Tiny Buddha

Tag: depression

  • Living with Depression and Anxiety: How to Lessen the Pain

    Living with Depression and Anxiety: How to Lessen the Pain

    “I am bent, but not broken. I am scarred, but not disfigured. I am sad, but not hopeless. I am tired, but not powerless. I am angry, but not bitter. I am depressed, but not giving up.” ~Unknown

    Depression and anxiety. Two words we hear often, but unless we have actually lived with them, we cannot come close to understanding the tremendous impact they can have on one’s quality of life.

    Depression and anxiety can make people feel as if they are worthless and better off dead. What a horrible plague. But it is 100% possible to tame these two demons and live a happy, optimistic life that is full of wonder, gratitude, and contentment.

    I have lived with the twin tornado for as long as I can remember (since around the start of secondary school), and it’s been a battle of trying to find things to help me to live a good life—one in which I don’t constantly feel a knot in my stomach and a numbness toward living.

    When you tell your doctor you’re struggling with depression and/or anxiety, they usually suggest taking medication. This approach can work for many people and is a viable temporary option; however, what happens when the medications don’t work? What happens if the medication turns you into a walking zombie—numb, passive, and cold?

    That was my experience. Fortunately, I had enough self-awareness to realize that I wasn’t living; I was just surviving.

    There has to be another way, right? That is the question I asked myself night after night. Luckily, my interest in self-development and self-help led me to a few alternative options for healing, many of which sounded promising and were very effective.

    I stumbled across the work of Anthony Robbins, which really blew my mind. Many of his NLP ideas were great, ideas such as reframing the way one perceives a problem, creating a radical change in one’s physiology (posture, breathing rate, facial expressions, etc.), and changing the images in our head as well as the story we tell ourselves when we get depressed or anxious.

    I found this new information exciting and put it into practice straight away. Sure enough, I started to become more socially confident and began feeling more comfortable in myself.

    Much of the change in my life came about because now I had tools that I knew could take the edge off my depression and anxiety whenever they cropped up.

    These psychological tools continued to work time and time again; plus, I knew just how effective they were, so my self-belief improved.

    Before long I started training in martial arts and kickboxing, began attending public speaking classes, and also landed myself a girlfriend. These were feats that had seemed daunting, intimidating, and impossible back when I didn’t have a handle on my depression and anxiety.

    I want you to know that if you are suffering right now, things can and will get better.

    Many of you are likely reading this article to get the ‘answers’ for defeating anxiety and depression in order to help yourself escape a dark place. Many of you are reading this in order to help a friend or loved one do the same. Some of you might be reading out of curiosity.

    For those of you who are struggling right now, you might feel pessimistic about my advice, and that’s totally understandable. I ask that you dedicate a week to trying some of my suggestions and make a point of noting your mood throughout the day; you’ll see how these things will help you, again and again.

    For those of you reading this who aren’t struggling too much but are looking for suggestions to promote happiness and well-being, or simply to fight off a bad mood when one arises, I also urge you to keep reading, as well as to take on any of my suggestions that may suit you.

    Before I share the main things that have helped me manage my depression and anxiety, I want to let you know that I still have bad moods (I am human), I still get nervous (I am still human), and that life is not a fairy tale.

    This being said, I have made tremendous leaps forward and feel in control of my depression and anxiety. These two demons are still in my life, but now I control them and not the other way around.

    Okay, so let’s take a look at some of the things that helped me—things that can help you too.

    Practical Steps for Managing Depression and Anxiety

    Meditate.

    This is easily the most overlooked and simple practice that can make a world of difference in improving the quality of your life.

    It is so frustrating to see people who know all of the vast benefits meditation has to offer and yet do not meditate. Due to the fact that it seems too simple to be truly helpful, many people never start a practice. (Rant over!) I lovingly suggest you make it a daily habit, as it can help you train your brain to respond differently to negative thoughts and stressful situations.

    There are many different forms of meditation (including walking meditation, so “having no time” cannot be an excuse). I suggest you experiment and find one that suits you.

    If you’re suffering with depression and/or anxiety, I recommend Loving Kindness Meditation. (Google it—you’ll find lots of articles explaining how it’s done).

    Start with a short practice to ensure that you build the habit of practicing daily. If you can only manage three minutes a day, then perform three minutes of meditation per day. If you feel as if you can do more, then go right ahead. The goal is to eventually practice twenty minutes a day.

    Ask better quality questions.

    Thinking is nothing more than the process of asking and answering questions in our heads. We need to develop the habit of asking ourselves more empowering questions whenever we fall into a downward spiral.

    If we ask a question such as “Why do I always fail?” or, if we make statements to ourselves like “Life is pointless,” we can’t be surprised that we feel bad. Imagine somebody following you around all day pointing out the negatives in you and in life; your self-talk can have the same damaging impact on you and your emotions.

    Whenever I felt as if the cycle of depression was coming on strong, I would take the time to answer the following questions in as logical as manner as possible. Why logical? Because logical thinking negates irrational thinking and helps stop the spiral of depression (or anxiety) from getting worse.

    It’s easier said than done to be purely logical in our thinking when we’re depressed or anxious; it’s still worth a shot, though, because it can help.

    • What is the issue that is upsetting me? (Be factual here—what do you know for sure?)
    • What can I learn from this problem/situation?
    • What is one good thing about this? How can this be an opportunity?
    • What is great about this situation?
    • What action can I take right now to better the situation or how I feel?
    • What is the worst-case scenario here? How can I handle this should it become a reality?
    • What am I grateful for in my life right now?
    • What am I excited about or looking forward to right now?
    • Who do I love and who loves me?

    These questions can get us to acknowledge all of the good in our lives and helps us to get away from a downward negative spiral of emotions when we encounter situations that might otherwise trigger depression and anxiety.

    Practice acceptance.

    Many people have different ideas of how we can truly accept the obstacles and struggles that life throws us; they all involve non-resistance to the present moment (how things are in your life right now).

    I practice acceptance by stepping into the body, becoming present, and identifying how depression and anxiety feel. This does not mean how we think our depression and anxiety feel but how it actually feels.

    Is it a tension, a tingling, a pulsing? It usually feels like a knot in my stomach. I often feel my heart beating stronger and stronger, while I also experience a slight tingling or even shaking in my legs.

    Where do all of these sensations reside? Are they in your chest, stomach, or throat? How about all three?

    I have found that depression usually occurs in the mind first—our thinking is what gets us depressed. Accepting how your body feels in the moment takes your attention out of your head, giving you a much-needed break from the relentless thoughts that depression and anxiety bring forth.

    Try not to get roped back in to wrestling with your thoughts. Simply acknowledge them and let them drift in and out, or even dissipate. This kind of acceptance is likened to a mindfulness approach—again, very simple but extremely effective.

    Side note: Another great way to get outside of your head is to help somebody else. Spend some time helping somebody feel better, sleep better, live better, and notice how this makes you feel.

    Tell people how you feel.

    Sometimes it can feel as if those around us, whether family, friends, or colleagues, don’t truly understand how we feel. You might think people can sympathize but cannot empathize, but more people struggle with anxiety and depression than you may realize.

    When we tell people how we truly feel it’s as if a weight has been lifted off of our shoulders, and also, we are more likely to receive their support and understanding, which makes our lives a little bit easier.

    I understand how difficult it can be to let people know that you suffer with depression and anxiety, especially since we have been taught to ‘soldier on’ and put on a happy front to the outside world. But believe me, there is nothing embarrassing about admitting that we struggle. In fact, quite the opposite is true; it’s admirable because it takes a huge amount of courage to do so.

    Try telling somebody close to you how you feel and ask for their support and understanding. If you are really struggling and even battling suicidal thoughts then this is an even more important action step for you; I know it is extremely difficult but I promise you will not regret it.

    Give yourself time to be happy each day.

    This may seem too simple and perhaps even patronizing, but stay with me while I explain what I mean. Actually, I mean two things:

    First of all, we must be kind to ourselves and allow time for relaxation and enjoyment. Seems obvious, but many people (including myself) find ourselves feeling guilty or lost in thought during times in which we ought to be relaxing and having fun.

    Take an hour each day to do something you truly enjoy, something that makes you lose track of time and feel joyful and vibrant.

    One element of depression is a lack of enjoyment in activities, so you may need to think hard about what you can do each day that will bring a smile to your face; but I’m certain there is something!

    You could go for a walk in nature, read a book, watch your favorite television program, talk to a friend—the options are truly limitless.

    Now, if you struggle with both depression and anxiety (like myself), you may find that many activities you truly enjoy involve being alone. This is perfectly fine, but I urge you to push yourself at least once a week to spend time with close friends or loved ones; you will likely see an improvement in your mood and increase in your energy once you do so.

    The other element of giving yourself time to be happy is slightly different from what you may have heard before. Sometimes we forget that being happy can actually require work! In fact, most of the time we need to exert self-discipline in order to do those things that we know are good for us, such as eating a healthy, balanced meal and taking part in regular exercise or meditation.

    Set aside ten to twenty minutes a day to write in a journal. This is a great way to vent your thoughts, feelings, frustrations, fears, and dreams. A journal can give you more clarity and objectivity so you get out of your own head and escape your sometimes-malicious thoughts.

    I personally like to journal for five to ten minutes each morning and then again every evening. I noticed a world of difference to my mood once I became consistent, especially with regards to my anxiety.

    If you don’t know what to write or how to structure your journaling sessions, then start with the basics: how you feel, what you have been doing, anything on your mind, anything you are worrying about, etc.

    Try and write at least one thing each session that you are grateful for or looking forward to, as this will likely lift your mood. Remember that this will be your journal; you are free to do with it what you will. Give it a go yourself and see how you get on.

    —

    A quick word before I leave you: You might not experience any benefits immediately after you begin implementing these practices, so it’s important to be patient and to keep moving forward.

    As I already mentioned, applying some of what you may have learned here will require discipline, but I know that you can do it.

    Also, remember to be kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling down or anxious or uncomfortable. We all have bad days, especially when we are dealing with the twin terrors of depression and anxiety. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others.

    I wish you all the best, and I sincerely hope that this article has been of benefit to you.

    *This post represents one person’s personal experience and advice. If you’re struggling with depression and nothing seems to help, you may want to contact a professional. 

  • How to Be Like a Tree: Still, Strong, and Uniquely Beautiful

    How to Be Like a Tree: Still, Strong, and Uniquely Beautiful

    “This oak tree and me, we’re made of the same stuff.” ~Carl Sagan

    I was hugging trees long before it was cool.

    Recent research suggests that spending time in nature can reduce your blood pressure, heart rate, and stress level, not to mention cut down your risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and premature death.

    But when I began hugging trees, it was an undeniably weird thing to do.

    I risked the odd looks of strangers, however, because trees felt so calm and welcoming to me. When I wrapped my arms around their broad trunks, it felt like I was being gathered into the protective embrace of a beloved elder, as if their steadfastness imparted strength, and their rootedness helped me find my own solid ground.

    Recently, however, I’ve realized that their benefits extend far beyond momentary stress relief; it’s from trees that I’ve learned the most powerful lessons about how to deal with chronic depression and anxiety.

    Here are the biggest and most unexpected things I’ve learned so far from trees:

    1. When in doubt, don’t do.

    Every time I hug a tree, I’m struck by how still it is. There’s a silence, a spaciousness, and a total lack of movement that boggles my mind.

    I mean, it can’t be easy to be a tree. If you’re not getting enough sunlight, you can’t just pick up and walk a few steps to the right. If some animal builds its home too close to your roots, you can’t do anything to move it.

    I, on the other hand, respond to any perceived threat by jumping into action. That’s the nature of my anxiety; when I’m afraid, I want to do something—anything.

    But because I’m not acting out of clarity or wisdom, and because listening to fear makes the fear grow stronger, almost every action I take just makes things worse.

    Like the time when I was anxious about leaving my therapist because I was about to move back to Atlanta after fifteen years away. Jumping into action, I decided to go off my anti-depressant medication before I left so I would have her help, but I did it at a time when I was also changing careers, starting a business, and getting ready to move cross-country. Needless to say, it made a difficult time even harder for me.

    When I don’t get the results that I want, I feel even more out of control, my anxiety grows—along with my compulsion to act—and the negative cycle reinforces itself.

    Trees show me how to break this cycle by demonstrating the value of not doing.

    When I’m smart enough to imitate a tree, I get still. I feel. I listen.

    When I do this for long enough, one of three things happens: Either the problem resolves itself, or a wise response becomes clear to me, or I realize that it wasn’t really a problem in the first place.

    2. Support all of life.

    I’m often awed by how much trees give to the creatures around them, from the moss that grows on their bark, to the birds and squirrels they feed and shelter, to the humans who breathe their oxygen and enjoy their shade.

    When I’m depressed and anxious, I usually feel both overwhelmed by my own misery and guilty that I don’t have the resources to give more to others.

    It’s another negative cycle whereby my misery makes me unable to focus on anything or anybody else, which causes me to feel horribly self-centered, which makes me feel even more wretched and less able to give. What makes things even worse is that supporting others is one of the few things I’ve found that reliably helps me feel better.

    The effortless generosity of trees offers a way out.

    When trees have something to give, they share it with everyone, no matter how small or undeserving. But they don’t beat themselves up for not having acorns in the spring, or leaves in the winter. They simply extend whatever’s there to extend.

    Sometimes all I have to give is an apology for not being more considerate. Other times it’s a smile, or appreciation for someone’s support. Over time, if I give what I have, I have more to give, but the key is never to believe that it should be more than it is.

    That way, I can support all life, including my own.

    3. Don’t be afraid to get big.

    I’ve never been one to take up too much space.

    I’m talking physically: I’m over six feet tall and always felt awkward jutting up above most of the people around me, so I subconsciously slouched and made myself smaller.

    But I’m talking emotionally and relationally as well: I never used to like to call attention to myself, ask for what I needed, or speak up about my opinions. I went out of my way not to negatively impact anybody else, even if that meant sacrificing my own happiness or well-being.

    After years of always making other people’s needs and opinions more important than my own, it was hard not to feel depressed, helpless, and hopeless. By that point, however, making myself small wasn’t so much a choice as a well-ingrained habit.

    When I began to hang out with trees more, I started to notice how unapologetic they are about the space that they take up. They don’t worry that growing tall will cause somebody else to feel inadequate, or that stretching their limbs out wider will mean they’re taking up too much room. They just are who they are. When I stood next to them, I could feel their expansiveness begin to bloom in my own chest.

    Acting on this newfound sensation, I gave myself permission to get big. When I needed something, I asked for it. When I had an idea, I shared it. When I wanted something, I moved toward it. Not worrying about how others might perceive me, I stood tall and enjoyed the unique view.

    The best part is, after a long time of feeling powerless over anxiety and depression, I finally saw that I was bigger than either of them.

    4. Being crooked is beautiful.

    I’ve made plenty of wrong turns in my life.

    I used to feel ashamed that I had ten jobs over ten years before finally finding one that felt like a fit. Or that I had so many failed relationships before getting married nearly a decade after most of my friends. Or that fear made me wait twenty-five years to write a second novel when I knew after finishing my first at age twelve that I was born, in part, to write.

    Most of us (including myself) tend to think that the straight path is the best one. We beat up on ourselves for our false starts and slow progress.

    But have you ever noticed how beautiful trees are? And how crooked?

    I’ve come to believe that it’s precisely because of their odd angles and unexpected curves that trees appear so graceful. A tree made of straight lines would hold no appeal.

    Looking back, I can see that every job I had taught me more about what I wanted and brought me one step closer to work that I loved. Every relationship prepared me in some small way to be with the man I would eventually marry. And every time I negated my desire to write, that desire grew stronger, and I had more material to work with once I finally was ready to say yes to the call.

    We can’t undo our wrong turns, but we can appreciate their gnarled beauty.

    5. It doesn’t matter who you are.

    When I was younger, I thought that it was what I did that made me worthy. I pushed myself hard to do well in school, excel in sports, and achieve as much as I could.

    Eventually that strategy led to an unsavory mix of perfectionism, anxiety, and depression. Desperate, I got help from others and re-evaluated my beliefs. I soon concluded that it wasn’t what I did but who I was that mattered.

    At first this new belief seemed helpful, but eventually it brought its own set of anxieties. I was trying my hardest, but was I really calm enough? Or kind enough? Or wise enough?

    Then one day when I was hugging a tree, I tapped into a truth that made such questions irrelevant.

    I’d just gotten curious about what a tree’s energy felt like. Opening up to it, I was immediately flooded by a sense of expansive serenity. Peaceful as it was, it was also vibrant and strong. Welcoming and warm, it pulled me in. Suddenly I felt as if I were filled with, made of, and surrounded by sunlight.

    The energy was coming from the tree, but I realized that I could feel it because it was stirring something already within me. In other words, the tree and I shared the same true nature. Beneath my body, beneath my personality, and beneath my small identifications, I am this beautiful energy. So are you. So are we all.

    Unified in this way with every other living thing in the world, even I have to admit that the idea of being unworthy doesn’t make any sense. It’s not only irrelevant; it’s impossible.

    That’s when I realized that the magic lies not in what we do or even who we are, but in what we are, and how often we remember that.

  • Free 5-Day Mindfulness Challenge – Interview with Mindful in May Founder Elise Bialylew

    Free 5-Day Mindfulness Challenge – Interview with Mindful in May Founder Elise Bialylew

    Every year, I share a little about Mindful in May, a month-long online meditation program that can dramatically improve your state of your mind and your life, while also transforming the lives of others living in poverty.

