline based entertainment of some form including sex. The problem lies with the fact that these distractions are used as a constant form of escape rooted in the fear of low states.
Physically, the state of over-excitement is always draining. Any form of excitement causes the body to get into an adrenaline-rush mode, which is an added burden on its regular functioning and thus a constant proclivity towards excitement leaves your body fatigued and unnerved.
It’s also common for an over-excited mind to make choices towards amplifying the state of over-excitement through its behavior and habits.
For example, there is a tendency in over-excited people to eat foods that directly cause more excitement (sugar-laced, caffeine-laced etc). It’s also common for people to be fed-up of their over-excited state and take depressants (drugs that lull the nervous system) for a sense of temporary relief, or eat food in large quantities to cause the body to become slack – these forms of suppression just cause the body to lose its vitality.
Finding freedom from over-excitement
Over-excitement is not just a mental deal but also a physical deal, and the stronger the mind momentum the more acute the physical response.
A simple test is to sense if an excitable thought in the mind (fear-based or joy-based) creates a sensation in your chest and gut area in an intense manner – it’s an indication of a strong momentum in the mind and an accumulation of suppressed emotional energy.
When the mind momentum reduces the thoughts of the mind don’t affect the body space in any strong way – this is why the state of wholeness is a physical experience, not just a concept in the mind.
One can consciously come to a state of balance over a period of time by using their awareness to remove their anchorage to the mind’s momentum and releasing the store-up of suppressed energy (emotional clearing) of the past – thus allowing the momentum of the mind, and emotional body, to reduce.
It’s a process, and it’s a journey, and it’s something you need to undertake within yourself knowing that it’s your own commitment towards balance that will take you towards it. A mindset of blame, resentment, bitterness, self-pity or defending your negativity, is not going to serve any purpose towards bringing you towards wholeness. The below posts provide the required understanding to come to a state of inner balance, usually the mind understands in “layers” so multiple reads provide a better understanding.
- The space of being
- What is negativity?
- Reaching a place of total allowing
- Inner wholeness
- Healing the imbalance
- A deeper understanding of wholeness
It’s important to understand that this process is a journey and it entails time – don’t expect over-night results or quick fixes. I believe that once you have a proper understanding of this process, it would usually take a few months to start sensing the onset of stability coming in, however the time could vary depending on how much momentum you are carrying within and how willing you are to be open to the process. Once you get the essence of this process you understand that it doesn’t really matter how long it takes, it’s a journey you want to undertake knowing that it’s inevitable to undertake it at some point or the other.
Take the time to gain a “conceptual” understanding of this process first; this understanding will help your mind see the “logical” sense in this process and thus assure it to be committed towards it. A good understanding can cut short the time you take on this journey by a huge margin.
Thank you for exploring this topic, I see how this works in my life. sometimes I forget how important balance is. You have given me a wonderful reminder.
r
Thanks sen! A wonderful post
why are the posts suddenly so far between?
thanks for a post like this. nice one
This is so interesting – This information will be so helpful in my journey to heal from past issues I have had to deal with and be able to move forward , to feel calm and content is what I am searching for- thankyou for this information
this post is the post id been searching for inside..
i knew something in me had intense swings n instability. in one day depending on my thought or emotional momentum, I’ll b ecstatic to super depressed and anxious.
but ive been trying to suppress both extreme for so long that i would manage to avoid extreme polarities and binge to suppress feelings, and with a continuous nagging sense of restlessness in me.
thank god i found this post, now ive been conscious of my behavior and am releasing momentums. its almost non-stop and just spilling out.
all the while im just being aware, allowing and releasing the momentum.
Thanks for this. I’ve always wondered what is wrong with me and these side effect type things all are exhibited in me and I always get over excited in opposite polarities and have a very mature mind. Thanks!!
Hi Sen,
Hope you’re doing well. I would appreciate if you could shed more light on this topic. I feel very disturbed when I feel overexcited and I try to supress this uncontrollable excitement. Should I also allow this overexcitement, when it happens or should I allow the disturbance and control the excitement?
Hi Sen,
I have the same experience as asli. For example whenever I have a great inspiration/idea, I feel so overly excited in my body and mind that I immediately “taking recless actions to fuel this craving”.
Since I practice relaxed awareness (which you describe is the way to release this imbalance), I have the following strategy as written below to deal with it. I think this is the best way to handle it, but I want your verification. Maybe this would help asli as well?
