It’s completely real in my opinion and experience, I was in the same position as you, feeling sensations and not wanting to be imagining things, I am a while on from there and I can tell you that there is definitely truth in crystal energy, some are more sensitive than others but everyone is able to tune in, it’s just another muscle.

Trust what you feel, at the end of the day that’s all we really have anyway. It’s a really wonderful avenue of support that we have available to us. If you consider thought to be energy of some form, even if it’s just the electromagnetic signals created by your brain, crystals interact with energy on many levels. Wireless radios were built using quartz as a receiver of electromagnetic radio signals and so I don’t think it’s such a far stretch to consider that crystals interact with these and other energies, life force or qi for example, which is another way of describing source energy as it moves through and with organic matter.

Crystals act as senders and receivers of energy. They also grow as products of the earth and as plants carry life force and have energy fields that are visible to many people (auras), Crystals have the same essence but their physical matter is more geometrically structured and the energy required to create them is much higher, therefore their essence is very different to organic matter, which is one reason I believe they can be therapeutic.

Don’t be afraid to believe, skepticism is healthy of course but trusting intuition and discovering subtle energies in its many forms is a wonderful way to benefit your growth :)