    This year, I was grateful to connect with Mindful in May founder Elise Bialylew to learn more about the program; how mindfulness can help with depression, anxiety, and chronic stress; and how you can you can get a free taste of the already dramatically discounted program from April 8th through 12th.

    Here’s what Elise had to say…

    1. Can you tell us a little about yourself and why you decided to launch Mindful in May?

    I was always deeply curious about the human condition and the ingredients that are required to live a thriving life. At medical school, I remember being completely blown away as I held a human brain in my hands and wondered how a one kilogram mass could house a lifetime of memories, thoughts, and desires.

    Studying medicine, although at times was so difficult, gave me a deep appreciation for the miracle of the body and the preciousness of life.

    As I moved deeper into my career I discovered that while psychiatry helped save people’s lives, it often left the flourishing part of the equation to other professionals. I also realized that this was the part of the journey I was most passionate about. I wanted to support people in thriving, not just surviving.

    It was during my own search for greater clarity, meaning, and a way to manage the stress of my everyday life in the wards, that I truly committed to meditation.

    When I started learning mindfulness I had no idea how deeply it would transform my life.

    One morning, I was sitting in meditation when a phrase appeared in my mind, flashing like a neon light: “Mindful in May.” The phrase grew into an idea to create an online global mindfulness fundraising campaign each year during May, where people could be taught about mindfulness by the world’s best experts and dedicate the month to making a positive difference in the world, by raising funds for global poverty—specifically bringing clean, safe drinking water to those in need.

    This was the beginning of a new path that would answer the call of my longing to make a positive difference in a more far-reaching way than prescribing medication and facilitating small group meetings. It was an idea that integrated three of my passions: mindfulness, social impact, and community.

    For me, mindfulness meditation has been life changing. It’s taught me so much about how to manage stressful situations and equipped me to manage my emotions more skilfully, both in my personal and professional relationships. Of course it’s still a work in progress—there’s never an end to learning and growing but so far it’s transformed my life and career path for the better.

    The fact that we now understand that the way we use our minds can literally change our brains and our genetic expression, is an exciting finding that has re-inspired me along my career path and led me to create Mindful in May.

    In the developed world most of us have our material and survival needs met, but it’s our minds that cause so much of our suffering. The World Health Organisation states that depression is now the second leading cause of global burden of disease.

    In the developing world it’s something as basic as clean water that creates so much suffering.

    Mindful in May addresses both of these global issues by offering people a way to learn how to train their attention, develop their awareness, and become masters rather than slaves of their minds, while helping to raise funds to build clean water wells in the developing world.

    2. Who is this program ideally suited for?

    The program offers daily content and support including an online interactive community where participants can get their questions answered and connect with other likeminded people from around the world.

    Each year complete beginners and more experienced meditators can join the one month program and, no matter their experience, find it hugely valuable. There’s something for everyone in here and most people who do it once, come back again and again each year to deepen their knowledge and practice.

    3. How many people have participated since you launched, and what kind of feedback have they shared about their experience?

    We’ve had thousands of people from over forty countries participate, and each year we hear of the profound benefits people experience.

    Although I was hearing thousands of anecdotes each year about how the program was transforming people’s lives, I wanted science to support this finding. So we completed a pilot research study a few years ago that was published in the Mindfulness Journal which suggested that ten minutes of meditation a day over the one month program, was enough to bring tangible benefits.

    Specifically, research revealed that participants experienced greater presence and focus, reduced stress, reduced negative emotions, and more positive emotions and overall described a greater sense of flourishing in life.

    As well as these benefits, the research suggested that the more you practice meditation the more mindful you get, and the more mindful you get the more you experience positive emotions.

    4. So many of us today struggle with depression, anxiety, and chronic stress. How can mindfulness help us better cope with these challenges and life’s daily struggles?

    Each year more than 1,000 studies come out exploring the benefits of mindfulness in different domains. There is very solid research around the benefits of mindfulness in the realm of mental health.

    A group of psychologists in England (Mark Williams, John Teasdale and Zindel Segal) conducted a study of patients who had suffered multiple episodes of depression. Incredibly, they found that mindfulness practice was at least as effective in preventing depressive relapse as maintenance antidepressants—without any of the side effects. A later study building on this discovery found that mindfulness practice could nearly halve the risk of depressive relapse.

    Another groundbreaking study revealed that regular mindfulness meditation increased amounts of the enzyme Telomerase, which protects DNA from age and stress-related damage, suggesting that meditation can protect our cells from age-related damage that comes with stress.

    Although genetics undeniably has an influence on our mental health, the new science offers a more empowering perspective, where we can, to some extent, become sculptors of our own brains by practicing mindfulness.

    5. What, have you found, are the other key benefits of practicing mindfulness?

    Mindfulness offers us a way to see more clearly and be more aware of what’s happening within us and around us in the world. With this greater self-awareness and present moment attention we become better at:

    • Being aware of our emotions and responding to them rather than reacting
    • Having better access to what we really want in our lives and then taking action to make that happen
    • Recognizing thoughts and letting them go rather than getting stuck in obsessive planning or worrying
    • Managing our stress
    • Being in relationships with others with less conflict
    • Communicating more effectively as we are more aware of why we are feeling what we are feeling
    • Staying focussed at work and being less prone to multitasking
    • Falling asleep at night as we have a tool to settle the mind
    • Making decisions that are aligned with what we truly value

    6. What do you think are the biggest obstacles to starting and maintaining a meditation practice, and how can Mindful in May help people do just that?

    I’ve found over the years of teaching that there are many misconceptions about what meditation is, and this means people come to the practice with expectations that set them up for failure. One of the biggest misconceptions is that meditation is about stopping your thoughts.

    Meditation isn’t about stopping your thoughts but rather recognizing and becoming more aware of thoughts so that you are less caught in the impact they can have on you. Although as you practice for longer periods the mind certainly does settle, you can never stop the mind from thinking.

    Just like the heart beats, the lungs breathe, and the eyes see, the mind thinks. So when you sit to meditate and notice the constant stream of thoughts, you realize that this is part of meditation, and so it becomes less of a challenge as you stop battling with your own mind.

    There are other challenges to meditating whether that’s boredom, sleepiness, or restlessness, and these are all predictable obstacles that have been described for thousands of years in the ancient texts. Thankfully, meditators from centuries before us have faced these challenges and have come up with ways of working with these challenges, which support you to go deeper into the practice and experience the benefits that lie beyond these obstacles.

    I created Mindful in May with all of these obstacles in mind, and each week I offer direct ways of working through these challenges. I think this really helps people finally get beyond barriers they’ve previously experienced and they start to experience the deep benefits of the practice.

    One of the other big challenges for all of us is finding the time, prioritizing meditation, and making it a habit. We cover this challenge as well, and I feature guests who are experts in habit formation and behavior change. So it’s not just a meditation course that people are getting, it’s really an integrative program that helps people learn the tool of meditation but also learn how to create lasting positive change in their lives.

    7. As part of the program, you feature interviews with more than a dozen mindfulness experts. Looking at the lineup, I’m sure these were all powerful, inspiring conversations! But can you share a couple key insights from these interviews—ideas that you think have the potential to change participants’ lives?

    Critically acclaimed author and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, Dan Siegel, offers fascinating new research on the benefits of mindfulness and its ability to slow the ageing process, reduce inflammation, and lower both blood pressure and cholesterol.

    He delves into interesting discoveries around mind wandering, explaining that, …”it’s not that unhappiness leads to mind wandering, but, it appears … not being present is making you unhappy. Even if your mind is wandering toward fun things—I’m going to go on a trip to Hawaii or I’m going to go to a fun ski trip, or whatever—that actually isn’t the issue. Somehow being in the present moment and literally having presence is associated with happiness and well-being.”

    Mark Epstein, an NYC Bestselling author and psychiatrist, discusses what anger, restlessness, and worry can teach us about ourselves, and why “letting go” does not necessarily mean letting go of thoughts and emotions. He says, “Letting go does not mean releasing the thing that’s bothering you, trying to get rid of it only makes it stronger. Letting go has more to do with patience than it does with release.”

    8. I know you offer a free five-day mindfulness challenge to offer a taste of Mindful in May. What does that challenge entail, and how can interested parties sign up?

    I know how powerful the Mindful in May program is, but I also know that there are so many offerings online it can be hard for people to discern whether programs are really going to deliver what they promise. So, that’s why I offer a free program, to give people a chance to get a taste and discover the incredibly valuable learning and tools inside.

    The FREE 5 Days To Mindfulness program runs from April 8th-12th, and when you register you get:

    • Daily emails for five days with mindfulness teaching and guided meditations
    • Access to a fascinating video teaching with world leading Stanford mindfulness expert and professor of psychology Kelly McGonical—you’ll learn practical tools that will transform your stress and life for the better!
    • Guided meditations that will help you find greater focus and calm (and take less than ten minutes!)
    • Support from a like minded online community where you’ll be held accountable to stay on track during your five-day training.
    • Experience the power of meditating in community with people around the world through a LIVE online guided meditation with Elise to help you access greater calm and relaxation in the busyness of your life

    9. If people enjoy the free challenge, how can they get involved in the month-long campaign?

    To register for the one month Mindful in May program they need to simply register here.

    When they register they’ll get:

    • Guided meditations from the world’s best meditation teachers including meditations for relaxation, improved focus, better sleep, greater emotional balance, managing difficult emotions like anxiety and anger and more.
    • Sixteen+ exclusive video interviews with mindfulness experts, and neuroscientists including Daniel Siegel, James Baraz, Mark Epstein, and many more…
    • Daily emails to make meditation a habit
    • Access to the online community to help them stay accountable, connected and regularly meditating

    This world-class meditation program is normally $300, but for the month of May, we drop the price to just $49. This gives you a chance to donate some of the difference to the cause. So it’s a win, win—a clear mind for you and clean water for others.

    You can make an optional donation and or create a fundraising page and get sponsored to meditate for ten minutes a day throughout May.

    Every $50 you raise will transform the life of one person through giving them the gift of clean safe drinking water.

    —

    In case you missed the many links throughout this post, you can join the free 5-day challenge here, or get signed up for the full month-long Mindful in May program here. I hope you find the program helpful, friends!

  • How Embracing and Loving My “Negative” Emotions Helped Heal My Pain

    How Embracing and Loving My “Negative” Emotions Helped Heal My Pain

    “Do not fight against pain; do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it. The same thing goes for all your emotions.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    For a long time, heaviness and dark feelings were very familiar to me. In a strange way they were comforting; I felt safe in darkness. The light felt more painful to me, but I also wanted to change because I wanted to free myself from the limitations of staying in the dark.

    I first started struggling with depression when I was young. From an early age my mother told me there was something wrong with me, particularly when I dared to express “negative” feelings, like anger. It became a mantra that filled my mind all the time. This one statement pervaded my entire life and dramatically affected the choices I made and didn’t make, well into adulthood.

    In my early forties, after much searching, I hit rock bottom. I was lying in bed, wanting to die, my thoughts telling me how wrong I was as a human being, when another thought popped into my mind: “What if depression is a gift?”

    Depression had felt like this never-ending darkness that clouded everything in my life. Even at times that I should have seen as positive, the depression prevented me from enjoying them. Depression was an old friend, one I not only tolerated but believed was the whole of who I was.

    I found my identity in feeling like a failure, and not moving forward meant that my identity was correct; I was confirming that this was who I was—until I understood that I was meant to be so much more than this depressed woman, sad, sorrowful, constantly grieving and frustrated. There had to be more to life.

    Instead of looking at what was wrong with myself, I started looking at the feelings that came up, noticing that my aversion to them was not only perpetuating them, but was affirming that I was not worthy of love, acceptance, or even acknowledgement.

    I could no longer fight who I was. I had to start looking at myself as a whole, including the pain and trauma, so I started to imagine that my repressed emotions were small children—and not just any small children, but orphans.

    They lived in a large orphanage, where nobody cared for them and the only adults that came in to see them were mean, critical ones who would beat them if they showed anger or leave them to cry if they were sad.

    There were many children in there, cowering in their cribs, with no one to hold them or reassure them that they were safe.

    Some of my “orphaned children” were shame and embarrassment. I’d felt these feelings many times in my life, and they’d prevented me from sharing my skills or even recognizing that I had any at all.

    I also had angry orphaned children who had been made to believe that anger was negative and bad, not positive fuel for creativity and healthy boundaries.

    And then there were my sad orphaned children, who had not properly grieved the loss of their father, who’d passed in my late twenties.

    These parts of me didn’t need to be alienated; they needed my love, care, and attention.

    I’d orphaned these feelings because I didn’t want them to be part of me, but because of this, I lived a half-life for a long time. Rejecting my feelings, ironically, fueled my depression, because you can’t selectively numb your emotions. When you numb any, you numb all.

    Instead of embracing these suffering children, I’d created diversions to avoid them.

    As a child, I used food to avoid feeling lonely, rejected, and broken. In my teens and early twenties, I was a binge drinker, consuming huge amounts of alcohol four days a week to repress my emotions. As an adult, this meant too much coffee and sugar, or I overworked to avoid feeling anything.

    At one point I used “positive thinking” to distract myself from these neglected aspects of myself. This was probably the most powerful distraction, because by thinking I needed to be grateful and happy all of the time, I was automatically rejecting all other emotions.

    It was easier to pretend than to make friends with these aspects of myself.

    I eventually realized that I couldn’t do this to myself anymore. I no longer wanted to lie or consider a huge part of my nature, my shadow, wrong.

    Self-compassion and self-acceptance are so important if we are to be balanced human beings. If we are unable to acknowledge and accept the pain inside of ourselves, how can we ever expect that things will change? How can we be less judgmental of other people if we judge ourselves harshly most of the time?

    Embracing pain isn’t easy. It takes courage and commitment to take this transformative path, to begin to reframe depression and other mental health issues as a gift, as an awakening, to help us return to who we really are, which is loving, kind, compassionate, and accepting.

    Though the darkness had felt safe, I eventually realized that I was afraid of the light because it illuminated those dark corners where my orphaned emotions live.

    It was time to stop fighting my feelings and give them a new home in my heart. Here’s how I did just that.

    Embracing My “Orphaned” Emotions

    1. Acknowledge.

    The first thing I had to do was to acknowledge that I had been avoiding my pain, and to accept that it was okay that I did this. If I beat myself up for deserting parts of myself for so long I’d just be putting further shame or blame into that orphanage.

    I had to accept that sadness, fear, anger, and rage were healthy emotional experiences, sometimes necessary, and that I’d previously rejected these feelings as a way to protect myself until I was ready to face who I truly am.

    If you’ve also abandoned your most wounded, fragile parts, decide to break the cycle now. Acknowledge what you did but also why, and have compassion for yourself.

    2. Get to know your feelings.

    Take the time to get to know these pain feelings, but do so as an unconditional mother would, without judgment, without needing to fix or make the feelings anything other than what they are. When sadness or sorrow comes up, take a quiet moment to witness this child within with loving attention.

    3. Accept them as gifts.

    Our feelings are not there to make our lives miserable; they’re there to show us what may not be working in our lives, or what needs to change.

    When I accepted that depression was a gift, I began judging myself less harshly and embracing the feelings I’d repressed for so long. Essentially, I started accepting all of myself.

    I’d gotten comfortable viewing myself as a failure, and I thought my unconventional life confirmed that’s what I was. I was living with my best friend who was in his seventies. I was single, poor in my eyes, and unattractive. I believed that because I didn’t have my life together in my forties—I didn’t have a home of my own, a partner, or a successful career—I wasn’t acceptable or enough as I was.

    My depression was a sign that I needed to change how I viewed myself. This enabled me to see not only that I am enough as I am, but others are enough, exactly as they are right now.

    Instead of stuffing down your depression, anxiety, shame, loneliness—or whatever emotion you’re tempted to resist—ask yourself: What message is it trying to send to me? What would I do differently in my life if I listened to this emotion instead of suppressing it?

    4. Remember it’s not a race.

    When I first started owning my shadow I found it challenging to stop my avoidance practices, but I initially tried to rush through this process. I thought I could immediately accept all feelings, whenever they arose, without ever giving in to my old habits.

    I eventually realized I had to be kind to myself and to take each new step as mindfully as possible. I also had to understand that I would probably fall back into old habits at times and accept this was all part of the healing process.

    It takes regular practice and persistence to welcome those unwanted emotions time and time again. It takes time to internalize that it’s not about getting rid of any feelings, but about welcoming them as part of self-love and personal growth.

    5. It’s all about trust.

    Becoming aware of our painful emotions is only one step. Until we are able to fully welcome and embrace them, life will trigger us to love them further. Things will happen that evoke all the feelings we want to avoid—challenges in our work, relationships, and other aspects of our lives.

    We can turn back and ignore the triggers, or we can trust that whatever shows up is meant to teach us unconditional love. It takes faith and trust to love shame, anger, and fear. We need to trust that this is worthwhile and that we’re capable of re-parenting ourselves in a more wholesome way.

    —

    I know that my old ways of avoiding and distracting myself from the pain never worked—that I had to go through it to go beyond it, and that going beyond it does not mean I will never feel sad or despairing again. I will, but I can do so from a place of trust, knowing I will be okay, because I now understand that all of me is lovable, and I am enough exactly as I am right now.

  • What Your “Negative” Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

    What Your “Negative” Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

    “Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.” ~Billy Cox

    It might sound like a senseless paradox to say that the “bad” or “dark” things about you are actually your “light” or “positive” qualities. However, this isn’t just a feel-good platitude; it’s literally true. The things we struggle with the most are our greatest sources of empowerment.

    Because this process is not exactly front and center of modern mental health and wellness movements, committing to your own healing can seem daunting and hopeless. Few people have truly learned how to welcome their painful, suppressed emotions, listen to what they have to say, and come out the other side stronger.

