Yep, same here. I always try to keep some distance to esoteric concepts. But a lot of people get really hung up on those names, so I felt it necessary to add the disclaimer.
I'm not part of any real-life spiritual group, so it makes sense that I know of nobody who had those problems. I know nobody who ever had a kundalini awakening, at all.
For me, it is a question of focusing on it. It gets easier and easier, and it happens on its own ever more often, but it's not permanent (yet). I think there are still lots of things to work through, for me, till I get there. (And I am very fine with that! You can't hasten those processes.)
That is the interesting difference here. I am naturally an intellectual, thinker, not connected to my body, wordy, nerdy, skeptical, anti-religious... the archetypical non-spiritual person, lol. So I guess it makes sense that it doesn't come natural to me.
I practiced some Kundalini Yoga back in the early 1980's, and had some vivid experiences that were unsettling. The most intense was during the breathing and visualization process, I felt like I was about to leave my body. I stopped with this research and decided to approach this from another angle; Psychology. I assumed there had to be a science explanation, but since first hand data is not allowed by the philosophy of science, this led me down a convoluted path, that brought me to the psychology of Carl Jung; collective unconscious and higher human potential.
The book from which I learned Kundalini Yoga, was from an Eastern Master. He made the point the Westerners were too stressed to allow the full flow of kundalini energy. He suggested a precursor yoga exercise he called chaotic meditation. The goal was to tire and relax the body, mind and heart so one could be empty and calm, before attempting Kundalini. I took the advice and it worked for me, a little too good. Then again I always had some psychic propensity; more unconscious access.
In chaotic mediation you begin by doing a chaotic dance that has no repeatable structure; jerky jazzy dance for 20 minutes. The idea is to disrupt the smooth or rhythmic patterns of movement. This is very tiring due to it being inefficient, moving while lacking symmetrical patterns. The next 20 minutes were designed to relaxed your heart; emotions, with a type of catharsis, where you randomly express emotions good and bad with no sense of order; laugh, cry, get angry, feel sad; etc. It is like over acting. This relaxes your heart so you feel nothing and can rest. Lastly, there is 20 minutes of calming the intellect with gibberish. You speak in tongues, so to speak, making up new words and weird sounds to disrupt the routines of structured language and thought. Lastly, after you are tired, you stop and try to exist in complete empty calm. When complete calm is achieved you are ready.
The way I started Kundalini, about two week later, was to do the chaotic medication routine, first, but for the forth rest cycle, which was now working, I would use that calm time, to focus on the Kundalini breathing and visualizing. It was from the contrast of tired calm, I could feel the subtle energy, which got stronger with practice.
At that time, I was in my 20's and I used to hang with a group of older women; early 30's, who were into mysticism and psychic phenomena. We were friends and I explained my interest in occult and mysticism, and demonstrated Kundalini Yoga affects by allowing them to feel their seven centers, using the energy in my hand. I would scan my hand, down their spine; six inches away, and by feeling which centers were most active, and what each centered represented, I would try to tell their fortunes. They were into that type of thing so they were open and receptive. I could also use that kundalini energy, through my hand, to induce centers as party tricks and for therapeutic energy rearrangement; guy and girl games.
About that time, the observational data was getting stronger until one day, at the end of the Kundalini visualization cycle, all my centers started to resonate and then expand and then overlap. My body felt like it was expanding like a balloon, and I was about to float out of my body. This had been one of my goals; astral projection, but once it was about to happen, I feared not being able to return, so I stopped cold turkey, to approach this unique data with a more western approach. Maybe if I had a Kundalini coach, I would gone for it. But doing his alone, it was too unsettling.
The chaotic mediation does help create a contrast so you can feel the subtle centers and get into focus to expand on that.