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Are You Awakening or Just Overthinking? How to Tell

22 May 2026

There’s a question that haunts a lot of people in the early stages of spiritual awakening — one that doesn’t get talked about enough, because it feels almost too vulnerable to say out loud.

Is this real? Or am I losing my mind?

I asked myself a version of that question more times than I can count.

My Question Was Different

Most people assume that doubting your awakening looks like overthinking — analyzing every experience, second-guessing every feeling, running through it all at 3am with a cup of tea and seventeen browser tabs open.

That wasn’t me.

My doubt was quieter. And in some ways, heavier.

After my aortic dissection, after the surgery, after waking up to experiences I had no framework for — I didn’t spin out into analysis. I moved through those weeks with something closer to calm curiosity. But underneath the curiosity was a question I kept returning to:

Can this really be happening?

I wondered if I had actually died on the table — from the tear, or during surgery — and had simply woken up in a different reality. A parallel one. Because so many things were happening that seemed so far outside the range of what I understood to be possible, that ordinary explanations didn’t hold.

I also wondered if I was developing schizophrenia.

My mother is paranoid schizophrenic. That fact has lived inside me for as long as I can remember. And when the experiences began — things I couldn’t fully explain, perceptions that went beyond what I could verify — the fear surfaced. Not because the experiences felt chaotic or frightening in themselves, but because I didn’t want to become what I had watched her struggle with my entire life.

I want to be honest about that, because I suspect I’m not the only one who has thought it.

What I Wasn't Doing

Here’s what I noticed: I wasn’t obsessing. I wasn’t looping. I wasn’t catastrophizing.

I was searching — carefully, openly — for understanding.

There’s a difference between a mind that is spinning and a mind that is seeking. Spinning is exhausting and circular. It returns to the same point without resolution, feeding on its own anxiety. Seeking has a different texture. It moves forward. It stays curious. It can sit with not-knowing without collapsing under the weight of it.

What I was experiencing wasn’t ordinary thinking at all. It felt less like thought and more like recognition — like something in me already knew, and the question wasn’t is this real, but how do I understand what this is.

The Three Leaves

Toward the end of my time at rehab, I went for a walk in the forest.

By that point I had already been through weeks of intense experiences. Synchronicities. Physical sensations. Moments that didn’t fit any category I had for them. I had processed a great deal.

This walk felt quieter. More grounded. I wasn’t searching for anything. I was just walking.

And then something stopped me.

Hanging in front of me — not attached to a branch, not caught in a bush — were three oak leaves. Suspended in midair. Held together by a single, almost invisible thread of spider silk.

Delicate. Precise. Gently moving with the air.

I stood there looking at them for a long time.

There was no visible structure supporting them. And yet there they were — intact, held, balanced. Something was keeping them in place. I just couldn’t see it clearly.

The moment didn’t shake me. It steadied me.

It felt like an answer to a question I hadn’t known how to ask. You’re supported. You’re being held. Even when you can’t see what’s holding you.

The thread was there. It was doing its job perfectly. I simply had to look closely enough to notice it.

So How Do You Tell?

If you’re reading this wondering whether your experiences are real, or whether you’re overthinking, or whether something is wrong with you — here’s what I’d offer:

Notice the quality of what you’re feeling. Overthinking is anxious, circular, and exhausting. Awakening — even when it’s uncomfortable — tends to have a different quality underneath it. A kind of aliveness. A sense that something is being revealed rather than invented.

Notice whether curiosity is present. If you can observe your experiences with genuine curiosity, even alongside fear or confusion, that’s meaningful. Fear and awakening can absolutely coexist. But the fear of awakening tends to feel different from the fear of losing your mind. One is fear of the unknown. The other is fear of yourself.

Notice what grounds you. During those weeks, what helped me most was being in nature — daily walks, alone in the trees, letting the ground beneath me be real and solid. It also helped enormously to talk to people who could hold the conversation without judgment: my doctor, who was genuinely open to the spiritual dimensions of what I was going through, and my father, who had his own deep relationship with these questions. They didn’t tell me what my experiences meant. They listened. They reflected. They helped me feel less alone in the searching.

That last part matters more than almost anything else.

Don't Keep It Bottled Up

Running these experiences over and over in your own head — alone, in silence — will close you off. It narrows the channel. It keeps you circling.

What opens it back up is connection. Saying it out loud to someone who feels safe. Someone who will listen without criticism, without rushing to explain it away, without making you feel like something is wrong with you.

Be selective. Not everyone in your life will be the right person for this conversation. But find the ones who are. Or find a community where people are walking something similar — where you don’t have to start from the beginning every time, where your experiences don’t need to be defended or justified.

That kind of space exists. The Awakened Journey Collective was built for exactly this — for people who are in the middle of it, whether they’re afraid, curious, overwhelmed, or simply looking for others who understand what it means to have your reality quietly rearranged. You are welcome there.

Because the goal isn’t to figure out whether your awakening is “real enough.” The goal is to come home to yourself. And that becomes possible when you stop carrying it alone.

A Word on the Fear of Going Crazy

If that fear has visited you — and I suspect it has for more people than will admit it — please hear this:

The experiences of awakening and the experiences of psychosis are not the same. They can look similar from the outside. But they feel different from the inside. Awakening, even in its most disorienting moments, tends to carry a thread of coherence — a sense that something is being revealed, that perception is expanding, that there is meaning present even when it can’t be fully named.

If you are genuinely concerned about your mental health, please speak with a professional. That is not a failure. That is wisdom.

But if what you’re experiencing is a quiet, persistent sense that something has shifted — that reality is larger than you once thought, that you are more than you once believed — then perhaps the question isn’t whether you are going crazy.

Perhaps the question is what you do with the fact that you are waking up.

Have something stirring that you haven’t been able to put into words yet? I’d love to hear from you. Reach out through the contact form below — your experience matters, and it doesn’t have to stay unspoken.

And if you’re ready to walk this path alongside others, the Awakened Journey Collective is open to you. Come as you are.