    But in today’s world, it’s become increasingly difficult to avoid, suppress, and force ourselves into fake states of positivity. Clearly, our “negative” emotions are bubbling to the surface where they cannot be ignored any longer.

    We see anger and pain overflowing into the social and political sphere, in schools where violence occurs, and all over the news. According to ScienceDaily, “121 million people worldwide are impacted by depression, and 850,000 commit suicide every year.”

    It’s no wonder so many of us get stuck in apathy, pessimism, and distractions. Life is challenging us right now, and the first necessary step is to actually acknowledge that we are in pain. This sounds incredibly simple, yet so many people choose to fight their symptoms rather than committing to understanding them.

    On social media I see a lot of hashtags exemplifying our resistance to pain, like #depressionwarrior and #fightanxiety. And while it’s totally understandable to want to conquer the pain you’ve felt for so long, mental illness is not something to be battled and conquered. It doesn’t need to be fought, but rather, listened to and respected.

    Just as the physical body has innate intelligence, so does the emotional system. We don’t want to wage war against the very emotions that are trying to alert us of a problem and walk us through the solution. From a basic state of resistance, no healing can occur.

    In 2018, I gave up on a painful relationship, moved to a new apartment, started a new job, and finished writing my first real book. I grew up in so many ways, and processed more trauma and healed more aspects of myself than I ever thought possible. For the first time, my growth and progress were unmistakable—I didn’t need to squint to see that I had become wiser, stronger, and more capable in the real world.

    But my radical transformation was not exciting or easy. It wasn’t a fight, and it sure wasn’t the kind of glamorous story of triumph that goes viral nowadays. My life circumstances pushed me into a sort of hibernation—a state where I spent most of my time reading, meditating, resting, crying, and just doing whatever I had to do.

    This is the thing: True healing doesn’t look cool. It’s not a fighting and a conquering, but a softer, more intuitive process. This is why society resists it so much.

    True healing requires us to be counter-cultural. It requires us to be awkward, to stay in on Friday nights, to take strange trips or buy strange things that we can’t quite explain to other people.

    Healing requires vulnerability and radical allegiance to yourself.

    This is why much of my healing took so long. Prior to 2018, I wasn’t ready to commit to myself no matter what. I was too impressionable and willing to change for other people.

    The biggest lesson I learned is that my mental “illness” was not really illness or dysfunction at all. In truth, my emotions were messengers I had been ignoring, judging harshly, and trying to get rid of. My negative emotions were on my side, not against me.

    Negative emotions are not something you need to fight or fix any more than you’d need to fight or fix your immune system as it tries to ward off an infection. This is the great misunderstanding of our time.

    Many people never heal from mental illness because they mistake the symptoms for the problem. The symptoms are your obvious negative emotions, but the root problems are hidden. For example, you may be depressed because you don’t express yourself freely. On top of this, you may have a deep-seated fear that if you express yourself, you’ll be scolded.

    There are often several layers of negative beliefs and fears in our subconscious (or “shadow”), but all we ever see are the symptoms (e.g. depression, anxiety, etc.). I lived much of my life trying to solve my emotions until I learned a much more effective approach: listening to my emotions.

    So how do we actually heal?

    1. Listen to your mental “illness.”

    This is the simplest first step you can take. Every time you feel unpleasant symptoms arise, no matter what they are, make time that day to stop and listen. You can do this through a simple meditation in which you quiet your mind and let the emotions have space to express themselves.

    If it suits you better, you can also write all your current negative emotions on a page. There’s no need to worry about any emotion besides what is activated in the moment. What are you currently struggling with? Oftentimes, it will be connected to your other issues any way. Let that particular emotion speak.

    2. Ask your mental “illness” questions.

    Another thing I learned is how surprisingly easy it is to get answers from your subconscious mind. As soon as these emotions are given time, space, attention, and unconditional love, they waste no time revealing what you need to know.

    Maybe the message is simply that you need more time in your day to rest, or that you need to leave a serious relationship. Whether big or small, the guidance you receive will help you shift your life in a way that soothes your symptoms. This is the beginning of true healing.

    3. Practice gratitude for your symptoms.

    This is probably the most challenging thing on the list. Your symptoms really are guiding you and alerting you to what is out of alignment in your life. However, we’ve spent so much time suppressing and denying them that they’ve caused us significant pain.

    Our symptoms are like children throwing tantrums. If we don’t listen, they get louder and angrier. This is why we need to “make up” with our symptoms just as we would with a friend with whom we had a fight.

    Once you literally start to notice how your symptoms are subtly guiding you toward solutions, it becomes much easier to feel grateful for them (and trust them!). This step took me a bit of practice, but over time I found that I could have gratitude for my symptoms without any effort or forcing.

    4. Commit to the long haul.

    At first this may seem discouraging. But when I look back, I see that most of my wasted time was spent desperately trying to rush to the “perfect” life. I wanted to magically arrive at a place where I had no emotional or physical issues, and everything looked pristine on the surface. It was during these periods that I felt the most dissatisfaction and pain.

    Committing to the long haul means you have decided that no matter what, you will not abandon yourself. You will not try to skip out on true progress and growth for a quick and easy “fix.” You will not try to appear perfect from the outside.

    Once you make this commitment, your healing can occur faster and with more joy and ease throughout the process.

    So if you are at your wits end, pause. Stop resisting your circumstances and try a new approach. What if your emotions weren’t out to get you? What if they honestly wanted to help move you forward?

  • It’s Oversimplified to Say Happiness Is a Choice

    It’s Oversimplified to Say Happiness Is a Choice

  • Sensitivity Means Passion, Not Weakness

    Sensitivity Means Passion, Not Weakness

    “The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t make you a burden. It doesn’t make unlovable, undesirable, or undeserving of care. It doesn’t make you too much or too sensitive or too needy. It makes you human. “ ~Daniell Koepke

    A while back, during one of my therapy sessions, I became acquainted with the word “dysthymia.”

    I was puzzled at first, but as my therapist dug deeper into the subject, I realized that complex-sounding term was, in fact, a birth name to the grizzly monster that has been shadowing me for years. It’s more commonly known as persistent depressive disorder.

    I can’t exactly remember the onset of an extended period when I felt lower than usual. It might have sneaked in unnoticed in my early teens and grown out of proportion since then. It might have been born with me. I have no idea.

    All I know is, I’ve had a pervading sense of hopelessness long enough to convince myself that something was wrong. It’s only natural for a child to feel threatened by the world around them. At least that’s how I felt, day in and day out.

    I was told it would only be a matter of time until I grew out of it and became a self-assured woman. Well, I’m twenty years old and this day has never come, and I’ll tell you, the old times were paradise. I was lucky to have my parents’ back in every situation, and the thought of loosening my grip on their protection with the passing years was a scary prospect.

    Inevitably, I grew up and things didn’t get any easier.

    My generalized fear mingled with an endless hunt for the meaning behind words, people’s actions, and even life itself. The existential nature of these questions made it impossible for me to get concrete answers, which overloaded my brain with the untold possibilities, thus fueling an anxiety disorder.

    Being an avid gobbler of pills and a depression sufferer herself, my mother suggested that I went to a psychiatrist. As expected, at sixteen I left the doctor’s office with an antidepressant prescription in hand, as I doubted both my sanity and worth.

    In a different session, I can recall my therapist drawing a chart of sorts, in order to illustrate my situation: she traced three parallel horizontal lines and named them “euphoria,” “neutrality,” and “depression,” from top to bottom.

    She then drew a squiggly line with stable highs and lows, yet mostly focused in the area between depression and neutrality.

    What that means is I’m bound to feel down most days, with the occasional bout of gloom and/or cheerfulness, depending on the situation. The mood sways aren’t fickle; they’re usually curbed into the same spectrum, but still, sometimes I wish the ups would last longer.

    “Don’t worry, that is very common in highly sensitive people,” she said to me. “Now that you’ve named that feeling, it will become easier to deal with.”

    At the time, that wasn’t helpful at all. Why did my personality have to be built this way? Would I have to deal with this for the rest of my life? That’s not what I came here for!

    I developed an unhealthy habit of comparison, as I envied the life of every extroverted and confident person I knew, even if that meant scrolling through their social media pages (which, let’s face it, makes everyone seem at the top of their game on a daily basis).

    For months on end I tried to stick to a fully positive lifestyle. Spoiler alert: I was doing it wrong. It took me a while to recognize that I didn’t have to be happy all the time nor rebuff my icky moments in exchange for a phony, dimmed spark of sunshine. I felt something was missing.

    I was in denial. I was rejecting myself, whom I’ll have to spend the rest of my days with whether I want to or not. Little did I know, refusing who I was wouldn’t do anything for me; it would only hinder the process of acceptance.

    All I had to do was skew my perspective, bit by bit. And I did, with the help of unexpected sources and events.

    Sensitivity Means Passion

    During a recent conversation with my brother, I came to the slow realization that I might have underrated what can prove itself to be a powerful attribute.

    His girlfriend had broken up with him, and his devastation was painful to watch. However, his main objection was that he felt guilty for “feeling too much while she felt way less.” I could identify with him at that moment.

    He would beat himself up and judge his past actions, wishing he could go back and suppress the excess emotion he poured into the relationship. Anyone who’s familiar with him would advise him to never change for a girl, and that the right one would see this supposed “defect” as a major quality.

    Being his twin sister, of course we’d share some traits– besides in appearance. And that’s it: we feel too much. Too much of everything, whether it be the pain of a heartbreak or the delight of succeeding at something, for instance.

    In discussing life’s matters, we’ve both agreed upon the fact that oftentimes we may be taken up entirely by emotion, to the point where even gazing at the stars opens our minds to an immensity of otherworldly interpretations. How amazing is that?

    Besides, we’re eager seekers of beauty in the little things and lovers of kindness. That depth in our mindset is what allows us to express everything so thoroughly, especially through writing and other kinds of art.

    What was supposed to be a wallowing session ended up giving us a different view of ourselves. Needless to say, we finished the conversation feeling way better than when we started it.

    See It for What It Is: Just A Trait

    About three years ago, something interesting came in the mail. One of my aunts resides in England, and she sends gifts every so often. This particular time, she had a special present for me.

    It was a book, but not just any book. It was a self-help book called The Highly Sensitive Person, written by Dr. Elaine N. Aron. It had highlighted passages and comments scribbled all over it, as if Auntie wanted me to pay special attention to them.

    I might have rolled my eyes at first, but that’s part of my proud nature. Also, never in my seventeen years had I read a self-help book, so I decided to give it a reluctant try in case she asked about it later and I had to whip off a review. I started reading, and to my surprise, it felt like staring at a mirror.

    The book, first published in 1996, promotes the de-stigmatization around sensitive people, often mislabeled as weak, shy, and even antisocial, to name a few labels. It has offered me the best advice I’ve been given, from someone who has been through similar struggles.

    It counts on interviews with hundreds of people like me—perhaps like you, too—who have offered their experience as HSPs. Their stories prove that we are not alone and that being sensitive makes us unique in our own ways; we just have to make an effort to see that amidst the haze of society telling us we’re somehow abnormal.

    I can relate to my aunt on many levels, especially because we have strikingly similar personalities, which is always a recurrent topic during family reunions. At some point in her life she had the same doubts I do now—she felt unfitting and lost. She gets me, and she made sure I had that in mind by giving me that book.

    “Think about the impact on you of not being the ideal for your culture. It has to affect you—not only how others have treated you but how you have come to treat yourself.” ~Elaine N. Aron. Ph. D.

    For the first time in a while, I accepted my wholeness. I felt an overdue relief in being myself, comforted to know that being dysthymic and highly sensitive by no means indicates than I’m worse than everybody else.

    I’m still coming to terms with my fragile essence. I haven’t left therapy or the medications, and I may need them for the rest of my life, who knows? Even so, in researching alternative ways to cope with my anxiety I stumbled across several posts that swore by meditation, so I decided to give it a shot—and it worked like magic!

    I meditate for at least ten minutes daily, and the practice has helped diminish common anxious and depressive symptoms, such as a fast heartbeat and racing thoughts. This happens due to meditation’s scientifically suggested power to positively modify our brains—yes, it’s possible! If combined with consistent daily activities such as exercising or anything that sparks creativity, it becomes a strong healing method.

    The good news is, my sensitivity has ceased to be a problem. Whenever it wants in, I won’t slam the door, I’ll just invite it in for a cup of coffee instead. Maybe acceptance is all it needs to rest cozy in my chest.

  • How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

    How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

    “No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

    I’ve battled depression for most of my life. In my younger years, it gripped me pretty frequently. I was first hit with suicidal thoughts at the age of fifteen, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was young and dumb and had no idea what was happening.

    When I was twenty-five it hit again. This time, however, I understood the cause. I was getting divorced, and my entire life was in turmoil.

    It was at this time that I decided that I was going to do something about it. So, I dove into the world of personal development. I read every book I could get my hands on.

    The following are some realizations I’ve had about depression and what’s helped me break free from it. This may not work for everyone, but perhaps there’s something here that can help you.

    Depression is like a Chinese finger trap: the more you try to get free, the more trapped you become.

    When I was younger, I would try to fight my feelings. I believed in facing my challenges head on. As any young man would do, I would see myself as the hero of my own story and depression as the villain.

    The last time it hit me, however, I wasn’t nearly as brazen. I laid in my bed and the feeling washed over me like a flood. One minute I was okay, and the next I was going haywire.

    All I could think about was killing myself. And the crazy part of that is that I had a great life, and that I didn’t want to actually do it. I just wanted the intensity to end. I wanted to be free from the feelings that penetrated everything I did.

    Depression is like a Chinese finger trap. The more you fight it, the more it gets you in its grasp. And the only way to get out is to do the very thing that you intuitively feel is wrong.

    You only get free from depression when you lean into it.

    I know that goes against every piece of self-help advice that exists. But depression is a different animal. You can’t positive-think your way out of depression because this kind of mental battle is a big part of what causes depression in the first place. Obsessing over your thoughts keeps you stuck in your head.

    It’s a trap of the most frustrating form because your attempts at defeating depression often serve to keep it firmly in place. In other words, your resistance to depression causes it to strengthen its grip on you.

    There is a concept in psychology and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) called “exposure therapy.” The idea is that the more you expose yourself to the thing you fear, the less intimidating and fearful that thing becomes.

    I was able to get over my fear of snakes in this manner. One summer I made the goal to hike a certain trail near my house. However, the trail constantly had snakes on it, and I was deathly afraid of them.

    I didn’t want to give up on my hiking goals, so I forced myself to walk past the snakes. Eventually I realized that they are relatively harmless and won’t bother you unless you bother them.

    Do you fear your depression? I know I did, especially when it became so bad that suicidal thoughts would creep in. I would spend many a night in bed just lying like a brick, afraid to move because I was scared that I would do something to hurt myself.

    When you lean into your feelings, they dissipate.

    And thus is the wisdom of the Chinese finger trap. The only way out is to lean in. To stop fearing what you feel and start facing what you feel.

    When I started thinking about the things that may have been causing my depression instead of the things I thought could cure it, I got a better understanding of what my depression was.

    I saw that things like negative core beliefs and unhappiness with my career and finances were contributing to my depression, and that I needed to deal with those things. Depression, then, was more of a symptom of the real problem rather than the source.

    You don’t beat this enemy by fighting him. You beat him by standing in front of him and telling him that you are not afraid. And then you deal with the things that make him strong.

    I liken depression to a storm. It will hit you all at once, but it won’t stay around forever. If you wait long enough, the feelings will pass. And what is left after the feelings pass is in your hands.

    You can choose to let the storm of depression keep you in a depressed state even when the actual feelings aren’t there. Or you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep moving forward.

    Leaning into your feelings releases their power over you, but you still need to wiggle yourself free after you release your feelings.

    This is probably the most important part of dealing with depression.

    It’s not enough to just face your feelings and lean into them. If you’ve ever played with a Chinese finger trap, you eventually realized that to release its grip on your fingers, you had to push them further into the trap. However, to truly get your fingers free, you had to wiggle them back out slowly.

    This is exactly what depression is like. You may not have control over when depression strikes. You may even need medication to deal with it. But you can control what you do when you’re depressed, and you can break free. I am proof of that. I’ve battled this feeling, this inexplicable feeling, for most of my life. But I now know what true joy and true happiness is.

    You can know joy too. You can get past depression when it hits. You don’t have to let it define you any longer.

    How do you wiggle free? I use a process of deep introspection, mindfulness, and work toward a powerful purpose in my life.

    At the root of my depression were the most insecure and sensitive things I thought about myself. This is true for many of us. These beliefs run under the surface of our psyche like a motor. Pay attention to the things that make you emotional and look for the beliefs you have about yourself that are behind them.

    For example, I used to feel shame whenever someone would single me out in front of others. While this is a common feeling for people, I looked for the belief that may have been fueling that. I discovered that underneath it all was an old belief from childhood: “I am bad.”

    Now, when I recognize that this belief is surfacing, I remind myself that it’s human to make mistakes sometimes, and that doesn’t make me a bad person. This prevents me from spiraling into a shame cycle, which can easily lead to a depressed state.

    You have negative beliefs about yourself as well, and, while it’s an extremely emotional process facing them, it’s also cathartic. Find someone you trust and talk to them about these thoughts and feelings. Or journal about them to understand why you formed them and how you can let them go.

    Another powerful tactic for wiggling free from depression is mindfulness. I like to solve puzzles or do something creative to take my mind away from the thoughts that depression causes me to have.

