The downsides to emotional awareness

As many people in chat know about me I have struggled a lot with substance abuse, trauma, anxiety and the like.

I have found in recent months that a lot of my substance use and likely a decent amount of my depression and anxiety had been down to not really present in my body and what I was feeling emotionally.

I have spent a decent amount of my real life time working on that and I have been pretty strongly successful. I have had a significant improvement in most areas of my life.

The downsides has become though it's like a lot of what I feel has become quite out of proportion to what i experience.

I noticed this most prominently last night when I had a dream about someone that I helped out recently that I found to be disturbing.

I have been relying a bit more on spiritual practices and self care to get to the level I have but I'm struggling in the face of ferociousity and feel like I'm regressing to a degree

Open to any and all opinions.

So you're saying it hasn't always been like this, your emotional reactions have become more out of proportion? If so do you have any idea why that might be happening?
Do you want to say what the dream was, and why it's a problem?
Can you explain what the spiritual practices are, and what's making you regress?

It's ok if you don't want to answer these questions, but it might help others in giving feedback to know more about these things.

I'm slowly working my way to becoming a practicing Buddhist. My understanding is basic level at best but I have been trying to incorporate the concepts as I best understand them.

The dream was erotic in nature (which is rare for me at all) but it didn't help that involving someone who I would consider a inappropriate focus.

Regarding the emotional stuff everything feels like this as a example

Like lately I have felt very lonely and isolated. But instead of feeling that at a very low level or being slightly numb it's "OMG this hurts so bad I miss everyone and need to be around people right now"

How I feel like I'm regressing is that my anxiety level has been skyrocketing which has caused me to drink a lot more then what I really desire to be at.

If in the dream you actually felt sexual attraction to this person, then it may reflect that you actually are attracted to them. Even so, if you feel it's inappropriate, it's also ok to reject that.

In a way that might be good if you can relieve the pain by being around people. I'm not sure if something like riding on a bus, or being in other public settings would be enough to relieve that.

Are your spiritual practices or something else that you're aware of causing the spike? Do you have social anxiety, or is the anxiety centered around something else?

Here's what I think, for what it's worth: the dream was a message from your own mind, informing itself that there could be various benefits to being more socially engaged. Not necessarily sexual; it was couched in those terms in order to get your attention.

This is probably true. Also a splash of mourning for things I have either lost or never had

I'm hanging out on the forum side of this place a bit more as I navigate a relatively busy workweek.
I'm probably ultimately going to volunteer at a animal shelter as my mom recommended me. Also I have Friday off this week so I will be able to get caught up on weekend errands and finally go to the Buddhist temple in town. I work evenings so I find it harder to get up early morning but they have a meditation class every Sunday at 10am.

Realistically this is probably just a massive fear response on my part. My life is fundamentally different then even a year ago and that probably scares me.

Regarding the dream I had....I heard a comment about dreams being your brains way to defrag it's hard drive. That's probably accurate.