Dead animals and lost children shifts?

[Moonalight]

Dramatic title, I know, please bear with me because this is a long one, but it's really relevant after the last few weeks. First an old mare at the farm I work at had to be euthanize. It was the first time I'd been around something like that and my mom pulled me away because the vet said it'd be to startling to see her drop. Now, I'm very attached to horses though they're not one of my kintypes so this upset me. I spent the night curled up in my den grieving. Then, a few days ago one of the roosters was squeezed to death by a snake. This didn't upset me, possibly because I didn't see the body, my aunt did. I give snakes a wide birth naturally and this case has been no different. The last few days I've also been finding dead birds. They've been hitting windows, drowning in pools and bird baths, and just appearing torn up on the ground. This also hasn't upset me as much because of my bobcat kintype. Honestly I find them interesting, or I want to bat them around a little, it's a natural reaction I have to birds. The big one was today though. Upon arriving at the farm, I found a dead kitten lying on the ground in one of the stalls. It had fallen from the rafters a short time before, still soft and warm. This triggered a shift for me.
For the longest time I've always known that I've lost children before, which doesn't make sense because I'm seventeen and would know if I had a baby or two. However, upon seeing the dead kitten I kind of, went into a frenzy? I'm not sure how to describe it. I didn't even know the barn cats had kitted, all of them were supposed to be fixed. But the next thing I knew, I was up in the loft pulling moving all the hay bales piled up there. One by one I moved every single one, which I really don't know how. I'm extremely weak and there were more than I can count but I still did while simultaneously cutting up my hands and breaking out in hives. (we're pretty sure I'm allergic to hay on a low degree) During my search I found another dead kitten that was already completely stiff and had been dead for a little while. This only made me work faster. I finished the whole loft, moving everything, fortunately without finding anymore dead kittens, or living ones.
The mother was in grieving and she stole the one that had fallen before we could bury it. It was still soft and she didn't seem to fully understand it wouldn't wake up. The whole thing just left me feeling incredibly unlike myself.
Sorry for the long background triad, but I guess my questions are; how common are shifts this bad? Was this even a shift? Are these strange partial memories and feelings I have from one of my headmates, and if so, is there a way to try and prevent something like this? Cutting up my hands, allergic reactions, and straining my muscles without even pausing to think about why I needed to search for more kittens was honestly kind of scary. I didn't feel like myself, like something was pushing me, but I didn't know what.
Side note; Does anyone know anyways to try and bring forth memories from other lives? I really only have fragments and strong feelings and it can sometimes bring up more questions than answers.

 

[Red-in-Tooth]

What one is describing is a classical event of sympathy, because the concept of loss is fairly universal in increasingly intelligent organisms. Animals, primarily avians and mammals, will often grieve to some extent or at the very least recognize death on an individual, personal level. We all know stories of elephants mourning or ravens or chimpanzees, dolphins, whales, cockatoos, and down the line. Even horses, cattle, and the like are known to show mourning behavior or at least awareness of death; giraffes are known to try and spur stillborn calves to move for hours on end despite it being clear they are dead. It provokes a very strong emotional response, with sympathy being a stronger form of empathy, at least historically in language, and this is the type of phenomena it describes. The human experience alone will provoke bonding with non-kin, kin in the sense of human in this context not as we know it, and there is really no shortage of that among the mundane population we are all aware of; people regularly informally call it "pack bonding" now, even if that is somewhat erroneous.

What makes this experience different for those who are any shade of "other" is that the responses can become heightened to the point of irrationality or recklessness. One needn't have a "type" or "heart" specific for that animal either, because the experience naturally predisposes the individual toward feelings for things outside themselves. Obviously this is much, much stronger if one has a sentimental, personal bond to an organism, such as say cats in this case, let alone kittens - as even males are biased towards protective behaviors towards young to some extent, females just to a larger extent and that is just a function of biology generally speaking. So as one begins to pour all these elements together, along with a series of repeat death exposure, it creates a further heightened event that this seems to have catalyzed into. The kittens were the tipping point, it was too much to bear.