    Note that this isn’t meant as a way to avoid your problems. Depressed thoughts are like a tape that plays automatically in the back of your mind. When you immerse yourself in an activity, you interrupt that tape and break the negative cycle so that you’re no longer fixated on negative thoughts (which is akin to pushing your finger deeper into the trap).

    It’s also helped me to fix my finances. They say that money can’t buy happiness, but that’s not the entire truth. According to this study, our income can actually increase our happiness up to a certain amount, since it’s easier to be happy when we’re not struggling to survive.

    To fix my finances, I stopped wasting money on things that weren’t bringing me joy (such as a cable subscription) and focused on ways to increase my income. I learned pretty quickly that, although being rich doesn’t make you happy, I feel a lot more at ease when I’m not living paycheck to paycheck.

    Lastly, I’ve focused on finding meaningful work. One of the biggest culprits of depression is a feeling of hopelessness and despair. So, finding meaningful work or a deeply personal life purpose will do wonders. For more information on finding meaning, check out Viktor Frankl’s book A Man’s Search for Meaning.

    In my case, I found that the career I was in was making me more depressed. I was an engineer, but the long days sitting in a cubicle were driving me mad. I wanted a career where I felt like I was doing something that mattered.

    So, I went back to school and became certified to teach. I ramped up my writing career and started freelance writing. I did more of the work that I loved to do. When you do more of the work that you love to do, you become more of the person you want to be, which makes you a lot happier with yourself and your life.

    And that leads me to the final point…

    You are not your depression. You are the person who is feeling depressed.

    Until I realized this, I was seeing myself as a depressed person, and I was allowing it to define me.

    You are not your feelings. Stand in front of a mirror and shout that to yourself. Scream it to the world. You are more than that.

    You are whatever you choose to be. See the possibilities of who you can be and move toward those things. Don’t let depression beat you up and keep you trapped. The door is open. All you have to do is walk through it.

    *Disclaimer: Depression can have many different causes, and different people may need to take different approaches to healing. Don’t be afraid to seek professional help if nothing else has worked for you. There’s no shame in needing or accepting support!

  • Why I Drank, How It Destroyed Me, and How I’m Healing My Self-Hatred

    Why I Drank, How It Destroyed Me, and How I’m Healing My Self-Hatred

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual assault and self-harm and may be triggering to some people.

    Hi, I’m Adriana and I’m an alcoholic.

    When I look back at my life, I realize it was inevitable that I’d end up here.

    By the time I was nineteen, I’d already had a history of self-harm through cutting, a byproduct of my depression and anxiety. I was anorexic. I’d had a near cervical-cancer scare not once, but twice within a six-month period, leaving my gynecologist back in Sydney speechless. “I have never had a case like yours.”

    I’d survived an abusive relationship that, I believed, left me with no other choice but to end my life. If I were going to die, I’d rather die by my own accord, not his. So, I swallowed forty Panadol pills, two at a time, within thirty minutes. I felt my body slowly shut down as each minute passed by, and ironically, it was the first time in a long time that I felt alive.

    I’m not writing about the sugarcoated life many have engaged with on my social media feeds over the years. I am here to introduce you to my self-hatred, which you don’t see each time I post a filtered photo on my Instagram page.

    I fell in love with the wrong person when I was seventeen. The first six months together were filled with happiness. I was convinced he was the one I’d spend the rest of my life with, and at seventeen my hunt for a husband was over. Hashtag winning.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    Over the course of the ten months that followed, he routinely beat me, and I covered up the evidence to protect him. He psychologically raped me, repeatedly telling me, “Who’s gonna love you when I’m done with you?” He even sodomized me.

    He threatened my life if I didn’t listen to him or if I dared to tell anyone the truth. I had two friends who begged me to walk away, but no matter how powerless I felt, their concerns meant nothing to me. So over time, they gave up trying.

    He told me when to speak—“Don’t be too funny, Adriana. I don’t want people liking you more than me.” He also told me what to wear, and I had to ask permission if I wanted to go out. Worst of all, he stripped me of my right to feel human, true to the nature of how insidious an abusive relationship can be. In this case, love really was blind.

    I internalized the trauma to such an extent that I carried the shame, guilt, and pain with me throughout my twenties. I forgave him long before I forgave myself, which led me to a path of unconscious self-destruction.

    It was my fault for holding onto those first six months and hoping the real him would return. It was my fault that I let him treat me the way that he did. It was my fault for not leaving, particularly after the first time he hit me. It was my fault because surely I was doing something wrong that would trigger him to hit me. It was my fault because by staying, I was asking for it.

    So I did what most young people do when they’re nineteen and single: I started my clubbing career and my relationship with Jack Daniels. A year before, alcohol repelled me; now it was my savior. This also led to the introduction to a string of dysfunctional people I’d come to call my friends.

    You know, you should never judge a party girl. Every party girl has a backstory, but in my case, no one cared enough to find out. They just bought me more drinks.

    People would say they envied my life—how I had zero Fs for the world around me—but what most people failed to see was that, in reality, I had zero Fs for myself.

    Then I entered the permanent hangover I now call my twenties.

    I started going to festivals and was introduced to ecstasy. I still remember the first time an e hit my bloodstream. Like most users, I tried to relive that feeling every time I popped a pill. Eventually, ecstasy became boring, and I started experimenting with pure MDMA. It was a little bit riskier and more dangerous, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t matter.

    I was then introduced to cocaine when I was twenty, and that became my favorite drug of them all. Cocaine meant that I could drink more. It also meant that I had something in common with people who I usually wouldn’t associate with.

    Cocaine turned me into a version of myself that was confident and unstoppable. When I was high, I used to think to myself, “Imagine you were this confident and unstoppable but didn’t need cocaine to get you there.” Just imagine!

    I often found it funny how the drug was commonly referred to as “the rich man’s drug,” yet it left me feeling emotionally bankrupt.

    At twenty-one, I was partying in Las Vegas with some friends when I got busted with an eight ball of cocaine—and got away with it. Fortunately, I was given a slap on the wrist and banned from entering half the hotels in Vegas for life. Personally, I was more devastated because that meant that I could never be a Playboy bunny.

    I remember the undercover policewoman taking me down to the public toilets, handing me over the bag of coke, and asking me to flush it down. I took this as an opportunity to bribe her into letting me keep the bag.

    You’d think that an incident like that would encourage me to hang up my party dress and clean up my ways. But it didn’t. I continued down this path, playing roulette with my life.

    Not all was tragic. I did find myself in a loving relationship a year later, and for three years lived a ‘normal’ life. He loved me, and I loved him as much as I could. But what is love when you don’t love yourself? This voice inside my head constantly whispered, “You’re not good enough for him.”

    Once that relationship ended, I was straight back to my self-destructive ways, drinking heavily on most nights.

    On one occasion, I decided it would be “cool” to bring a guy home and drink skull cafe patron out of the bottle. Mind you, I was already intoxicated. The next morning I woke up peacefully in my bed. A few hours later, I received a message that read, “I need you to take the morning-after pill ASAP.”

    I thought, hmm, it’s not my ideal situation; sh*t happens, I suppose. It’s $30 in Australia, and you can buy it over the counter, fortunately, but the problem was, I couldn’t remember having sex.

    To this moment, I don’t. I had blacked out.

    I felt so exposed, vulnerable, and disgusted with myself. Then the shame kicked in. Who the hell did I think I was? What was I becoming?

    I decided I needed to stop drinking, and I was successfully sober for three months. I survived parties, lonely nights, and even the ultimate test, a big fat Croatian wedding.

    I never considered that I had a problem with alcohol. I thought that alcoholism was a condition you could learn to control.

    In my late twenties, I decided to move myself from Sydney to London to “find myself.” We all know the saying that you must “lose yourself” in order to “find yourself,” and I did just that.

    London is a fascinating city to lose yourself in. There was always an occasion to drink. I wasn’t one of those wake-up-and-drink-right-away type people. I was more self-respecting than that; I waited till lunchtime and continued until I blacked out! But as a high-functioning alcoholic, I still made my work deadlines.

    I was always around people who didn’t just use drugs; they abused them. And no matter how much I knew the difference between right and wrong, I was perpetually on a quest to distract myself from myself.

    There was no one more delighted to meet another person who was more messed up than me. “Great,” I thought. “Let’s talk about your problems; I’m not ready to talk about mine.”

    I slept my way around, seeking someone who would understand and rescue me. I was bed hopping, using sex as a way to validate myself and feel worthy. It was nothing less than a cheap thrill.

    I attracted males who were misogynistic and dominant and resembled the character of my first love. Everyone had an agenda to take a piece of me. I was aware of this; I just didn’t care.

    I had one who would eventually tell me that maybe I shouldn’t be so upfront and honest about my past with the next guy because “it may turn him off.” But it was okay for him to turn me over in my sleep, get on top, and insert himself inside of me because he was in the mood. This was the many occasions that I was raped.

    Then there was the one who slapped my face as I told him to get out of me, but he kept going, smiling as he watched the tears roll down my face.

    Before I forget, there was another who was more than willing to buy me cocktails all night while telling me he couldn’t wait to take advantage of me later on, but made me call my own cab when I threw up all over his bedroom. Apparently we had sex too.

    We can sit here and go on about my clouded judgment when, in actual fact, this dialogue and connection was just my comfort zone.

    A year ago, completely fed up with myself and my chemically addictive ways, I decided it was time to kill myself. I was emotionally exhausted and starved. My body no longer felt pain, and I could longer taste alcohol. I was so deep in depression I could feel it in my blood.

    I planned my suicide, step by step, over several days and kept reminding myself that the world was better off without me helplessly roaming within it, without a purpose, doing more harm than good.

    I was a bad person because I was a broken person, as many boys had told me. I may not have intentionally hurt those around me, but I had a decade-long struggle during which I perpetually hurt the one person I never knew how to love, myself.

    I started writing my suicide letter and decided I needed some background noise. On the front page of YouTube was a video titled “How to overcome procrastination by leaping afraid,” by Lisa Nichols. This video would end up saving my life and distracting me from my open wounds that were so desperately trying to dry up.

    There is nothing that scares an addict more than sobriety and having nothing to turn to when that darkness from your past begins to appear and say, “Hey, remember me?” But I knew my problem with alcohol was fueling my depression and, therefore, contributing to my self-hatred. I had to break this cycle of hate.

    I sat in my silence and said, “Adriana, you have two choices right now: You can continue down this path, knowing you’re going to keep doing the same thing, getting the same results; and I’m pretty sure that’s what Einstein defined as insanity. Down this path your addictions will kill you or you may do it yourself—whatever comes first. Or, you can do something you haven’t done in the last ten years: give sobriety a chance and see if things are different on the other side.”

    I was twenty-nine when I said enough. My grandfather was sixty. Some people never have an age. Some people simply drown and instead of living to their full potential. They just exist.

    Every year on my birthday, I would blow out my candles and wish for love. Last year, my wish came true, and I started the tumultuous road to recovery, healing, and self-love. It may be a cliché, but it’s true: Who’s going to love you if you don’t love yourself first?

    I knew that the life I dreamed of was on the other side of my fears, and getting sober was a stepping stone. I just celebrated eight months of sobriety, and although this may not seem like long, it’s the longest I haven’t poisoned my blood in ten years.

    It hasn’t been easy. I have cried alone in my room. I had cried walking down the street. I have cried at parties and events. I’ve had breakdowns in several AA meetings. I have cried during a yoga class when the tears were triggered by the damage I had done to my body. I felt it all.

    I heard voices telling me I’d fail and I should just stick to my old ways, the ways I knew best. I almost relapsed twice in the first three months because I was tempted to show my new friends who my old friends knew me to be.

    But I am healing and getting stronger.

    I’ve learned that we find our greatest strengths in our darkest shadows, and there is no way you can know what happiness is until you figure out what it isn’t.

    The relationship we have with ourselves is the longest relationship we’ll ever have. Yet, we spend prolonged periods of time neglecting ourselves to suit the world around us.

    We chase happiness in momentary triumphs instead of simply choosing it by putting in the work to keep ourselves self-aware and on our own paths of personal enlightenment.

    We avoid taboo topics like addictions because they make people uncomfortable, but we are more than willing to engage in these addictions because they make us more comfortable with ourselves.

    We are united by owning our struggles and sharing our stories and divided by our quest for perfection and appearing perfect to the world around us. Perfection is an illusion, and God, did I learn this the hard way.

    I don’t deny my demons because instead of feeling ashamed of them, I’m now proud of how I’ve overcome them. And I know my greatest strengths have surfaced from my deepest struggles. Because of what I’ve been through, I’m more compassionate with others in similar situations, and I’ve also developed a strong sense of determination to do the inner self-work required to get past my trauma.

    How many of you can look yourself in the eye and say, “I love you” without knowing deep down that you just lied? I’m still learning, but courtesy of sobriety, I’m getting there.

  • The Delusion of Separation: We Don’t Need to Feel So Lonely

    The Delusion of Separation: We Don’t Need to Feel So Lonely

    “The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.” ~Yasutani Roshi

    You know those moments? Those brief, fleeting moments that shine through the grey of everyday life like motes of glitter caught in a sunbeam. The moments when you suddenly feel a connection to the world around you, when the quotidian alienation of modern life falls away and color pulses back in.

    Walking through the torpor of another generic day, the background static of depression distorting the colors of the world, I often don’t realize I’m on a downward spiral until I look up and realize the sun seems a long, long way away.

    The spiral staircase in my mind has steps that aren’t just worn smooth from use, but more often than not seem to be lubricated, too. At the bottom, the door marked “suicide” is always standing there, waiting… and how much easier it would be to push it open and walk through, rather than trying to climb back up those endless, slippery steps.

    And then, out of nowhere, I lock eyes with another person and, unplanned and unplannable, we see each other.

    I don’t mean we just notice one another, or that we look and immediately glance away before continuing our automaton stomping along the street. No, I mean we actually share a moment of mutual recognition: we see each other and share, for a long second or two, something fundamentally human. A connection.

    Stereotypes and defence mechanisms flicker, before revealing themselves to be the smokescreen of fear they really are—a hazy distortion field which blurs our vision of what’s right in front of us. A barrier that we hide behind, but which has no more substance than fog.

    The mind loves shorthand and shortcuts, but nobody can be accurately reduced to these crude symbols, and nobody really fits into the boxes that we’ve learnt to shove them into to make the complexity of the world more manageable.

    “Manageable” is the spreadsheet, not the thing itself. It’s a lens, but like reading glasses, it helps us see something at one level, but distorts everything else if we look up and try to see anything more.

    If stereotyping reduces, then these moments of connection distill. The essence rises and we can taste the purity of it. In these moments, looks aren’t deceiving, but revealing.

    Recently I was walking across a narrow footbridge over a stream, heading back to the flat I was staying in. Just a few paces ahead of me, a couple of young men in tracksuits are leaning on a railing, chatting quietly. They hear me coming, and one of them looks around, a little tense as his instincts alert him to my approach.

    We lock eyes. We don’t smile; we don’t exchange reflex pleasantries. But we both nod slightly and in that small moment wordlessly exchange several deeply human things.

    A greeting; an acknowledgement that we see each other going about our day without need to intrude, question, or interfere; that we’re both enjoying the bright, beautiful morning; that there might theoretically be cultural and class divisions between us, but we are not bringing them into this simple interpersonal moment; that, in some ephemeral but weighty sense, we respect each other.

    But even that sounds too cold. Because this, like all such moments, is definitely warm. The stranger on the terrace raising a glass to you in silent toast; the knowing look you exchange with a parent trying to control their young children; holding a door for a stranger and sharing a smile, or waving to someone on a distant ship and seeing them raise a hand in return.

    These aren’t rituals, politeness, or other rehearsed and mechanical behavior. This is what all the meditation teachers are talking about when they exhort us to be present with what is, rather than the stories we impose on ourselves and the world around us.

    It’s a brief mutual knowing, a wink around the corner of the matrix, when you both silently acknowledge the absurdity of the conventions that we live inside.

    It’s the barista who doesn’t reel off the heavily scripted line when they pass you your coffee, because in the moment before they do, you see each other and smile, acknowledging in no words at all that the artifice is all pretty silly and you don’t need those lines to appreciate the exchange that’s taking place.

    I’m not saying that we’d all become great friends and enjoy each other’s company if we actually got talking. But beyond those layers of accreted cultural, social, and personal compost, there’s a core of shared humanity, which, in these brief moments, we instinctively recognize and feel heartened by. When the zombie apocalypse breaks out, perhaps we will, after all, be able to rely on our fellow humans.

    Zombies aside, I’m not being flippant. Disaster movies and the mass media love to scare us with visions of society and basic humanity rapidly collapsing in the face of major disasters.

    After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was soon portrayed as a terrifying regression to a Hobbesian world of man-as-wolf-to-man, but this was simply untrue. The fears of the government, police, and media became the lenses through which they and then we perceived and approached the situation. The reality was altogether different.

    As Rebecca Solnit describes in her fascinating book A Paradise Built in Hell, not only do the vast majority of people not turn savage in the face of disaster, they rapidly begin helping complete strangers, setting up ad hoc shelters, kitchens, search parties, and hospitals.

    And the survivors of the natural and manmade disasters Solnit describes, even if they experienced terrible personal losses, they frequently look back on these periods as some of the best in their lives. In large part, this is because they felt that rarest of things in the modern industrialised world: that they had meaningful and consequential things to do.

    Why? Because they were suddenly talking and cooperating with other people in the same boat as them, from complete strangers to neighbours they’d never spoken to in twenty years, despite living next door.

    It was as though external circumstances triggered a different human mode of operation, back to something more fundamental and less complex.

