“What does an aura feel like?”
I have an account on Quora. This is a very interesting place to get information and find surveys of randomness, with a lot of well-written response. Sometimes better than others, but the response are up and down voted and people do post their experience if they wish, or remain anon if like. If you “consider your source” based on your responses and don’t use it to craft all your
Today I answered a question about seizures that answered one of my own personal questions about myself. Here is the whole thread if you want to see it, there aren’t many answers (3 before I responded).
one of the quotes which I reference in my response is by Fyodor Dostoyevsky:
“you have no idea what joy that joy is which we epileptics experience the second before a seizure… I do not know whether this joy lasts for seconds or hours or months, but believe me, I would not exchange it for all the delights of this world.”
They say that auras (the sensation before a seizure, which is actually the beginning or a seizure activity itself according to my neurologist) are very hard to describe consistently. My response:
I have never found my auras difficult to describe, except one I would almost categorize as something else because they feel different. I get my seizures at night, and the “something else” may just be how I experience it during the day.the daytime is less of what i describe below, sometimes with little bursts of good feeling or bad feeling, like when you feel a strong pain pill kick in on a localized ache or conversely wear off, but exacerbated, and feels like inside my head. (little guy with a gun in there?)
Jess James Richard’s answer is very good and similar to mine, particularly about avoiding a seizure. I think mine *may* be when I am beginning to process REM stuff for dreaming (I know that sounds super-technical haha) because I will get a thought stuck in my head… anything silly and random like something I read or heard that day or thought about saying to someone and without wanting it to be there, and sometimes trying to focus on anything else, it will get stuck there like a broken record for what seems like ages:
“if you’re going to San Francisco.
if you’re going to San Francisco.
if you’re going to San Francisco. if you’re going to San Francisco. if you’re going to San Francisco.”
but maybe 10 seconds have gone by.
Like a record skipping.
A neuroscience grad student this is when my cells are syncing up, and he described it like a full theater applauding until the applause starts to fall into patterned cadence.
at this point, I can’t think my way out of this “place” so I try to move out of “the place”… sort of. you could also call it a loop if you are used to computers or robots getting stuck in a loop. since i am usually asleep/falling asleep/waking during this, I am lying on my side or prone and the movement involves rolling over or lifting my head. If I can’t shut my eyes, or lift my head, tonic clonic seizure may start at that time. I am conscious for less than the ones I pass out during.
The Dostoyevsky thing is interesting too- I am a visual artist by trade and know many creative epileptics despite brain-half-communication things I have read related to epilepsy.
What dawned on me as I wrote this has to do with what I hear in my head when I have my auras. The skipping record thing. and the connection to how I’ve been making my art and what I use to convey my messages. I must ruminate on this, and figure out if I put my head down to avoid something bad, or lift my head up to take dread-good-bad-euphoric risk.
And… I do agree with Dostoyevsky (or whoever said this and stuck his name on the quote, I haven’t read him much to know for sure)… there are some things that the possibly observed to be “bad” parts of me bring to my consciousness which are wonderful and helpful and insightful, even if they only last a few seconds follow by longer periods of pain. So i guess i do not feel shame or guilt about this like I used to, unless i hurt or scare those around me.
Amanda Christine Shelton
