In honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, I thought I would share a little anecdote.

     About 3 years ago, my life was hit with a serious curve ball when seemingly out of nowhere I was hit with borderline debilitating anxiety. It came on so suddenly and with such force that I was scrambling to even get out of bed in the mornings, let alone make it through a day of work without having to go to the bathroom to have a quick solo cry session. For the first time in my life I was having panic attacks and I didn’t know why. It felt like I was waking up from a dream, but that dream was my life. The confusion of it all then led to bouts of depression which then led back to more panic attacks and so the vicious cycle continued. I tried to hide it but at a certain point, it could no longer be hidden. The pain was too much, too confusing, and it was just physically exhausting. I didn’t know what was wrong with me and neither did anyone else since my life, from the outside, seemed pretty normal. I had graduated from a good college, I had a cool job, a boyfriend, a great group of friends, an active social life and no real serious complaints about life.   

     It turns out though, as with all anxiety, it really didn’t come out of nowhere. The reality was that it had been building up over years and years of constantly trying to live up to either some internal or external expectation of who I (or others) thought I should be. This combined with self-delusion and emotional neglect towards myself led me to live a life that was not aligned with who I really was. I was essentially living a lie (even if it was just internal lies I was telling myself), but that would not reveal itself until about a year into therapy. Yeah I said it. Therapy. The “T” word. It’s not just for the “crazy people” (although they go too). I’m not sure why there is so much shame in it these days, especially in the black community. Why should you be ashamed of something that will (or theoretically should) help you heal yourself and your relationships with others? Anyways, that’s a different topic for a different time……….Therapy was a huge help but the dark horse that really took my healing to a deeper level was meditation.

    Starting meditation, specifically vedic meditation, changed my life in some subtle yet extremely profound ways and it’s only been a year and a half:

I will always deal with anxiety to some extent but it is far more easily managed

sleep better and without taking anything

feel less stressed (the amount of stress is still the same if not more, but my perception of what I deem “stressful” has changed)

have better time management skills which leads to…….less stress and (see next point)

the ability to hone in on more things that I actually do want to do (like create a weird blog for example)

     Where therapy provided me with an emotional outlet, an ability to come to terms with my own vulnerability and sensitivity and insight into some issues / patterns in my life, meditation gave me (and still continues to give me) clarity and the tools to actually make different choices. Where therapy helped to shed light and take the shame out of my anxiety and depression, meditation (and continued therapy) allowed me to heal it. Let’s be clear here: there is absolutely no shame in anxiety or depression. That stigma really needs to just see itself out the door. If anything it can be seen as a gift. It can be seen as a sign to slow down; to take a look inward; to see what is not aligned within. 

     Meditation is not a magic wand by any means and it didn’t instantly solve my life issues; but sitting down somewhere twice a day where I could close my eyes for 20 minutes allowed (and still allows) me more daily rest and because of that, clearer insights into problem solving and often into my own neuroses.

     It really is an amazing (and sometimes scary) thing to just sit and see the absolute chaos that occurs in your mind but facing those thoughts and not getting caught up in them are the only way to take away their power. The truth is that we all get caught up in our own stories even if we never realize it; there is usually some story playing in the background of our minds telling us why we feel this way about this or that, why we don’t like so and so, why we like this thing and not that and so on. Meditation can give you the self-awareness and insight into what those stories are…….and then the ability to release them, or transcend them in the case of the Vedic style. 

     In a sense, meditation is a true act of personal courage. It was for me at least. It’s like actively choosing to take off the blinders or the rose tinted sunglasses and beginning to see things, life and yourself exactly as they are. Not everyone wants or is ready to see that. However, even though it may take away the rose tinted glasses, meditation then gives you the means of not only dealing with reality as it is but also building up a natural internal happiness as you do it.

   If it’s true (and it is) that our thoughts, or the thoughts that we choose to hook onto, create our reality, I shudder to think about where I would have been without meditation and also therapy. Truthfully I think I would have continued to be fine from the outside, as I imagine is the case for many people, - probably just a medicated, self-delusioned, anxiety-fueled, albeit high functioning, version of myself……...constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown. So really in a sense, meditation (and therapy) saved my life.