    Studying the same phenomenon, Sebastian Junger calls this a return to tribal existence, but this isn’t a story of reversion to an idealized pre-modern existence. It’s simply the rediscovery of what’s already there: it’s the collapse of the fiction Yastunai Roshi described—the delusion “that I am here and you are out there.”

    Don’t get me wrong – there are plenty of times when I find myself actively avoiding any connection with the people around me. When I’m standing on the street, some part of my mind often starts whirring away hoping no one strikes up a conversation with me. What if they want something from me and make me feel bad for not giving it to them? Why can’t I just be left alone to my thoughts?

    And yet being closed off to those external inputs isn’t much of a way to think or to live. It is, after all, based on fear. Fear of change, fear of disruption, and fear of a loss of control.

    Those fears are simultaneously completely valid and entirely foolish: change is the only constant in life, so there’s no benefit in fearing it. And control is always an illusion and a constraint.

    We imagine the moment of interruption as inherently negative, and yet we’ve got no idea what might happen next. Maybe this person simply wants to know the time, or they’re lost, and when we can help them out we end up feeling really good about it.

    So far, so nice. And perhaps familiar. But why highlight these little moments, if we all know them?

    Because each one seems to come as a surprise, or a slight relief. Because until they do, at least for those of us in big cities, we’re surrounding ourselves with countless Schrödinger’s boxes of uncertainty regarding the people around us. And so we cast our eyes downward, or keep our gaze frictionless when we look at the people around us, avoiding contact for fear of rejection or accusation.

    It can feel so much easier not to open the boxes and keep things unknown, but the vertigo of what Pema Chödrön calls “groundlessness”—of leaning into the unknown with heart and mind open—is precisely where life happens. 

    We must learn to relax with groundlessness—of having no certainties, nothing solid to which we can cling, and no promise our smile will be returned. As Chödrön explains, Buddhism encourages us “to remain open to the present groundless moment, to a direct, unarmored participation with our experience,” with no guarantees at all that everything will work out the way we might want it to.

    The trick is not to look for a reaction. Not to expect anything at all (and thereby avoid the ego’s spluttering outrage that this or that person was so damn rude for not returning our smile or greeting). That’s just giving with strings attached.

    Instead, moments of connection happen when something is given freely, without the higher functions of the brain coming into play. In the same way we smile at a cute animal or a child laughing, we can remain open to everyone around us, because they are also us, living a different life. There’s no need for “why”; we can just do.

    When we act without expectation, there’s no disappointment. Which isn’t to say something nice will definitely happen, but whatever does happen will simply be data—not something weighed in the scales of our prior expectations and found wanting.

    For me and many others, depression creates a sense of desperate isolation; it seems to close us off from all connection. But while the sun can seem so far away—a pinprick of light at the top of that spiral staircase—this is just another distortion.

    In truth, that light of Bodhichitta—the “awakened heart”—is still inside us and always accessible. Like the idea that we are separate from other people, it’s another delusion to think that we can ever be separated from the heart of Bodhichitta within us.

    Being alone isn’t the same as being lonely, and in those fleeting glances and connections we can be both alone and yet deeply connected with the people and the world around us. We just have to be present enough to be open to them.

  • Lost Everything? 8 Tips to Help You Get Back on Your Feet

    Lost Everything? 8 Tips to Help You Get Back on Your Feet

    “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” ~Robert H. Schuller

    About two years ago, I was working in a professional career that I had been building for nearly twenty years.

    I had been at my company for thirteen years, and had been generally commended and given positive reviews and regular bonuses and raises for most of that time.

    I had just left a terrible and traumatic relationship, and due to two years of criticism, gaslighting, and conflict, was experiencing severe depression. I was on medication that made it hard for me to focus and which gave me anxiety attacks.

    My manager let me know that I was on probation at work, something that had never happened to me in my entire career.

    One of the few lights in my life was an arts community that I had been very active in for several years, and I had just applied for a volunteer position working for the overseeing organization, which meant a great deal to me.

    Though every day seemed like an incredible struggle, I was trying to pull things back together, do better at work, get on different medication, and continue to heal from the trauma of the relationship. I felt down but not out. I felt I was on the cusp of something.

    It turns out I was right, but that the cusp wasn’t the something I thought it was.

    I was informed I didn’t get the volunteer position. Gossip tells me part of that was due to me sharing on Facebook how I was feeling in my depression and recovery from trauma.

    Due to “performance issues” stemming from my severe depression and anxiety, as well as institutional problems not of my making, and despite the fact that I told my manager that I was in treatment for depression, I was fired from my job (ironically, this company was a psychology-focused media company, run by a psychologist) and walked out of the office by co-workers with boxes of my stuff.

    I wasn’t even allowed to gather information for the professional contacts I had made and nurtured. Meanwhile, I was still experiencing PTSD symptoms from the abuse in my relationship. And then, a relationship I had entered into a year after the breakup, which in retrospect was not a good decision for me at the time, ended. Though we’re still friends, the breakup was very hard for me, especially on top of everything else.

    I felt I had just been forced to set up housekeeping in Rejection City; like everything I had been working for had crashed and burned, all at the same time. My feelings of self-worth and competence took a major dive. My identity as a successful, professional woman was crushed.

    As a result of losing my job, I lost my health insurance, including mental health care, and had to stop taking my medication. I couldn’t pay my mortgage on the house I had bought when I was making decent money. I fought for a year to get back on my feet, got on Medi-cal, the state-sponsored insurance, and worked with my mortgage company through incredible frustration and red-tape.

    I was determined that I was not going to collapse into a pile of sorrow, though that’s what I desperately wanted to do on most days.

    I walked away from the arts community, which I realized wasn’t supportive of me or my efforts, and walked away from most people except the ones in my life who I knew to be steadfast in their support and care. I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone except the few people who had always been there for me. I spent most of my days alone, worrying and fretting, and numbing myself when I could.

    That was about fifteen months ago.

    I’m now still in my home, working part-time, studying, networking, working with a career coach, and am on the edge of starting my own marketing business in a new industry, while also taking on freelance clients. This is the cusp life was preparing me for, way back then, though I didn’t know it.

    How do we get back on our feet and forge a new, even better path when life kicks us off the one we were on? Here are some tips:

    1. Allow time to grieve.

    This is really important. I had to take the time to sit with what had happened, to cry and get angry and talk to my close friends about my feelings, and to work through the sense of betrayal in many ways. I couldn’t afford therapy, so I just talked to myself when I was alone, which was a lot of the time. After about nine months, I finally reached a point where I made a conscious choice to move on from swimming in sadness and resentment.

    Rumination is normal in this kind of situation, though eventually, you’ll need to stop. But at first, sit with all those awful feelings and be your own best friend. Acknowledge them, know they’re normal, and be there for yourself in this difficult transition. If you journal: journal. If you create: create. If you walk: walk. Do what works for you to get centered again.

    2. Remember that things won’t always be this way.

    When I thought I was going to lose everything I had tried to build, I panicked. I felt like I was sinking, and had nothing to grab on to. It was really scary, and I had more than one panic attack in the middle of the night. But as I kept working for what I wanted, things calmed down and I could see that, though the waves were choppy, I wasn’t going to sink.

    The ship will right itself, once it’s time. Think of it like a painful breakup. You (hopefully) know that you’ll get over the sadness and all the other hard feelings. Practice mindfulness of your thoughts, and compassionately bring yourself back to the present when you start to feel that despair that your life has been destroyed. What has been destroyed is an old way of being; the intense feelings mean you are still very much alive.

    3. Know that things won’t go back to “the way they were,” and this is okay.

    One thing I knew instinctively right away is that I didn’t want to do the same thing I’d been doing for nearly twenty years, and I certainly didn’t want anyone ever again to have the hold over me that my old company, my ex, or the arts community had.

    I spent (am still) spending a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to do next and how I can hold power over my experiences in my own hands without giving that power away to anyone else.

    Explore your own interests: What really lights you up? Now is the chance to do that thing! Try not to get derailed by “what ifs” or worries that your dreams aren’t realistic. There are ways to do what you want to do. Brainstorm, talk to compassionate people who know you well, ask yourself questions, observe what you enjoy doing or who you want to be around and ask yourself: Can I do this more?

    4. Use language carefully.  

    When all this happened, somehow I knew that I didn’t want to introduce myself—or to think of myself—as someone who had just lost everything. I would tell people who asked me what I did for a living that I ran a freelance business, even before this was true, and often consoled myself with the fact that I was strong enough to walk away from a bad relationship.

    Think of empowering ways to describe your new reality, and use them, even when you think thoughts to yourself. Feeling sad, worried, angry, stressed, and regretful is normal. But you need to create a link between yourself and your new future. Using the language of growth and new opportunities will help you when it’s time to start taking steps to move forward.

    5. Network and connect.

    I needed to work to pay my bills, and wasn’t getting any of the professional-level jobs I was applying for, so after many months of 4am wakings worrying about money, I posted to Facebook about what I had to offer in terms of skills, and a friend offered me a job. I’m very grateful, and, though it’s not what I had been doing, I can use the skills I have, can learn new things, and it has given me some breathing room to set myself up in life again.

    Even if you don’t need a new job as I did, you may still need a new community or new friends. The important thing is to figure out what happened that wasn’t working, and to pursue new paths, not to just do the same things you were doing before.

    There are so many opportunities to meet new people online and through community organizations. Identify the people you need in your life to help you get back on your feet, and go to them. And don’t forget to keep connecting with people in your life who are encouraging, welcoming, and compassionate.

    6. Make your main priority taking care of you.

    To the extent you can, make sure you’re taking good care of yourself. Get enough sleep. Move your body. Allow time to rest and relax and enjoy the things you love. Take naps. Spend time with people who uplift you, not ones who tear you down.

    One thing I finally allowed myself to realize is that I was incredibly burned out and stressed at my old job, which likely contributed to the depression. Now I understand that, as I move forward, I am not interested in a new life where stress accompanies me every day, and a job where the goalposts are constantly being moved. This was an important realization as I explore ways to make a living.

    What does your experience teach you about what’s important to your well-being, and how can you create a new life where well-being is a priority?

    7. Ask for help.

    I am very lucky to have family and friends close by who were and are able to be there for me in many important ways, including financially. I was able to get back on a medication that worked by going to a family friend who is a doctor, and who agreed to see me at no cost. This was vital to my turnaround. If it weren’t for my support network, I’d still be depressed and would probably have lost my home.

    Hopefully, you have people in your life who are supportive and kind, and you also have other resources, whether it’s an alumni group of your college, a local job resource center, a library, or friends who are connected to different networks that might be able to help.

    Think about what you need in order to get to where you want to go, and ask for help from those around you who can help. It’s not embarrassing to need help from others. A drowning person doesn’t reject a flotation device that a rescuer throws into the water!

    8. Learn from the experience.

    Though I had been through a lot of painful situations in my life, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a year as awful as that year. Part of my recovery was to sift through everything that happened and figure out what went wrong, including my own contribution to the situations. When we make meaning out of our experiences, we recovery more quickly. When we feel we have no control over a situation, we tend to feel depressed and hopeless.

    Whether you journal, talk to a therapist, talk to supportive friends, or just think, be brave enough to look at the situation and understand how, going forward, you can prevent a similar thing from happening again.

    Do you need to choose your friends or relationships more carefully? Do you need to avoid certain employment situations? Do you need to change some of your own habits? Once you’ve understood what happened, you’ll have the tools to create a new kind of life for yourself.

  • 7 Mind-Shifts to End Depressed Overeating

    7 Mind-Shifts to End Depressed Overeating

    “Maybe the reason nothing seems to be ‘fixing you’ is because you’re not broken… You have a unique beauty and purpose; live accordingly.” ~Steve Maraboli

    Have you ever seen a woman down a family-sized tin of chickpeas?

    Or eat six pita pockets stuffed full of avocado, cheese, tomato, and onion?

    Or a dozen greasy samosas?

    I used to overeat when I was depressed. I’d eat till I was so stuffed, the only thing I could do was sleep.

    (Like Valium, but with added fiber.)

    I’d been doing it since I was a kid.

    My family was vegetarian, so I knew what healthy food was. The problem was, I felt like I had to eat until all the food was gone.

    Sometimes I made myself throw up because I felt so panicked about the amount I’d just eaten.

    I never had any professional help. The only time I talked about it was when I cried to friends at parties.

    They’d say, “You’re slim, so what’s the problem?”

    And I get it. On the outside I looked sorted. But for me, eating was a constant obsession.

    I’d try to rein it in by counting calories. Or I’d plan to only have one or two helpings, but I’d always cave in and eat everything.

    It went on for years.

    It was my normal.

    But it reached an all-time low in my final year at college.

    In the past, I’d overeat in the evening and then sleep off my food coma at night; but now I was binging and sleeping during the day as well, when I should have been studying for final exams.

    It was the most miserable time.

    Every morning I’d head out to the campus library, with a packed lunch in my rucksack, and a plan to read all day.

    But in the library, I’d be bored. By 10:00, I’d eat the sandwiches. Then I’d want more. So by lunchtime I’d head home with bagful of groceries.

    And eat. A lot.

    Then, when I was completely, utterly, totally, abysmally full, I’d crawl into bed.

    I’d wake up when it was dark. I’d hear my housemates joking together. They seemed to be having a normal college experience!

    I hated my body for making me eat. I hated how fat and slobbed-out I felt.

    I was at such a loss, I would have tried anything.

    Thankfully, help did come my way. And it came in a surprising package… a trashy-looking slimming book, advertised in the Sunday papers!

    It promised to “change you from within to help you lose weight.”

    I bought it. I read it.

    But I didn’t just read it; I studied it. I listened to the audiocassettes that came with it over and over again; I took days over each exercise in the book.

    I set aside trying to change what I ate. I wrote “eat normally” every time it said “lose weight.” Instead, I focused on my beliefs around food and body. I found I had plenty to work with!

    I filled journals. I found more and more books about the inner world of the eater. And I started to visualize a different future—one with space for other interests aside from my food and my figure.

    I kept believing in that future. I changed a couple of eating habits, and others just fell away.

    Two years later, I realized I felt more relaxed and guilt-free around food.

    As my self-judgment around food disappeared, I got happier in myself too.

    I was amazed how happy.

    What surprised me was, when I tackled the eating, my depression lifted. Even though overeating was only a side issue!

    Working on my eating shifted how I saw myself. And that changed how I approached everything—I was more assertive, more forgiving to other people, I never locked myself out my house by accident any more…

    (Only joking. I did that yesterday).

    So, in case you’re struggling with food yourself, here are seven mind-shifts that completely ended my overeating.

    They also help you get through almost any unhappy moment in life!

    1. Tell yourself you’re not broken.

    It’s easy to feel ashamed for having a problem when everyone around you makes eating look easy.

    You know what you should be doing, and you can’t. It feels like there must be something wrong with you.

    But there’s not!

    When we’re in a fix, it’s perfectly natural to reach for something. At some point in the past, food was the best solution you could come up with.

    Well done, you!

    Just because overeating doesn’t serve you now, doesn’t mean you were stupid or wrong for taking that approach then.

    For example, I started to overeat because I was pushing myself at school. That sedative, I’m-so-full feeling was a relief from trying hard.

    My real problem was I didn’t know how to relax!

    Of course I didn’t! I was a teenager! It made perfect sense to zonk out instead of seeking inner peace.

    At college I also put myself under insane pressure. My overeating gave me an excuse to hide in bed. It was my way of showig that I was daunted.

    Your eating may look crazy, but that’s how your unconscious waves a red flag, telling you something’s up on a deeper level.

    Your inner wisdom is alive! That’s very much a sign you’re not broken!

    2. Ditch guilt and self-punishment.

    I used to feel like the temptation to overeat was this big weakness that won every time.

    I’d plan to be strong, but then I’d think, “One last time won’t hurt.”

    Then I’d overeat, panic that I’d done it again, and lay on the guilt. I thought, “If I hate myself hard enough, I’ll teach myself such a lesson I’ll never do it again.”

    But I still slipped up, and my self-hate grew.

    And grew.

    Over time, guilt completely sapped my confidence. I felt like a criminal. That I didn’t deserve to ever be normal.

    But there’s nothing morally wrong with overeating. It’s not bad.

    You’re not bad. You’re allowed to make mistakes.

    Let go of the idea that if you don’t feel guilty, you’ll never learn.

    The opposite is true!

    When you stop feeling guilty, you can continue your journey, praise yourself for caring, come up with new creative ways forward, and get to know yourself better.

    3. Make a no-rules pledge.

    Do you have a lot of ideas about what you should and shouldn’t eat?

    I didn’t realize I had food rules in my head, because I never dieted.

    Officially.

    But I always made promises to myself. I tried to be healthy (“No more frozen cannelloni.”) Or ethical (“I’m vegan.”) Or well-informed (“I’ll try being gluten free.”)

    I restricted myself, like a dieter.

    It’s a natural mistake to try to get ‘good at’ eating by following rules and plans.

    It’s not that sticking to plans is bad—it’s great for getting things done, budgeting for a holiday, and not randomly adding grapefruit segments to a birthday cake recipe (sorry, Mum).

    But when it comes to your body and emotions, you need a more intuitive approach.

    Rules and restrictions are an invitation to your inner rebel to go ape.

    You break your rule, you fail.

    Failure is a killer, because you can’t build progress. You just stop! You give yourself a hard time. You start over. It’s a huge drain on your energy and morale.

    So stop making rules.

    Instead, give yourself permission.

    You can choose a vegan option if you want to; you might cook a meal from scratch if you feel like it; and you might pick foods that give you energy, if that’s what you feel like.

