Regarding Meditation

Let me just build a scenario for you guys to understand what I am talking about. Lets just say I'm currently meditating and my goal is to place my awareness/attention on the sensation of the breath. When I do this, my attention/awareness of the breath is immediately covered in a blanket of sensation/thought/feeling which then supersedes the sensation of the breath. I don't know what is it, and I can't really put a word on it other than it feeling like a lite psychosis. The expereience is somewhat scary, frustrating and seems to run its course no matter if I attempt to cut through it or let it be. When cutting through it, by immediately replacing it with the sensation of the breath, is exhausting. And the effectiveness of how well I can cut through it is dependent on my energy levels. My intuition tells me it is my ego or self that is immediately applying itself, relentlessly, to any sort of peace of mind.

If this makes sense to any of you, what is this phenomenon called and how can I prevent it, as I would like to have a clean stream of focus. Also, this phenomenon happens more often when my eyes are closed than open.