** Trigger warning: discusses mental illness, anxiety and depression **
Today is the day I would have started my 10-day long vipassana course. For those of you that don't know, Vipassana is essentially meditation bootcamp; you spend 10 days with several other people in silent meditation all day, every day. I have been planning to go to one for a few years now, but the timing has never lined up. I recently cancelled my course I had signed up for due to scheduling conflicts with the next thing I had planned for the summer. I was disappointed about not being able to make it to the course, so as a compromise, I decided I would spend a week in silence. My plan was a bit different from Vipassana's; I wouldn't just meditate. I would read, write, make medicine (I'm a herbalist), go for bike rides, hikes. I would turn off facebook and not watch TV. Get up early and do yoga. Be with myself for a week, allowing myself to be present with everything that comes up, including all the uncomfortable feelings.
Sounds great, right? Yes, except that halfway through my first day, I realized there was a flaw in what I was doing. Essentially, I was dieting. You know when you've really outdone yourself over Christmas Break, and then for New Years you decide you're going to be a NEW PERSON and lose a bunch of weight, eat healthily, climb Mt. Everest, learn Spanish, and learn how to juggle? And then you never do those things? Well, what I was doing was more or less the same for me. There is a problem with this kind of deprivation: it isn't kind to yourself, and it doesn't last.
I'll let you in on a secret. This secret became blaringly clear during my one day of silence; it is something I have known almost my whole life but had never been fully upfront about, even with myself. I suffer from mental illness. I may appear to function in daily life, but take away my crutches, take away the busyness I occupy myself with, and my mind goes haywire in a mess of anxiety, overwhelm and depression. I'll let you in on some more secrets. What I suffer from doesn't necessarily have a formal name or diagnosis. I call it overwhelm. Extreme overwhelm. I suffer because to do most things takes a certain degree of fighting with myself to do it, because the thought of doing it makes me overwhelmed. The overwhelm largely comes from unbelievable amounts of pressure I put on myself. To sit down and read, or get up and do yoga, or practice the guitar, or write this blog post; for me to get myself to do anything on a regular basis takes an extraordinary amount of energy. I recognize a degree of this is true for most people; to do anything on a regular basis takes discipline and perseverance. Yep, I get that. But for me it is different because I can't just do the thing; I fight with myself that I'm not doing it right, that I need to be doing more, that really I should be doing this other thing. And to do most things requires me to get over a messy hurdle of anxiety, overwhelm, and sometimes depression. Some days, for me to pick up a book and begin reading it is a victory; it means I've managed to overcome a storm of overwhelm before actually opening the book to Page 1.
As I mention in my previous blogpost, I also suffer on a daily basis from a highly overactive sympathetic nervous system, that was hardwired that way as a baby. Undoing this hardwired behaviour will be a lifelong struggle for me.
So there's my secret. How do I deal with this, usually? Well, a number of different ways. The first one is school; it's one of the reasons why I have stayed in it for so long and keep going back. To have a structured system of learning, to have assignments and tests that have to get done, takes some of the overwhelm away. When the pressure comes externally, I seem to be fine, most of the time (depending on what it is). But otherwise, I deal with this by turning my brain off and numbing it out. I do this by looking on Facebook, scrolling my news feed, watching re-runs of familiar shows. These are not just crutches. They're my Xanax, my Ativan, my Prozac. Sure, they may not be the 'healthiest' ways of dealing with my struggles, and yes, I would like different ones, but they take the edge off, and sometimes, that's what's needed.
So how does this relate to my vow of silence? I begun to realize that what I was doing was actually likely to make my situation worse rather than better. By removing all of my crutches, I was alone with myself and my thoughts. This is kind of the whole purpose of that type of exercise; to be present with oneself and one's thoughts. While its true that I can see that exercise as valuable for many, for people who struggle with anxiety, depression, or other forms of mental illness, I would avoid it with a ten-foot pole, unless you have it more or less under "control". To tell a depressed or anxious person to be alone with their thoughts can be a very bad move, if not dangerous. And actually, in the end, not necessarily helpful or necessary. While there is definitely value in being able to be alone with oneself, one must also be kind; its great to learn to be alone with oneself, if one can treat oneself well while alone. As someone who has lived with anxiety my whole life, and depression as well to a certain degree, what helps more than anything else is human connection, whether that's in the form of friends or TV characters (or occasionally book characters). In the frenzied anxious state, what you need is something to take the edge off, something to calm you down, before you can deal with your thoughts. For me, that's very often human connection that I trust. To remove that from the equation is like taking away a depressed person's Effexor before they're capable of withdrawing safely. It's cruel, and also follows a highly addictive binge-purge cycle.