    4. Slow down and enjoy your food.

    If you’re overeating as I was, you might think that “enjoying food more” is the opposite of what you need!

    But (weird thought coming up…)

    … maybe you don’t enjoy eating enough!

    As an overeater, sure, I’d think about food all day. But while I was actually eating, I’d be completely zoned out.

    Learning to eat slowly, and concentrate, made it easier to switch off about food between meals.

    It also redirected all the worry about what I was eating, into a more relaxing focus on how I was eating.

    Plus, when I slowed down everything tasted yummier! Even a sweaty boiled egg from a lunch box was really good.

    The more you enjoy the eating experience, the more your cravings settle down. And one day, you notice you’re full: satisfied, but not stuffed.

    I was blown away when it happened to me. In my mind’s eye I can still see the potatoes I left on my plate. I just sat staring at them.

    They were just potatoes. They didn’t have any power over me.

    5. Move your body.

    I used to dread sports.

    I thought it was all about counting things and competing. And I felt like I never measured up.

    The only good feelings I got after exercise were from knowing how many calories I’d burnt.

    At college, my friends went for a run, but I couldn’t join in. I felt embarrassed that I could only run for …

    One. Minute.

    So I went to the park secretly, to shuffle around with my headphones.

    One minute was almost pointless… but not quite. Because after I did that a few times, I found I liked my body a tiny bit more.

    I felt refreshed. I wasn’t judging my body from the outside, I was feeling good inside instead.

    There’s a lovely word for that: embodiment.

    I started to have fun.

    I joined my friends. They liked to go running in nature, with fresh air and flowers. They’d speed off, and I’d just boogie to my walkman by a rhododendron bush.

    You can move your body, even if you’re not good at it. You don’t need to be head to toe in lycra. You don’t have to think about calories, or try to do a bit more each time. It doesn’t have to look like exercise at all!

    It can look like messing around with a hula hoop.

    Chasing pigeons.

    Or walking.

    When you embody, your self-criticism about your body calms down. And that helps eating become natural and easy.

    6. Let your desires lead you.

    When I overate, I used to feel possessed by urges. A thought like “avocado pita” would start up.

    AvocadoAvocadoAvocado! PitaPitaPita! Aargh!

    I thought cravings were evil forces that wanted to ruin my life, and that eating to the point of self-disgust was the only way to silence them.

    But now, when I look back at those binges, they make perfect sense: My body was starving for carbs!

    “Lo-carb” was a fashionable way to eat around that time, and my housemates didn’t buy bread or pasta, so I’d slipped into it too.

    So our appetite isn’t evil after all! It guides us to what our bodies need.

    When I realized that, I saw that I didn’t accept my other hungers either.

    When I was tired, I didn’t rest. I’d party for fear of being antisocial. And I’d never ask for what I liked in bed.

    Food, sex, space, sleep, success, money. It’s not wrong to want!

    Your desires make you, you. When you enjoy what nobody loves quite as crazily as you, you’re living out your life purpose.

    Blue cheese was created by the universe. And then it needed someone to go nuts about it.

    That’s what I’m here for.

    7. Redirect your energy where it counts in the world.

    When eating is an obsession, it takes over your day.

    All that brainpower spent on eating doesn’t leave much for things that matter to you. The things that make life fun.

    By the end of college, I couldn’t see the point of studying literature anymore. I didn’t want to admit that my degree was a big, expensive, mistake. Hibernating under a duvet was easier.

    But I also didn’t dare own up to what I really wanted: to illustrate and write and perform. To communicate and belong and connect.

    I always thought, “First I’ll fix my eating and get a better body shape, and then I’ll go for it.”

    Wouldn’t it be awesome if we used all that energy to love our people and do our thang?

    Straight away, not later when we’re ‘perfect’?

    Beneath my food challenge was another, bigger challenge that I was avoiding: to do what I cared about.

    It’s ongoing, but it’s worth it.

    The more I stop worrying about my eating, the more voom I have to throw at it.

  • The Best Things in Life Are Free (and Healing)

    The Best Things in Life Are Free (and Healing)

    “The six best doctors: sunshine, water, rest, air, exercise, and diet.” ~Wayne Fields

    I’ve always believed the best things in life are free. Sunshine on your skin next to a body of water ranks up there as one of my favorite experiences. I love nothing more than to be in a pool in the summertime.

    Though doctors have helped me with my depression, nature has provided me with my best doctors. When I’m in nature, I feel restored.

    When I was a child, I used to like to go on adventures. I would venture off into my parents’ backyard with the neighborhood kids, telling them we were going on an adventure into the forest.

    I was a little nature child in love with the flowers, the sunlight, and the trees.

    Those were some of my best memories of childhood. But, as I grew older I forgot about the restorative power of nature.

    I started working all of the time and using the weekends for chores. I stopped doing the things I loved. I forgot to venture into the forest.

    For years, I suffered from seasonal affective disorder. In the winter, a deep depression would overtake me. I was exhausted. I didn’t want to get out of bed.

    Being inside felt suffocating. The dark nights and the cold winters seemed to drain my spirit. In the spring, I’d feel reborn.

    Once I realized there was a definite seasonal aspect to my depression, I started taking preventative measures. I bought a light box and started getting up earlier each day to get some sunlight in the winter. I made a point to go meet friends and not stay at home all day.

    There are many tools I use to cope with my depression. I see a therapist and take medication. But, for me, the best medicine is preventative. It’s getting out into the world each day.

    Getting enough sunshine is vital to my well-being. I almost feel like the sun is recharging me when I’m outside. I take a morning walk each day to walk the dog and listen to the birds. I use that time to say positive affirmations to myself and reflect on having a good day.

    If I have time, I also take a walk during my lunch break or at least spend some time outside. I remember the days when I would stay inside at work eating my sandwich while staring at the computer. No more eating at the desk for me!

    I take another walk when I get home from work. It relieves the stress from the workday and sets me up for a nice evening. These are short ten-minute walks, but they really do make a difference.

    After dinner, I try to find some time just for me. Soaking in a hot bath seems to melt away all of my worries.

    Being a Pisces, I’ve always been drawn to water. I live in a land-locked state, but take every opportunity I can to go to the ocean. As kids, we used to go fishing on the weekends. I remember how quiet those days were. Just looking at water seems to cleanse the negativity from my mind.

    I like to watch the way the sun sparkles on the water and the way it ripples. Water has a very meditative quality. You can’t help but feel mesmerized looking at it.

    I don’t always get the opportunity to be near a body of water, but I love the springtime. Opening the doors to let in fresh air after months locked inside is invigorating. I like to do some spring cleaning with the doors and windows open to let in the light and a light breeze.

    No matter what time of year it is, proper rest is vital to a healthy body and mind. I used to go for days staying up late and waking up early, and didn’t understand why I felt so lethargic and terrible all of the time.

    When I don’t get enough sleep, I’m crabby with others, I eat unhealthy food, and I stop being productive at work. I get in the habit of powering up with caffeine throughout the day and not being able to get to sleep at night. The next day, I wake up tired and the cycle begins all over again.

    When I do get enough sleep, I have the energy to exercise. The combination of rest and exercise leads to feeling much better.

    I can see a big difference in my outlook when I don’t exercise. When I’m active, I smile more, breathe easier, and get more done.

    When I skip a few days, I become irritable and tired. I snap at my husband. I don’t want to play baseball with our child. Ironically, using energy to exercise creates more energy for love.

    However, I’ve also found that I have to do exercise that I love or it feels like a chore.

    I love yoga and taking walks outside. I love Zumba because it makes me feel like I’m dancing. But, ask me to run and I’ll resist and procrastinate.

    I want to enjoy exercise and moving my body. When I opt for what I enjoy, I look forward to doing it.

    For me, all of the other elements come before diet. Perhaps for others, it’s the opposite.

    For years, I’ve battled with trying to eat better. What I’ve found is that when I’m getting the other four items, I naturally want to eat better. It’s not as much of a struggle as it is when I start with diet first.

    By all means, use every tool that helps you to enjoy a full, healthy, and happy life. But give nature a try.

    Revel in the warm weather! Get out and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Get some rest, take a nice walk, and eat some fresh, healthy vegetables. End the day with a nice, warm bath.

    It may be just what the doctor ordered.

  • How Listening to Depression Can Help Us Overcome It

    How Listening to Depression Can Help Us Overcome It

    “These pains you feel are messengers. Listen to them.” ~Rumi

    My first diagnosis of depression came at the age of fifteen. Depression runs in my family; it wasn’t a case of overmedicating. It was genuine, and the black dog has followed me all my life.

    I’ve been on eight different antidepressants and a handful of anti-anxiety drugs. I’ve been in and out of therapist offices and hospitals for most of my life, and I expect that I’ll continue to do so.

    My mindset (and that of my family and doctors) was that depression is an adversary to be defeated. If only we found the right medication or the right therapy, we could solve the problem. But that mindset ignores a positive effect of such a negative condition: depression’s ability to induce change.

    Depression lies to you, but it also tells you the truth. And that truth leads to change.

    Silencing

    As I began my career as a lawyer in New York City, my depression worsened. Law is a perfect profession for depression to get worse. I was taught to look for mistakes, to be cynical. A pessimistic mindset is an advantage for a lawyer.

    Lawyers have high rates of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. I don’t know whether depressed people become lawyers or becoming a lawyer makes people depressed. It’s probably a combination, though ultimately it’s irrelevant.

    My depression found expression physically and emotionally. I had chronic tension headaches; when I woke up feeling like head was squeezed into a vice, I knew the pain would last all day. My back and neck were steel cables of tension.

    I gained weight from a combination of lack of exercise and poor diet. On the weekends, I would order huge amounts of food, seeking solace and finding only regret.

    Emotionally, I was ashamed. Ashamed for being depressed and ashamed for hating my job. It was the prize so many of my law school classmates had competed for. Why didn’t I want it?

    More than the shame was an overarching sense of sadness, like a gray filter applied across the screen of my life. It felt like other people were seeing in color, but for some reason I was seeing in black and white.

    I remember discussing a medical leave with my therapist (she was supportive, and I owe her much). But I was crushed as I realized that a leave was only that—I’d have to return to the office.

    Late one night, unable to sleep, I found myself scrutinizing my apartment’s lease agreement, looking for a way out. My apartment was bathed in darkness. In the pale glow of my laptop’s screen, I broke down, shoulders heaving with sobs.

    I had been trying to kill the messenger. I wanted to silence my depression, as if I could put my hands over my ears and make the noise stop. But instead, I needed to listen to what my depression was telling me.

    Listening

    In those times, depression felt intractable. It was a heavy stone that I wasn’t strong enough to move. But I think, more subtly, depression can signal change. Pain is a messenger.

    Just like physical pain, emotional pain is a signal. Your body is telling you to change what you’re doing. And those changes can’t take place if you don’t stop and listen.

    And how to listen? Sit in stillness, observing what thoughts and emotions arise in the silence. No control, only observation.

    I learned to focus on my breath, observing its rising and falling, without focusing on a specific object or mantra. I learned this meditation technique at a vipassana retreat near Kathmandu, Nepal, and it still serves me well.

    Meditation clarifies the difference between genuine pain and temporary discomfort. Genuine pain is a messenger of change. Temporary discomfort is a passing phenomenon we all experience at one time or another.

    It’s like exercise at the gym: it can be unpleasant and uncomfortable, even though you know it’s good for you. In contrast, some pain is like breaking an ankle. You have to take time to heal.

    In this sense, meditation is a guide to distinguishing between depression’s truth and lies. Depression tries to trick you: it lies to you (in the form of cognitive distortions like catastrophizing) while sometimes telling you the truth (the genuine pain that you’re in). Meditation separates the truth from the lies.

    Recognizing

    I relied on meditation to help me recognize the pain I was in. Not only had I run away from my depression, I had chastised myself for even feeling it (“you shouldn’t feel this bad”) then felt guilty for being depressed. Meditation cleared this fog of avoidance and guilt.

    It also taught me to stop trying to figure out my depression. Attempting to intellectualize how I felt was a fool’s errand. I had to recognize my depression in a visceral, bodily way.

    When a stove is hot, you pull your hand away so you don’t get burned. It doesn’t matter if the stove is gas or electric, or who turned it on. None of that information will prevent you from getting burned. It’s happening; the exact causes don’t need to be figured out to act accordingly.

    And this is exactly what meditation taught me: to focus on the sensations (breath, bodily discomfort, thoughts) instead of attempting to rationalize those sensations. That’s why vipassana retreats require you to surrender your books and journals. Experience the phenomena, don’t intellectualize them.

    Acting

    In the end, my thoughts were just excuses. When my lease was up, I told myself, I’ll quit in six months after I get my bonus. When I got my bonus, I told myself, I’ll quit in six months when my lease is up.

    Once I stopped attempting to reason with myself, it became clear that I had to quit. My depression had lied to me before, but it wasn’t lying this time.

    I’m not recommending recklessly quitting a job without a plan. I had to sublet my apartment and figure out my finances before I left. But my depression had led me, finally, to make a decision.

    Then I had to take the leap. As I told my boss I was quitting, I felt a strange combination of anxiety and exhilaration. I shook.

    I left New York City. I remember sitting at the airport and deleting my work’s email app from my phone. It sounds like a millennial’s cliche version of catharsis, but deleting that app felt immensely freeing.

    I’m still in the process of letting myself be sad sometimes, and I doubt that process will ever truly end. I’m still on medication. But the gray filter over my life has lifted.

  • 6 Questions to Help You Love Yourself More When It Feels Impossible

    6 Questions to Help You Love Yourself More When It Feels Impossible

    Sad painting

    “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ~Buddha

    In 2012, self-love became the most important thing in my life. After self-loathing and addiction led me to rock bottom, there was nowhere to go but up. When someone asked me last year how long I’d been on the self-love journey, I counted back from 2012. That’s when I thought it began.

    In my old journals, however, I recently found something strange and incredible—my self-love journey started long before I thought it had. Years prior to hitting rock bottom, I’d been having the same epiphanies: I need to love myself, I need to stop trying to get other people to love me, I need to be kinder to myself.

    Yet those epiphanies wouldn’t last. In fact, I habitually forgot about them as I returned to my “normal” back then—anxiety, depression, self-judgment, social anxiety, and a host of addictive behaviors that helped me escape these uncomfortable states.

    Strangely enough, when my suffering was at its worst, few people could have said that self-love was the problem. I had an outward facade of ironclad self-confidence. Most people thought I loved myself too much.

    Yet my journals tell another story. It is a story of not only silent suffering but also accidentally ignoring all my attempts to heal that suffering. Even though I was chronically self-sabotaging, I was also trying to help myself along the way.

    In a Facebook comment to one of my other posts on Tiny Buddha, someone wrote, “A lot of truth in this, but I’m so tired of the thing about loving yourself. Nobody has ever written about how this happens when you don’t feel that way. It sounds so simplistic—just love yourself first. Great, still no answers!!”

    It might be ironic to give an even more simplistic answer to this, such as “Find the answers within you.” But I think it’s important to note that there is a difference between simplicity and ease. The most important lessons in life really are simple—love yourself, find your own answers, know yourself. Yet implementing these lessons is a lifetime job full of tears, fears, and uncertainty.

    The truth is—the answers are within you, just like they were within me. It’s just a matter of discovering them and implementing them consistently.

    Your answers are within your experience. But they aren’t filed into neat folders. They’re scattered in every moment between alarm clocks, worries, and errands. They’re also not labelled by which questions they answer. You might get a bad feeling about something and that could be self-love, but it could also be fear.

    So, instead of answers, I’d like to provide some questions. Your relationship with yourself is unique and your answers will be unique. And the answers will keep changing. You can ask these questions every day, and that wouldn’t be too much.

    1. How can I better understand this experience?

    One sentence that I found frequently written in my old journals was, “Why does this always happen to me?” I said this about periods of depression as much as relationship patterns.

    When I asked this question, I wasn’t looking for an answer. My biggest mental health breakthrough was learning to genuinely ask that question. No, really, why do I always end up alone when I most need people? Why do I sometimes experience overwhelming periods of depression? Thus, I started to learn important things about myself.

    I learned that I had a tendency to never take breaks, strive for perfection, and burn myself into the ground. I also learned that I had a way of pushing people away to “test” if they’d stick around. Seeing these patterns was painful, but much less painful than believing I was broken, unworthy, and doomed to being alone.

    When you’re in the middle of criticizing or judging yourself, take a moment to shift your focus toward understanding.

    Instead of trying to fix your emotions or your reactions, how can you understand them better? What are your feelings trying to communicate to you? How can you acknowledge these messages?

    Instead of beating yourself up for saying or doing something, how can you get a more holistic perspective on your motivations for saying/doing this thing?

    When you make a conscious decision to be more curious about your experience, you will naturally stop resisting, judging, and criticizing it. The more you embrace each moment, the more you will be able to embrace yourself.

    2. Who am I beyond my behaviors, thoughts, and emotions?

    To be able to embrace the ups and downs of life without losing self-love, you must love yourself beyond those ups and downs. This is the difference between self-approval and self-love.

    Approval comes and goes. When you make a mistake, you might disapprove of yourself. This is healthy and normal. If you didn’t experience lulls in self-esteem, you might never learn from your mistakes and end up hurting others.

    Self-love, on the other hand, is something you need in each moment—especially when your self-esteem is low.

    When you don’t approve of your behaviors, ask yourself who you are beyond those behaviors. How can you accept yourself beyond the rollercoaster of day-to-day experience, so that no matter what those experiences are, you continue to think of yourself as worthy of existing?