Now that brings to mind the question of, "Was this a shift?" and the answer is an unhelpful, "Maybe?" It depends upon the state of mind and experience during it. One can say they "acted outside their will" or behaved irrationally, absolutely, but in the question of "Was this a shift?" it becomes, "Did these I experience what felt like a completely different side of me?" and or, "Did I feel, perceive, experience, and act in ways that are not me?" Which is to really say, "Was I animated by something?" or what people can at times call "possessed" - ignore any paranormal connotations, this is instead referring to psychological possession - and felt like someone, something else? Was that in line with one's other experiences in the matter or was it just a normal human experience amplified and channeled into something? Does it show any signs of being part of one's "otherness"? Did it spur that side of being and feeling?

If no to even a few of these, it very likely was not a "shift". This is not to say it could not be, just that it probably wasn't. Just the reality of feeling like one's having children in the past could be a strong motivator, again, a symptom of sympathy manifesting at highest. It really becomes more substantial if one can recall those events from the potential past, which of course is difficult if not outright impossible; not everyone can or will have that sort of recall and there is no surefire way to conjure it. It also is difficult to separate the fantasy of it by desire and belief from what might be memory. Memory, just to note, tends to be deeply sincere in the sense that one lives and relives events, and that rather than say, a delusion, memory tends to feel subconsciously deeper. It is difficult to convey but if one has ever thought back to something and vividly relived it, then one understands what I mean. Again, issue being this takes a tremendous amount of energy and effort, often being triggered - in the legitimate sense of the word, not modern lexicon - by some sort of deep stimulus. There are methods to dubiously bring these to the front but allow me to state this beforehand, these methods require extreme trust and certainty, because they must avoid suggestion. An individual could receive hypnotic therapy, either autohypnosis or by a professional, and be opened to their subconscious more, but as I said, suggestion is extremely dangerous and poisonous if misused to these ends because it can create inception of events that never took place or things that are not real and convince the hypnotized person, through themselves, that they are.

So common, safer alternatives are deep introspection, often through prayer and meditation, as well as counseling with a spiritual advisor or a psychologist or psychiatrist. Less skilled or trained persons could be conversed with as well but one needs be even more careful with them because people can inadvertently confirm biases. I will also note that yes, this might bring back memories and explain experiences, but there is still no assurance of that.

Memory, at least of this variety, tends to naturally be extremely fragmented although emotionally intense. I have shared here before elsewhere my story about how I recall several different periods of my existence that I could have no way of knowing and no real way of imagining. They were always triggered by environmental stimulus - visual, auditory, and olfactory - and provoked a period of what felt like being displaced from time and space in a flash, reliving a captured moment of time intensely and compounded into one almost blinding moment. The reason I considered those valid is because they operated in the exact same manner as events of my life that I know and can confirm happened; not like a daydream or just creative mindfulness. They were also unprovoked and extremely circumstantial. Looking at the sky on a high plain and listening to the wind in the dead of night really shouldn't say, provoke an elaborate instance of where I am overwhelmed by feeling of loss at something I never could have had in life, let alone give me the same experiences of flashback, or what is called an involuntary recurrent memory. Which is, again, distinct because it overtakes reality and replays an event.

As for avoiding the consequences, that is wholeheartedly a matter of mediating one's self. It is the process of learning to control the animation one feels during an experience, to be it, not be controlled by it, and that really only comes from experience. Rather than being swept up in the wave, to glade across it; to note be taken by the winds but knowing how to move with them. Instead of trying to go up the mountain, become the river and flow around it. Artistic and naturalistic metaphors, certainly, but it is hard to describe the concept too of needing to be part of something and guide it, will it to be, where it goes, what it does, rather than resist it or become controlled by it.