There is a force acting on me.

I’m being pulled into somewhere horrible, sucked into a whirlpool of awful feelings.

I’m lost in the energy of the Swirl.

It’s a frighte­ning space, somehow familiar, but also  alienating .

Swirls

A swirl is not your friend
it walks beside you, but sometimes it is inside you
it makes you feel bad, useless, hopeless and lost....
it sucks you into a vortex of fear, or anger, or both.
It's like a virus, airborne, seeking a host body.
Sucked in, helpless in its grasp, you feel there's no escape,
and you are distressed and disturbed.
Is it something you've done, or not done.......do you feel ashamed?
Your head feels full of pressure and empty of thoughts,
feelings of dread fill you up.
You have to find your thoughts again. Where did they go?

The swirl experience

The swirl experience involves the coming together of certain emotions. These always involve self deprecation.
The feelings may include fear, anxiety, shame, anguish and despair. In addition feelings associated with diminishment. It is the combination of these feelings with a background anxiety that gives rise to the felt power or force of the swirl.

Energy

The power of the swirl lies in its energy. It creates a force or resistance that makes it very difficult to think or reflect.  The swirl experience is one of alienation; alienation from self and other.

I feel helpless

I feel helpless and worthless isolated and overwhe­lmed by something ... in despair and afraid ... in a dark space devoid of hope...

Swirls are dynamic.

Swirls are dynamic. They have power, and invariably that power takes the form of negative energy. So, when a swirl finds its prey, the individual feels acted upon. Unfree and helpless.

Distributed sensorium

There is a homology between outside and inside. As one moves into a swirl, as one is sucked in by it, senses contract. The distribution of the sensorium becomes skewed. What this entails is the inability to draw on one's senses to provide information that would otherwise nullify the swirl. The result of the coerced withdrawal of the sensorium is invisibility.This is an experience of extreme diminishment.
There is an analagous process in the political sphere when certain groups are excluded from the political process, and become so diminished that they are invisible to the dominant group.

Swirls is a metaphor

Swirls is a metaphor to describe the painful experience of feeling sucked into an empty space, a vortex, where initiative and energy are drained away, replaced by helplessness and despair, panic and anxiety.  When someone is in a swirl, that particular space constitutes their environment.

Intuitively, the swirl is internal

Intuitively, the swirl is internal, inside the individual. But swirls can be both inside and outside, because what happens to us can cause one.

To enter the swirl

To enter the swirl is to become disconnected. One becomes temporarily disconnected from others and from oneself. Painting by Edward Hopper, who portrayed 20C alienation and loneliness.

What is unique about the swirl?

Swirl is a metaphor to describe an existential mood state. It is a deeply unpleasant experience that borders on despair and anguish.
A Swirl is like a black hole; we fall into it or get sucked in. We feel overwhelmed by something stronger than ourselves.

When in this state, emotional paralysis takes over. We lose voice, agency and will. We feel diminished, and sure there is no escape.
It may pass, as moods do, or we may find our own way to overcome its sometimes devastating effect.

What is unique about the Swirl is that it denotes a range of distressing experiences that go together and relate to an internal physical, emotional and mental space which however may have dimensions and coordinates that we can begin to recognise.  Understanding them helps us to find a way to conquer it.