    3. What do I need right now?

    Each day, ask yourself what you need. Like this, you can begin to nourish yourself. You can also begin to understand some of the side effects that you experience when you don’t meet your needs. Once you feed your hunger, you’ll better understand your symptoms of starvation. This can lead to profound self-forgiveness.

    Especially when you are trying to break bad habits, you can ask which needs you’re trying to meet with those habits.

    Every single self-harming action, even if it hurts you deeply, also serves you in some way. Maybe your unhealthy habits make you feel comfort, control, or even help you gain attention. The need behind each behavior is always valid, but some behaviors are more sustainable and healthy than others. By acknowledging your deeper needs, you can make a plan to consciously meet them in a healthier way.

    One thing I’ve discovered that I need is movement. I have so much energy in my body from day to day. I didn’t realize this for a long time because I expended that energy on chronic anxiety.

    When I realized that I could use my energy to be physically active, my life changed. My anxiety levels plummeted. I formulated a completely different relationship with my body. I also got a new perspective on my long struggle with eating disorders, smoking, and addiction.

    I had a basic need to control my body, to influence my physical state. I still have that need. The only difference is that, now, I’m making conscious choices about how I’m going to meet it.

    4. How can I give myself what I need?

    Once you discover what your needs are, you can begin to anticipate them and fulfill them.

    Simply to acknowledge your desires is half the work (especially if they are different from those of the people around you).

    The other half of the work is asking yourself, every day, how you can meet your needs. The key is to foresee your hunger and feed it before you feel starved. This way, you can avoid relapsing into those desperate self-destructive habits.

    5. How can I acknowledge the needs that I can’t yet meet?

    Let’s say you discover that you need more alone time than you thought. And suppose you discover this while living with four roommates. Chances are, you will not be able to meet this need overnight. However, self-love isn’t a report card on how quickly you’ve fixed your problems. It’s simply the practice of having a kinder relationship with yourself.

    You can acknowledge your frustration and your desires before taking action to address them. You can comfort yourself and assure yourself that you are going to do something about it. Remember how you’ve felt better when other people have reassured you. How can you give that kind of reassurance to yourself?

    6. How can I take responsibility for myself?

    One thing that might interrupt your journey of self-nourishing is waiting for someone or something else to save you.

    You might acknowledge your need for appreciation, but instead of taking action to meet it, you might tell yourself a story about when it will come.

    You might tell yourself to wait until some promotion, accomplishment, or event. Thus, you can lose out on valuable opportunities to love yourself.

    Start to pay attention to which needs you aren’t meeting because you’re putting them into the future or into other people’s hands. And ask yourself how you can begin to meet that need right now by yourself.

    —

    We all long to have someone be attentive to us—to really care about what we’re going through and how to make it better.

    The most beautiful part of learning to ask and answer these questions on a regular basis is this: your longing will finally be fulfilled.

    You do not need to wait for someone to make you feel like you are worth listening to and caring for. Your savior has been waiting in the mirror all along.

  • Why “Be Positive” Isn’t the Best Advice When You’re Down

    Why “Be Positive” Isn’t the Best Advice When You’re Down

    Depressed man

    “Learn the alchemy true human beings know. The moment you accept what troubles you’ve been given, the door will open.” ~Rumi

    As much as I tried to apply personal development ideas in my life, I failed big time.

    All the affirmations in the world couldn’t make me love myself.

    The more I tried to “be present,” the more all-over-the-place my mind became, getting lost in overthinking.

    Mindfulness didn’t work for me either. Observing my thoughts got me to chase each and every thought and analyze it. When I tried “letting go,” I just held on tighter.

    This was my experience from reading hundreds of popular self-help books over a ten-year period. I studied intensely as if for a PhD, experimenting with the techniques several hundred such books suggested, but still my life wasn’t working very well, to say the least.

    My mind was a storm of thoughts and emotions. Sometimes I had panic attacks, which caused me to spend hours in bed, making me unable to work for stretches of time. I tried various drugs (medical and recreational) and other compulsive behaviors in an attempt to get over my depression that descended on me like storm clouds.

    Through my job at that time as a journalist, I interviewed some of my favorite personal development authors of the time, in a bid to overcome the low feelings and anxiety that were ruining my life. But little helped.

    At first I thought it was just me experiencing such problems—that there was something wrong with my mind—but when I spoke to other people in a support group I started at the time, I realized many people were experiencing the same frustrations as I had with some of the books out there, which made it all sound so easy.

    Although they knew they “should” be positive and focus only on what they wanted, they couldn’t do it. And then they felt bad about themselves that they couldn’t do it.

    Positive Thinking Pressure

    Positive thinking is everywhere these days, and yet it’s not helping the depression statistics—which are going up, not down.

    “Be positive” has become the new way of telling someone to “cheer up.” It didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now. It’s hardly like you need to be told that you should feel better. Of course you already know that. Of course you’ve heard it a million times before. And it’s downright annoying and useless to be told it again.

    Like Instagram and other forms of social media, this “positive thinking” movement seems to be about living up to an ideal standard of perceived perfection all the time. Not satisfied with looking “perfect,” now you’ve got to think perfectly, too.

    It’s like something out of the film The Stepford Wives, where real people are replaced with robots. Denying our emotions is an insult to the journey of what it means to be a human being, and it does nothing to help people feel better.

    Why It’s Okay to Be Down

    Even the great saints and mystics weren’t this perfect. They had bad days, and they were open about it. Buddhism, for example, teaches in the Noble Truths that pain is universal and inevitable. Of course, there is a difference between “feeling down” and dealing with major depression, but for many of us the former evolves into the latter because we compound our feelings with self-judgment.

    Unlike certain dubious New Age “teachings,” these authentic masters understood that negative thinking is part of the human journey, and that it’s okay to feel less than your best sometimes. And they also knew that it’s a quick route to self-hatred to expect any more of yourself.

    Without going into the low emotions, we would not feel and appreciate the high emotions. And another thing: it’s the challenges that actually evolve the best times and bring the best out of us by strengthening our “mind” muscles.

    Think of going to the gym and telling the trainer you want the ideal body, but you don’t want any tension on your muscles. It’s the same with experiencing challenges. The tension of life evolves us. 

    What to Do When You’re Feeling Low

    When you’re feeling low, the mind races into overthinking and you start trying to figure out a way to get out of the mood. Although doing this makes sense, this is exactly what keeps you stuck there. Like fighting with a giant spider’s web, the more you try to escape, the more trapped you get.

    Your Choice: To Fight or Relax

    In the middle of a bad mood you think your option is to feel good or not—to “be positive” or “be negative.” But it isn’t. Your two choices are seemingly more limited than this: to be okay with where you are, or fight against it.

    The frightened mind really wants to overthink and so trying to “be positive” becomes near impossible Trying to “be positive” is actually self-criticism; it is sending the message that you “shouldn’t” feel bad. We look for books to help us—suggestions to help us get out of the mood—all the while anchoring deeper into the darkness.

    Instead, you want to turn and face where you are. So in other words, you want to go with the anxiety rather than fight against it (and against yourself).

    You may not want to be there, but that’s beside the point. Making peace with somewhere you don’t want to be seems illogical, but it’s a necessary step in moving to where you want to be.

    Accepting All Parts of Life

    Now, whenever I feel low, I know it’s not the end of the world; it’s part of life. When I feel this way, I also know that positive change is on its way. I know that my life is evolving; that new ideas are on their way.

    Just as I don’t have a nervous breakdown at the gym when I feel tension in my muscles as I workout, I no longer fall apart when I feel the tension of life evolving me. I welcome it. I accept the process. And I accept myself even when I can’t accept the process in any moment. After all, I’m human.

    Nothing has gone wrong if we find ourselves feeling less than our best sometimes, despite what we may have read.

    Negative thinking will not make your world fall apart—quite the opposite. It is the source of our evolution. And the first step to feeling better is realizing it’s part of the process, and it’s okay. Just as what we resist, persists, it is only in acceptance that we can let go and move on to better feelings and better experiences.

    Meditation

    Forget rearranging thoughts; trying to sift the positive from the negative. Those “new age” gimmicks will get you nowhere, kind of like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. To shift your life, a more “serious” approach is necessary. And that’s where meditation comes in. It’s something that’s been proven for centuries through all faiths and philosophies. In short: it works.

    Through meditation, we come into the present moment and foster a sense of inner calm. It’s not about changing our thoughts. It’s about learning not to attach to them and diminishing their power over us.

    Once you’ve made friends with exactly where you are, even with your negativity, a regular practice of meditation will make you less likely to be taken by those storms of negativity in the first place. But if they do take you down occasionally—and they probably will because that’s the journey of being human—you now know what to do about it.

    If you are suffering from depression or anxiety I recommend that you find a professional to support you and not do this journey alone.

  • Healing from Depression: It Begins With Asking for Help

    Healing from Depression: It Begins With Asking for Help

    Adult Man Crying

    “I speak of a clinical depression that is the background of your entire life, a background of anguish and anxiety, a sense that nothing goes well, that pleasure is unavailable and all your strategies collapse.” ~Leonard Cohen

    Right before my eighteenth birthday, when I was about to go to university, I was hit by a car and sustained multiple fractures to my right leg. This led to a couple of operations and the best part of ten months with me unable to walk.

    While all of my school friends and peers were having the time of their lives in school, I was silently suffering with depression and anxiety, both of which continued to increase.

    Whether it was the weed I smoked, the bottles of whiskey I drank, or the junk food I ate, I could not find comfort or relief from anywhere. Things just got worse, and I felt absorbed and consumed by the victim mentality that I had let penetrate my identity.

    I dropped out of university after re-doing my first year. Despite passing, I just couldn’t go back. I was so ashamed to be me. I didn’t even tell my future housemates that I wouldn’t be returning.

    About this time I realized there was a problem. In retrospect, it should have been glaringly obvious to me, with the self-medicating that was going on, but of course it’s harder to spot problems in ourselves.

    In two years I had gone from one of the most outgoing people I knew, someone who always liked to do things like play sports or party, to a recluse who needed some sort of alternate state of consciousness to function. I started working and going out again on the weekends with some of my old friends and people I had met through work.

    Naively I thought the problems were dissipating and I was returning to who I used to be. Now I look back on it and I know that the younger me had no idea who I was. Things leveled out for a few years until one day I had a breakdown on the way to work.

    There was now no denying the extent of the problem, but hell, if you are in denial you can dig your heels in pretty firmly, and that’s what I did.

    After a few more years of self-medicating, something happened, and to this day I can’t put my finger on the trigger, but something changed that made me realize enough was enough. A good friend recommended a therapist to me, and I was keen to see him and work through the issues that had been building up for seven years.

    So I met with Peter and it seemed like an expensive chat with a nice guy for the first five or six sessions. Around this time I also had had a regular meditation practice. One day whilst meditating I felt like I gave myself permission to open up at the next session with Peter, but I have no idea from where or by whom this permission had been granted.

    I was finally able to approach the issues with candor and rank honesty. I was able to bare my soul and describe how I had felt.

    It’s weird to think that at the age of twenty-five this was perhaps one of the first times I’d done this, but I’d been so suffocated by depression and anxiety, and numbed by my self-medicating, that I had not once looked under the surface to see what things were really like inside. 

    Therapy began to get in to the nitty gritty of what was causing me to feel how I felt.

    I had a fortunate and mostly happy childhood. My parents always did their best for my brothers and me. I could never doubt that. Interestingly, though, there were some wounds from my formative years that may well have contributed to me making some less than ideal choices in my teenage years.

    Add to this the massive fear of missing out and jealously of my peers when I began university, and it’s a perfect recipe for some kind of psychological disorder, which in my case manifested as depression and anxiety.

    I want to take a moment to describe the feeling of depression and anxiety as I experienced it, because I think too often in many parts of our society they are not described in their full ugliness.

    Imagine waking up and feeling sick. Sometimes you throw up, sometimes you don’t. You then have to think about going to work. These thoughts mainly contain a deep sense of dread—not dread of anything in particular, but dread at the overall sense of having to interact with the world.

    It’s so hard to describe because I wasn’t scared of interacting with people and I had friends, I just didn’t want anybody to know me.

    After the dread comes self-loathing. I wasn’t worth knowing. I wasn’t worthy of any attention or any of the good things in life. How could anybody want to be around me? I didn’t feel deserving of anything really, and I projected this on to my work life, where I never tried anywhere near as hard as I could.

    If it were the weekend, I’d do the only thing I knew that would help me: smoke weed or get drunk. It seems ridiculous now, and it probably is, that despite me being anxious and paranoid about going out, I would smoke weed, which only served to exacerbate this reluctance to leave the house. But it was my crutch; it held me up. (It didn’t, it made things worse.)

    I’m aware of the futility of describing feelings in explicit terms. Nobody else but me will know exactly how I felt.

    It’s like having a weighted vest on your chest that makes doing anything difficult. It’s like having the most negative person you could think of on your shoulder constantly nagging you, deeply instilling a sense of not being good enough and destroying any modicum of self-worth and self-respect that remained.

    Despite this being my personal experience, I now know that I was not alone. Nearly a fifth of people in the UK, where I live, suffer with depression or anxiety at some stage in their lives. This I am okay with, it’s natural. Life has its downs, bad stuff happens, and it is our psyche’s way of dealing with it.

    What I am not okay with is that it’s estimated that 50-80% of people suffering with depression do not receive treatment. 

    The stigma surrounding mental health issues in functional human beings is astounding. Because of our society’s attitude toward mental health, many people suffer in silence, and suffer much longer than they might need to.

    I want people to know that you can talk to people. You can get help. There are support structures in place through healthcare providers that can give you a light at the end of the tunnel.

    I was one of the lucky ones who, through a stroke of luck, found a way to ask for the help I needed. I’m still not sure how that happened, but I know I am forever grateful for it.

    Through therapy, learning to accept myself, and my meditation practice, I am fortunate enough to say I don’t think I will head down that road again. And I know that the people around me will help me. If not, then I can pay to see qualified professionals who will be able to give me the help I need.

    I know we have weeks and campaigns to raise awareness of these issues, but this is something we should always be aware of.

    If you are the one who is suffering, know that there are people out there who can help. If you’re suffering in silence and carrying on, then you have already shown you are brave enough to ask for help.

    If you know somebody who is suffering, remind them that you are there for them, and that there are people who can help.

    With the rate of diagnoses of these types of illnesses increasing over the last half a century or so, it’s more important than ever that we are able to help each other in anyway we can, especially with something as quintessentially human as our feelings.

    There are a few links below to free online resources that can provide support in dealing with your feelings. Of course, you can also discuss how you feel with a trusted friend or family member, or a professional. However you do it, know that taking the first step and asking for help is how it starts to get better.

    Anxiety Forum – Recommendations and a forum to discuss anxiety

    The American Psychological Association – Site includes research on anxiety, getting help, psychology news, and helpful books pertaining to the illness.

    Depression Forums – Offers a caring, safe environment for members to talk to their peers about depression, anxiety, mood disorders, medications, therapy, and recovery.

    Mental Health Forum – Loads of information and a friendly place to discuss mental health issues.

    British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy – Find a UK therapist.

    For further resources see the Tiny Buddha Helpful Free Resources page

  • Dealing with Postnatal Depression: It’s Okay to Ask for Help

    Dealing with Postnatal Depression: It’s Okay to Ask for Help

    “The light at the end of the tunnel might seem a long way off. But the switch may be very near.” ~ Anonymous

    When I think about it now, the ominous signs of postnatal depression were there even while I was pregnant.

    What started with worries and anxieties would continue to escalate after the birth of my child, finally coming together like a perfect storm, to become a deep, dark depression that would threaten to take my life away from me.

    Eighteen months after my daughter was born, now barely able to function, I found myself alone in the grounds of a mental health unit. I remember quite clearly looking up at the sky and asking aloud a question that would come to change the course of my life.

    “How did this happen?”

    I’ve spent the last twenty-five years unearthing the answers.

    The Landscape Changed Around Me

    I had sailed through my first pregnancy. My son was a placid baby and slept so much I sometimes had to prod him awake just to make sure he was fed. Life felt perfect but, between my first and second pregnancy, the landscape of my world began to shift and change around me.

    We moved. We took on a much bigger loan, but within a few months interest rates had risen so much we could barely make the payments. The property market had gone from boom to bust, and the value of our house came crashing down around us, threatening to throw us into negative equity. Now we couldn’t move again even if we wanted to.

    The financial pressures caused tensions. This was when I found myself pregnant for a second time. I felt a confusing mixture of joy and fear. This second pregnancy would be nothing like the worry-free first.

    And there was another problem: I wasn’t sure I even liked our new house, or, more to the point, where it was—right next door to a busy pub. Now pregnant, I began to focus more and more of my frustration and anxiety onto the pub and everything I hated about it.

    I hated the way its upstairs window overlooked my garden. I hated the smell of cooking and the sound of people drinking and laughing outside. When I was hot and sleepless at night, if I leaned out of the bedroom window, I could just about hear the extractor fan buzzing relentlessly. How I hated that extractor fan!

    Trapped

    I felt trapped and unhappy. All the worrying in the daytime ensured I slept restlessly at night, or not at all, and I grew more tired.

    Midway through the pregnancy, I caught shingles. Not only could I not take any medication to ease the pain because of possible side effects, but I grew worried about whether the shingles would affect my unborn child.

    But I kept soldiering on, pretending to the outside world that everything was okay. When people greeted me with “Hi, how are you?” I would smile and say, “I’m fine,” as we all do. Nobody wanted the true answer, it seemed to me.

    There was another problem in admitting I wasn’t coping: I didn’t want anyone to think I was anything less than a perfect mother, and there was an underlying concern, whether real or imaginary, that my children might be taken away from me.