Our culture lives in a perpetual binge-purge cycle. We live in a culture of excess, and yet many of us have become enamoured with states of deprivation. Due to a guilt complex over the excesses and indulgences, be that with food, TV, or what have you, we want to then 'purge' those from our system (hence the New Years resolutions after pigging out on Christmas dinner). As a result, we label certain items or behaviours as bad and others as good, and 'clean' ourselves up. As much as we love our donuts, French fries and slurpies, we also love our liver detox cleanses (please don't do this ~ whole other blog post), hard core meditation retreats, and Buddhist and Yogic teachings which, in some interpretations, emphasize a degree of deprivation. But the problem is, we in this culture run to these things having no lead up at all. We run from one extreme to the other, which, if you think about it, is unhealthy and ridiculous. Would you, for example, run a marathon having no physical training? Or play Hamlet after never having read a word of Shakespeare previously? No? So why do we want to put our livers through a detox after drinking and eating terribly only days beforehand? Or put our minds and hearts through a meditation and yoga retreat after only having meditated or done yoga once or twice before? If we want to change our old patterns and create new ones, we must do so slowly and with compassion; most people can't learn to swim by being pushed off the diving board into a pool of sharks.
This cycle is actually addictive, and perpetuates itself; we go really far to one extreme, then as a result bounce back to the other, and back and forth we go. Ironically, one of the most important tenants of Buddhism is the middle path; to live on the extreme of indulgence is unhealthy, but to deprive yourself of all the comforts of life is also that way. The best way is to find the middle ground; to not have too much, but also make sure you're being nice to yourself and giving yourself what you want (and need!).
Through my one day of silence, I realized something that I kind of knew all along: that many advocates of these spiritual or new age practices (for lack of a better word), while having their place, are often ableist in their approach. I was actually being ableist towards myself in my suggestion to remain silent and alone with my thoughts. In a group such as vipassana, you are with a bunch of people, and while difficult, you are also going through your difficulty surrounded by others, and are also able to engage in discussions with the teachers there. I was doing my vow of silence on my own. Mental illness is stigmatized heavily in our culture; those living with it are frequently told to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and carry on, to 'get over it'. In the spiritual, new age world, it sounds different, but has the same outcome; we are all told to 'face our demons', to sit and be alone with our thoughts, to feel the fear and run towards it anyway. This is great, unless you suffer from mental illness, and proclaiming those adages to someone who is, is disrespectful and discounting of their experience. Why? Well. Telling someone who suffers from depression to face their demons without adequate and professional support could be a fatal mistake. Telling someone with chronic anxiety and panic disorder to be alone with their thoughts or to run towards their fear is like tying a mouse to the end of a cat's tail. It would not end well. Those of us living with mental illness do not necessarily need to "face our demons"; we live with them every day. For some, these are great tools and in many cases, can help tremendously. But be careful who you suggest these tools to (including yourself), for to the obsessive mind and/or someone suggestible to these philosophies, it is not always the right solution. Its essentially a fluffier way of telling someone to keep their chin up, to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, or to 'get their shit together'. I'm not 'weak' if I can't go through with it because I need human connection. We are not meant to be alone; it's good to know we can be if we need to, but ultimately we need human connection and that's okay.
I swing to extremes in either direction very easily. It is really difficult for me to promise any kind of significant change in my life without becoming obsessive about it. And, if I'm not careful, what begins as a very easeful transition snowballs into a series of expectations I can't possibly live up to. I wanted to get to the root of my pain, to be present with the scorpions of my mind, and to be able to be alone with myself and be okay with it. While this is a worthwhile endeavour to some degree, to do this very suddenly, removing all of one's crutches at once, which I've labelled as 'bad', and do all of these things which I've labelled "good" (all of which are things which overwhelm me to do), is not actually being nice to oneself at all. In fact, I'd put it in the category of cruel. And there is a very fine line between challenge and cruelty. Thus, I decided to back out of my vow of silence, and instead, remove the things I don't want in my life, and add the things I do, slowly and gently, with grace and kindness. And I still want to challenge myself with a vipassana retreat; but trying to be silent for a week, on my own, was too difficult for me at this time. And that's okay.
May we all find peace and happiness on the middle path. Let's all be nice to ourselves.
**I will say, that if these extreme measures work for you, that's awesome. Keep doing what you're doing. My point here is only saying to be careful what adages and philosophies we've internalized, and that they're not for everyone in every circumstance. **