1. Inspiration/thought/idea coming up that makes me feel overly excited.
2. I start slowing myself down by intentionally feeling how it feels in my body and what I was thinking. I try to allow this exciting sensation for a little while by observing it. Not suppressing this by disapproving/judging and without taking immediate reckless actions.
3. Then I write down the inspiration/idea/thought on a list to deal with it on a later moment. Since I’m already busy doing something now.
4. Later when I come back to this inspiration, the over-excitement is gone and now I can view it rationally without the imbalance. The actions that I then take are coming from a more balanced state.
By first knowing, accepting and allowing the over-excitement as part of me, I do not suppress this. Taking reckless actions however is fueling the momentum in the mind, because of holding a desire and not be free to desire (read “It’s not a state of being desireless” at http://www.calmdownmind.com/inner-wholeness/).
Thanks Sen and hope to hear from you!
Hi Elaine,
Thank you for your comment and sharing your experience, it was very helpful. It sounds wise for your situation, to postpone impulsive decisions in a state of over-excitement. My case is a bit different, it happens when I was already following my prior decision & commitment to follow my passion. My passion makes me feel overexcited in joy, which makes me feel quite imbalanced (although it is an imbalance in joy, it’s quite disturbing for me). Everytime I plunge in, it happens; so postponing doesn’t work for me. I suspect that I still suffer from some deluded thinking with regard to my passion (it’s possible that this overexcitement might be coming from a sort of delusion). In my case, I also think that it might be related with a weird fear of happiness (I never thougt before that one can fear happiness, but now I know:) Since I’m used to fear and pain (they are familiar), I can more easily allow them but it’s more difficult for me to allow happiness and joy (unfamilar). Keep me posted about your situation.
All the best,
Hi Sen,
I tend to get very awkward in social situations. As a kid, I was very quiet and shy and I feel like I never learned the adequate social skills. In social gatherings, I can start conversations but it is not long before the conversation goes flat and an awkward silence takes over. I do not know how to carry conversations, and I feel like I come off very awkward. This really bothers me; but my question is if my problem is something internal-like having a high mind momentum, or something external-like not being a good conversationist.
As I have been trying to practice awareness, I can see my trends of thoughts at social gatherings. For example, I always left social gatherings frustrated and down because I was not able to be as social as I wanted to be or that I was very quiet and did not contribute much to the group conversations that night. By becoming a little “aware” I can monitor where my frustrations come from-for example, last night at a dinner party, I could see how each interaction and the mistakes I made built up frustration in me and what self-critisms run through my mind. However, I can not control them, but I felt less frustrated as I would have before. I could bear the frustration longer than I had before, but it was not long before I became overwhelmed and left the party. I always go to these events late and leave early bc I know I will run out of things to say and that things become kind of awkward. I would like to get to know new people at parties and have fun with them, but I do not know what to say and how to connect with people.
As I am in my mid twenties now, I am really struggling with this issue, and I really want to overcome this problem finally, but I do not know how. I know I can become better but I have not been able to find the right path. One can find lots of material on youtube-such as “alpha male” behavior, leading conversations, improving one’s body language etc but I do not know if these are the right things that I need. I can listen to people for a long time, but when it comes to my turn, I am not very good at contributing. This makes others look down upon me and gives me a low social status if you know what I mean.
I would deeply appreciate it if you can shed some light to my obstacle.
In addition, in general, when one reaches inner-freedom, is there any external manifestation that come with it? such as a change in behavior or skills?
Thanks a lot Sen
James,
I had exactly the same issue and still do to an extent if I’m honest… It’s from focussing on the fear of not being liked and delusion of wanting to be liked / fit in. For me withdrawing from those situations and focussing on my internal issues was the only way. To follow the advice in this blog and allow. When you have fears related to socialising, it is hard to allow during interactions. By building up the practise of allowing your thoughts and feelings when alone and little by little applying this during social interactions. I have proven to myself that I am now more than capable socially but its the high mind momentum that leads to overexcitement, which is probably what caused me to become anxious in the first place. I have a lot of growing still to in terms of social interaction but I need to become stable in myself before I can even hope to achieve stability around other people.But in the mean time I just practise and try to be aware / open which is helping and facilitates learning which is surely better than repeating the same old pattern again and again.
All the best,
Fay
Sen,
This article defines me from head to toe…I know where i have to work now.. Over-excitement in joy & disappointments were always with me.
I know How you feel as i am also like this. I’ve been told that I get too excited and reading the article and recognizing tin signs are all coming together. Thanks for this. I think Its time to start to become more aware of myself.