    By the time my daughter was born, I was already running on empty, and perhaps that was partly why she was restless, demanding, and so different from my first child. She had eye problems, joint problems, and, as it later turned out, a hole in the heart too, as a result of the shingles.

    By now I felt I was a different person altogether. Hollow-eyed, tired yet wired, I was plagued by a feeling of heaviness, vague aches, pains, and stomach problems. I finally visited my doctor and told him I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. His response was to put me on a four-month waiting list for counseling and to give me a prescription for the antidepressant Seroxat.

    I started taking them and felt so much worse. Now I was foggy-headed and confused too, and I started having disturbing nightmares, often, violent ones. I’ve since found out these are common side effects. It was Christmas and I couldn’t even raise the energy to cook a Christmas dinner. When I did eat, I couldn’t taste the food. I felt I was shutting down.

    I eventually ground to a halt and had to admit how things were for me. The perfect mother mask had finally slipped, and I had no alternative but to be more real. When people asked me how I felt now, I told the truth and it was a relief. Being fake, as it turns out, is really tiring.

    I accepted all the help I was offered. I had no choice.

    I was referred to a counselor, which helped a lot. Finally, I could offload all the worries and ruminations to someone who didn’t judge me, who simply allowed me to talk and hear my own thoughts.

    Friends and neighbors rallied round. People offered to mind the children so I could take a break. I felt I’d forgotten who I was and had to find myself again.

    Months later, feeling calmer, I wandered into the garden and sat down, with my back to the pub, on a swing seat.

    From here, I had a view of my home I had not really seen before. A pretty thatched cottage lay before me with roses around the door and colorful flowers tumbling down from its window boxes. Fatman, my cat, laid stretching and dozing on the path in the sun, and my children slept, safe and sound, inside.

    And in that moment, my perception shifted. I suddenly saw things from a different angle and realized that nothing in my life needed to change; I simply needed to change the way I was looking at my life. Things had happened to me and around me over which I had no control. Finally it hit me like a speeding train: My real control was over the way I chose to respond to those events.

    Nothing, and nobody, could make me unhappy without my permission.

    It was a moment of clarity and insight that became the turning point in my recovery. It was also the start of my long quest to uncover the mysteries of depression.

    How Antenatal Depression Begins

    Being a mother can be the most rewarding, yet the most demanding, of roles. Society has high expectations, especially now with social media piling on the pressure for perfection. Antenatal depression can resolve with the birth of the baby or might evolve, as it did for me, into postnatal depression.

    The signs and symptoms of anti, and postnatal, depression are the same as for any depression:

    • Tears and feelings of sadness
    • Restlessness and insomnia
    • Difficulty concentrating
    • Irritability with yourself, others, or life in general
    • Loss of appetite or overeating
    • Severe fatigue and wanting to stay in bed
    • Difficulty leaving house or handling social situations
    • Aches and pains
    • Loss of interest in things you used to enjoy
    • Loss of hope about the future
    • Feelings of guilt or self loathing

    How to Get the Help You Need

    Be open.

    Communicate with those around you. Explain how you are feeling and ask for support. Talk to friends and family. Other mothers are probably not as confident and upbeat as they appear to be. When you’re honest, it gives others permission to own up to being less than perfect too. Being authentic means you don’t have to pretend, which is such a relief.

    Speak to your doctor about what you’re going through, as well. Many pregnant women and new mothers feel guilty about having negative feelings at a time when they think they should be happy. But being open and sharing your concerns will help you, and others, understand and overcome the problems.

    Go online.

    There are many forums now that support mothers and parents. There is nothing to feel guilty or ashamed about if you are anxious or down. Plenty of others do. Talking openly to others who understand can relieve the burden and isolation.

    Take “me time.”

    Self-care is not vanity. You may be busy running around after other children or family, but you do need to take your physical and mental health seriously and support yourself with a healthy diet, plenty of rest, and some fun too.

    Keep a journal.

    Write down how you feel, to get thoughts from the inside to the outside. However, remember also, to keep a gratitude list rather than just focus on the negatives. Bring to mind the things that have gone well, like a trip out with friends or even a beautiful sunset.

    My list grew longer the more I searched for the positives. As I expressed my gratitude for the things I hadn’t previously paid attention to like my home, my health, a good meal, or even a lovely sunset, I started to be more mindfully aware throughout the day.

    I began to harvest the good stuff and started to feel better. I now know that when we actively look for the good and express our gratitude and thanks, we are re-setting our internal brain filters and begin to re-wire for positivity.

    Practice meditation and mindfulness.

    Track down a local yoga or meditation class. If you can’t visit a class, download one of the relaxation apps and downloads that are now available online. Learning to focus on the present moment trains the brain to switch off when you want it to. In this way, you can take a break from all that negative internal chatter.

    Get some talking therapy.

    Agencies such as MIND or Rethink or the Samaritans offer low cost, or no cost, support, and there are many private therapists too.

    Talking to a professional has some real advantages. They are trained to listen and offer support, and they can help you heal your past and identify changes you may need to make to meet more of your emotional needs.

    Don’t try to be perfect.

    Finally, cut yourself some slack. You don’t have to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect daughter, or perfect anything else for that matter!

    Consider the wisdom in the ancient tale of the carpet weavers.

    The carpet weavers, who were experts at their trade, would spend many months creating the most beautiful carpets, but just at the point of completion, they would deliberately weave a mistake into the intricate pattern, because, as they said:

    “To aspire to be perfect is to aspire to be god-like and who are we, mere mortals, to be as the gods?”

    Editor’s Note: Although the author did not have a positive experience with medication, everyone’s experience is different. Please consult your doctor before considering stopping any prescribed medication.

  • How High Expectations Can Lead to Disappointment, Depression, and Anxiety

    How High Expectations Can Lead to Disappointment, Depression, and Anxiety

    “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” ~Alexander Pope

    I was sitting on the couch in my bedroom, at sunset, looking at the trees outside my window. I felt a profound sadness, frustration, disappointment, and desperation taking me over.

    While I was staring into oblivion, all my expectations came flashing to my mind.

    “No, this is not what my life was supposed to be. I was supposed to be successful. I was supposed to have my own house. I was supposed to be happy. What happened?”

    What happened was that I am part of the majority, not the exception.

    My entire life I expected to be the exception. I assumed that if I worked hard enough, I would succeed; if I did well in university, I would succeed; if I poured my heart and soul into something, I would succeed; my dreams could come true.

    I had become a slave to my expectations, and they were ruining my life.

    In my mind, things were supposed to be different. My great expectations were robbing me of happiness, because I wasn’t where I wanted to be, I didn’t have what I expected to have, and I wasn’t who I expected I should be.

    The truth of the matter is that there are few people out there who are lucky enough to be living their dreams.

    Most of us survive on crumbs of our expectations. We have a job, even if it’s a job we don’t like. We work from nine to five every day to pay the bills. If you’re lucky, you get to go on a vacation once a year, and for the very lucky, two of them.

    Statistics show depression and anxiety are on the rise. I am part of those statistics, along with 350 million other people who suffer from the same hell I do.

    How could depression and anxiety not be on the rise when we are constantly bombarded by repetitive messages that tell us about all the great things we can accomplish?

    Of course giving people high expectations is what sells. If beauty creams advertised their products by saying, “It will moisturize your skin and that’s pretty much it,” not too many people would buy the product.

    Marketing survives by raising people’s expectations. When the product doesn’t meet up with their expectation, disappointment follows. And so it goes with most things in our lives.

    Don’t get me wrong; I truly believe that dreams can come true. The point is that we shouldn’t expect it to happen. If it does happen, it will be a nice surprise. But if it doesn’t and we’re expecting it, we are likely doomed for disappointment and frustration.

    Of course it would be amazing if we could all live our great expectations, but we shouldn’t base our happiness and personal satisfaction on them, because there is no rule that says that we will all live to fulfill them. I know this might sound pessimistic, simply because it goes against everything we’ve heard.

    We read great stories of people who defied the odds and became a success, but we never read about the people who did their best and failed. Their stories never become motivational quotes and bestselling books, because they didn’t make it.

    We never hear their stories about how they put their heart and soul into something and failed, because that doesn’t sell books; that doesn’t sell conferences.

    Many motivational books and personal coaches survive by raising people’s expectations instead of focusing on finding happiness with what they already have.

    Of course meeting our expectations could bring happiness, but if we’re waiting to be happy for that to happen, we might be waiting a long time.

    Maybe you’re not Anna Wintour or Mark Zuckerberg, and you don’t have a million dollars in the bank.

    Maybe you’re feeling frustrated because parenthood didn’t turn out to be what you had expected (it’s tiring and demanding).

    Maybe your job is not fulfilling, and at one point you expected you’d grow up to be somewhere completely different from where you are today.

    I could sit here and write that you can change everything and you should fight to meet your expectation. I think you should, but you shouldn’t base you personal satisfaction and happiness on that.

    I’m here to tell you that it’s all right if you didn’t meet your expectations.

    Sometimes life throws curve balls at us, and for some reason or another life doesn’t go to plan. It doesn’t mean we have to stop working toward our goals; it just means that we can be happy regardless.

    Instead of focusing on what we don’t have, we need to focus on what we do have.

    Capitalism shoves down our throats to strive for more, and we obediently follow, only to meet a brick wall and realize how frustrated we are for not being everything the system promised we could be.

    Millennials in particular are battling this problem harshly.

    We were sold the idea that if we went to college, got great marks, and did tons of unpaid internships we’d be destined for the stars. Instead, millions of millennials have a huge amount of debt from student loans and are finding it hard to find a job. I’m not even talking about their dream job—just a job.

    Did you know that millennials have the highest statistics on depression and anxiety ever recorded in history? That’s mainly because we expected to at least have the quality of life our parents had. But things have changed, and now we are not even close to what they had at our age.

    Our expectations were too high, and we live in a world where it’s harder to meet those expectations.

    It would have been a lot better to break things down to millennials in a realistic way, and if some of them got to meet their expectations, then good for them. But for the rest, we’d know that not all expectations need to be met for us to be happy.

    I know you might be reading this and thinking of all the expectations that you had that you didn’t get to live up to. Maybe you’re feeling frustrated and sad.

    The best and easiest way to be happy is to work toward our goals but never expect for them to become a reality. It’s a paradox. It’s the duality of existence.

    We need a goal and a dream to keep us motivated, but at the same time we need to not expect anything from life. That way, regardless of the outcome, we don’t become disappointed.

    I know it kind of goes against the motivational quotes we read, and it especially goes against the greedy perception that has been incrusted in our minds. We are taught to never be content with what we have and to always strive for more. But this greedy mindset is what has many feeling frustrated with their lives.

    I’m not saying that it’s good to get comfortable in mediocrity, but to push ourselves to be the best person we can be without expecting a great outcome. To do things because we love doing them, not because we’re expecting something.

    It’s like doing a good deed expecting a “thank you.” If the “thank you” doesn’t come, you become disappointed. If you do it regardless of the gratitude, you still feel content.

    It’s about being happy while working to be better, not by placing happiness on a goal. You find that happiness in your progress, in your daily life, in feeling grateful for the small things—for having food on your plate, a roof over your head, health, and loved ones to share your life with.

    It is about coming to terms with the idea that your dreams might not come true. Making peace with life—that even if it doesn’t allow you to fulfill your dreams, it has given you life, and life itself is a treasure.

    As the saying goes, happy people are not those who have the best of everything but the ones who make the best of everything they have.

  • How I Stopped Feeling Hopeless and Healed from Depression

    How I Stopped Feeling Hopeless and Healed from Depression

    “Abandon the idea that you will forever be the victim of the things that have happened to you. Choose to be the victor.” ~Seth Adam Smith

    I come from a history of abuse and mental illness on both sides of my family. I felt the effects of both growing up. By my twenties, I was a mess.

    I suffered from wild mood swings and severe depression, either lashing out or completely numb and disinterested. I was using alcohol to numb myself from reality, and it was only a matter of time before I’d end up in jail or dead.

    I saw doctors, counselors, and therapists. I was diagnosed with two mental illnesses and tried medicine after medicine. Eventually, I was taking over ten pills a day, nothing was helping, and my doctor said he couldn’t do anything more for me.

    That was when I hit rock bottom. I was shocked. My genes and terrible experiences had wrecked my entire life before I ever had the chance to really live it. It seemed that misery was all I would ever have.

    Deep in a downward spiral of hopelessness, something in me cried out that this couldn’t be it. There had to be something more. I had to be able to change this.

    I clung to that hope, and for ten years I searched for answers. I read everything I could get my hands on and took courses on anything that might help me. I tried things. I made mistakes. I worked hard to cope and to heal.

    Today, my life isn’t perfect, but I’m stable and happy. I’m in a healthy relationship. I have purpose and direction in my life. I’m finally healthy. Here’s what helped me move forward on my healing journey.

    1. Give up the victim mentality.

    I realized that you can’t make changes when you’re stuck in blame or self-pity. And letting others give you answers will only limit you to their perspective and understanding.

    Instead of looking for external guidance, I began listening to my own. I acknowledged my pains rather than avoiding them. I listened to what they were trying to tell me with the clear purpose of understanding myself better and learning what I needed to address and change.

    I had to choose not to let others or my circumstances dictate my life, but to take control and choose for myself. I had to let go of denial and accept responsibility for my actions, thoughts, and beliefs. I could blame the doctor for not being able to “fix” me, or I could take control of my healing.

    I had to learn that the only way to move forward is to recognize that I have the power to do it and then focus on the steps I need to take.

    2. Accept that change is possible.

    In my studies, I learned that neuroscience has proved something called brain plasticity—the brain’s ability to create new neuropaths, or ways of processing and responding to our experiences. We can literally alter our brain to form good habits and responses rather than be stuck with behaviors that are destructive.

    I accepted that I can change and overcome whatever is holding me back, and I started trying to do it.

    I created good memories and started new activities that nurtured my mind and soul. Then, I practiced holding onto those good feelings and memories, even when things were difficult and I was hurting.

    I learned to be patient with myself as I made changes and sometimes failed to react or do as I should, because it takes time to build healthy patterns and behaviors and replace old, negative ones.

    I explored my beliefs and my behaviors to determine what my issues were and what untrue ideals I was holding.

    I explored my family history and stories to understand that the dysfunction was a cycle passed from one family to the next, and I determined to end it.

    While my family chose to avoid talking about the past and ignore the damage done, I chose not to be afraid. I talked about and explored those things, not to rehash old pain but to validate those experiences, learn from them, and then let them go so I did not repeat them.

    3. Practice self-care.

    Healing starts with taking good care of ourselves.

    I had to give up alcohol, coffee, late nights, places, people—anything I found that exacerbated my issues or was not helpful to maintaining the healthy habits I needed.

    I got off of the meds gradually and started living healthy.*

    I set healthy boundaries in my relationships.

    I started using positive self-talk rather than allowing harsh, critical thoughts to dominate my mind. I started talking to myself like a best friend, giving encouragement and praise.

    I listened to my emotions and I honored them. I practiced acceptance and self-validation.

    I was starting a new life with new choices, and I had to commit myself.

    I couldn’t only love myself when I was happy; I had to love myself when I made a mistake or felt pain. I couldn’t stop nurturing my body with healthy foods. I couldn’t stop cultivating personal development and practicing what I learned. I realized that stopping those things would bring back the depression and instability I was fighting to overcome.

    4. Live with intention.

    I realized that I couldn’t allow myself to go through life simply reacting to everything that happened to me. I needed to think and plan ahead, and learn coping skills so that when something went wrong, I could work through it rather than be debilitated by it.

    I researched and learned cognitive therapies, one of them Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, to help me remain calm in difficult situations and react responsibly, every success strengthening my resilience.

    I became organized, scheduling and planning my priorities so that my needs weren’t an afterthought. I set healthy, realistic goals for work and personal development and strove for them knowing that consistency is the key.

    When we react to life, we’re victims of circumstance. When we set intentions and then strive to meet them, we’re consciously choosing how we want to experience the world.

    I now ask myself questions like, “Who do I want to be? What do I want to achieve? What is working? What do I need?” My healing began with an intention to change the broken cycle of my life, and I live every day determined to fulfill that.

     5. Let go of labels.

    Depressed, a criminal, a rape victim, broken, suicidal, loose, an alcoholic, mentally ill—whatever the label, that is not who you or I am. I realized that I am not defined by my issues, my mistakes, or anything else someone wants to call me or use to describe me. I am more than those things, and they do not define who I am and who I will be.

    If I let them dominate my thoughts, then I will make my decisions based on those things, and it will become my reality.

    When I look in the mirror, I choose to see someone worthy of love and happiness. I accept that she may have been denied that in the past, and I make it my mission to make sure she gets it.

    The more I practiced these things, the more stable I became. I was able to accept and let go of the bad experiences I’d had and the mistakes I had made. I made myself a new person— someone I like, someone who is happy.

    Ten years have passed since I started my healing journey, and I sometimes think that if I had waited longer, I wouldn’t have the new life I have now. I wouldn’t have healing. I wouldn’t be learning new things. I could be in a bad place or a bad relationship, or maybe I would have given up on myself entirely.

    Maybe you are struggling with illness like I was. Maybe you’ve experienced trauma or heartache and feel damaged, that your life will never be normal or happy the way it should be.

    I wanted to overcome a long cycle of illness and tragedy in my family. I chose life and healing, and I have that future for myself and my own someday family. You can too. Start today to change the story of your life.

    *Editor’s note: If you are currently on medication, it may or may not be wise for you to consider going off them. Everyone is different. Please consult your doctor before making any decisions about your treatment plan.