Having just come out of a very dark place recently, I now feel in a place to be able to share with you what happened and how my practise was of support to me.
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It's worth stating that being a meditation practitioner doesn't make you indestructible or immune to mental health issues. It does however, allow you to cultivate an inquisitive mind, meaning that you tackle any problems head on, no matter how difficult they may be.
Towards the end of last year I noticed my health started to take a plunge, then one thing after another started to go wrong with my health and before I knew it, I was overwhelmed by all my thoughts and emotions. Then things at my job started to heat up and my Boss decided he wanted to retire and this was not only a shock, but just happened to come at the worst possible time for me.
Alongside the medical issues I was having, I started to suffer with reduced sleep, waking up feeling down and very depressed. At its peak I would find myself extremely emotional and nearly in tears almost hourly. My mind was all over the place, in a state of anxiety, fear and confusion for the future. I felt I had sunk to the bottom of a very dark pit, where no light would get in and the hope for things to improve seemed unattainable. As a result of all these things, I found myself having to eat little and often and this helped to balance my emotional reaction to things. I then found I feared being emotional in my work environment and didn't want to look silly. So I made a tough choice and spoke to my boss and took a few days off to help me try to get things sorted. But whilst this helped, the fear of mounting work soon crept in and I decided to try a different approach. Speaking to my boss, we agreed that I would have the ability to work from home if things felt too hard at work. This really helped reduce my fear, as I was able to have some control over where I was, at any given time. Before I knew it I would be working in the office full time again, and would slowly get back to a state of normality.
So how did my practise help and support me? Well as i've been practising meditation for a few years, I would find myself waking up at 3am and would be wide awake. My mood would be really low and I just wanted to sleep, but couldn't. So I started to apply my awareness to the physical feelings I was experiencing single pointedly and not the thoughts that had been playing on my mind. As I applied my awareness to the physical feelings I was having, I noticed that after a short period of time the feelings would start to subside. Sometimes I would try and the thoughts would fight back, trying to get my attention. This happened every morning for a few weeks. I would try placing my awareness in the same way one of my teachers advised last year during lockdown. I'm not going to tell you that this worked every time or that it was easy, because it wasn't. I just kept telling myself to be present with what was going on, be it good or bad.
When doing my normal seated meditation practises, I would find myself in my head and other times I would be able to get into a state of calm abiding, but no matter what happened, I would site and be there for myself and try my best. After a few weeks of doing these things, alongside speaking to friends and family and getting some Reiki done, things started to improve. My low feelings in the morning whilst still there, didn't affect me as much. My work became easier to handle and my eating stabilised. It appeared that I had weathered the storm or at least, I had gotten to the far outer edges of it.
After a while I started to enjoy things again and have been able to stop and think about the beauty of everything around me, as the sun shines and the trees around me are in full blossom. Suddenly things don't feel so bad. My medical issues whilst still there, are being treated and I can't do much more than what i'm doing. So worrying all the time doesn't surve me or my mental health. I work with what I have and try to find joy where I can, but most of all i'm present with myself in a non-judgemental way.
Things in life that we cannot control, can really throw us off, especially when they all seem to come at once! But by practising mindful awareness when I was at my lowest point, doing my meditations (without judgement of whether it was good or bad), talking to people and eating small and often all helped me immensely. I'm not cured of my anxiety, depression, these things are part of my life and I have to learn to live with them and that's ok. But to meet these challenges with awareness and kindness has really helped. Being anxious and depressed is ok, but the hardest parts are the feelings and emotions that can trap you. By grounding yourself in awareness from time to time, can really help soften the blow, giving you the strength to tackle the day.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post, I share this with you in the hope that it may help you. If you have any comments or want to share how you have coped with some of the issues raised in the post, feel free to pop a comment in the box below, I would love to hear from you.
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