How Meditation Helps me Recover

Me teaching my first meditation class!

Let’s cut the shit. Most of us have mastered the craft of meticulously arranging our days so that they are filled with time consuming tasks - working, cleaning, socializing, scrolling - all in the hopes that our duties will drown out the incessant noise coming from between our ears. At least I do.

So tell me, why on this (somewhat) green Earth would I willingly sit quietly in the body that makes me uncomfortable, with nothing but the voices of my cruel, toxic thoughts playing like some sort of deranged podcast, in the name of meditation? As someone who has always struggled with mental illness, that sounds strikingly similar to a contemporary method of torture - I’ll pass!

Alas, when I find myself in need of an answer, I rely heavily on literature to tell me what to do. It wasn’t until l read the book ‘The Untethered Soul’ by Michael A. Singer - I’m a writer, of course I will quote it sporadically throughout this post - that I realized what it means and looks like to actually be in meditation. The wandering of my brain, the infiltration of my thoughts during a moment that I am trying to cultivate silence and stillness is not in fact a signification of me doing meditation wrong. It’s actually part of the meditation itself.

“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problem is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.”

“I can’t meditate.” “I’ve tried it, my mind is too busy.” “I can’t sit still that long.”

One of the misconceptions about meditation is that it involves sitting in silence for long periods of time without thinking. Essentially, you are to be a blank wall of nothingness, and if you can’t do that then you are a failure at yet another one of your ambitious endeavours in this life. Next!

Fortunately, if you are reading this post, you are lucky enough to have a working brain, and so you are always going to have thoughts. You’re always going to have a list of tasks, memories, worries, plans, feelings, running in and out of your mind. And if you struggle with a mental illness, it’s likely that a lot of those are going to be of the negative, unpleasant subtype.

The practice of meditation involves acknowledging when your mind has wandered, and then bringing yourself back to stillness, (or the breath, a mantra, the present experience in the body, etc.) over and over and over again. Like with any muscle in your body, the more you exercise it, flex it, use it, the stronger it becomes. It’s the same thing with your ability to be still, present, aware. The more you sit with the initial discomfort of a meditation, and the more you practice acknowledging when your mind has drifted and bringing yourself back to that anchor (breath, mantra, etc.), the easier you will find it to bring yourself there in the midst of your day-to-day chaos.

Supposedly people are attracted to lists when reading - probably because we can’t focus on one thing for too long because we don’t meditate enough ;) - so here are some of the reasons why I maintain a regular meditation practice:

1. I have better focus throughout the day.

The times when I am not ‘in active meditation’ - meaning, not intentionally engaging in a practice with my eyes closed and the lights off and the whole nine - I am more still. My mind isn’t buzzing around like a bee on performance enhancing drugs, and I am actually just present in my current experience. This is because I meditate regularly enough, that my brain is used to this concept of disconnecting from the thoughts/feelings/buzzings of the mind, and it likes it, so it now tries to do it even when I'm just living.

*P.S. Social media has a HUGE effect on our ‘resting’ brain experience. Lately I have been on it more than I am used to for work promotion purposes, - see post where I gave it up here - and I have noticed a significant difference in my ability to find stillness in between device usage. Something to keep in mind, for sure, if you have an embarrassingly high screen time and also struggle with focus and attention span at school/work*

2. I do not let my thoughts control me, because they are merely ~ thoughts ~.

We spend most of our lives in our minds, not in our bodies. Naturally, we believe anything that goes on up there. I learned this when I began recovery from an eating disorder - it was incredibly hard to reject the critical, destructive thoughts and feelings that I was so used to listening to all day long. Studying meditation has transformed my experience with, and relationship to these thoughts, and has taught me that they are:

Not fact

Not real

Not true

And not a part of me.

Seasoned meditators like to call their harmful, noisy thoughts ‘the monkey mind.’ You can call them whatever you want, but the importance is that you separate yourself from your entanglement with them, and that you stop the habit of over identifying with them. You are not your thoughts, you are simply the one observing the thoughts. 

“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind - you are the one who hears it”

3. I am learning to find comfort in the discomfort, thus having a higher distress tolerance.

I do not always enjoy sitting in silence. When I am having a particularly hard day on the mental illness front, the thoughts and feelings come, and they come hard. Usually they are a side effect of living in an overstimulating society, a harmful environment, a mind that struggles with mental illness. If I have the ability to see the thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings - literally, name them that- I can also see that I am not them, I am merely the one experiencing them.

4. It helps me realize that it is within my capabilities to FEEL DIFFERENTLY than I do right now.

Just as we choose a negative reaction to a song or flavour we don’t like, we also have the option to choose our reaction to external people, places and things that cause us tension. Meditation allows you to take some autonomy back over your seemingly in charge mind.

As any folks in recovery (substances, behavioural addictions, etc.) would know, so much of the illness or addiction is an automatic response. Even folks who don’t identify with a particular illness or addiction, can agree that much of their daily life is them reacting, moving, or existing on autopilot. You ‘naturally’ turn to the TV or the bag of chips at the end of a stressful work day. You ‘naturally’ scroll on your phone when you are waiting in line, or are bored with your work or studies, or are just uncomfortable with any silence in your day. Part of meditation involves becoming aware of when your brain is about to turn to these programmed, not particularly productive ways of being, and choosing a different response instead.

Our brain always wants to be comfortable, and we know that engaging in action X will allow us that feeling, even if temporary, so we do it. It’s really not much deeper than that.

So, there is no reason to feel bad for your repeated engagement in the harmful behaviour/substance/response, it is simply your brains natural programming to always seek out the comfortable, to keep you alive and make you feel safe.

In recovery from an eating disorder, much of my behaviours became automatic and unconscious, which is why it was (and is) so incredibly hard to choose a different response to the everyday feelings of stress, worry, sadness. Through learning how to become aware, and mindful, meditation has allowed me the chance to take a conscious step back. When I practice regularly, I maintain the ability to recognize when I am about to engage in a harmful, unconscious behaviour, because I am feeling uncomfortable in my body, or I am struggling in my relationship, or something at work made me upset, etc.etc., and I want to take the pain/discomfort away. Now, when these painful or frustrating events occur in life, as they always will, I remind myself that while I don’t have the ability to control the outside world, I do have the ability to control my response to it.

“The goal of meditation is not to control your thoughts, it is to stop letting them control you.”

Yes, it is uncomfortable, it feels wrong, but over time it gets easier, because I find new ways to cope with the inevitable stressors of life. Through breathwork, awareness, and silence, I learn how to work with my body instead of against it. I learn the way my body likes to respond, or is used to responding, and I learn that I can take a different way home this time instead.

If you made it to the end, I would love to know in the comments below what has been your experience with meditation, or any mindful practice? How do you think it would benefit your life if you were to incorporate some awareness or stillness into your day-to-day?

Thank you so much for supporting the work of a local writer. You can find some more of my work over on the YET Niagara Community Wellness Blog.

May we all learn to find comfort in the discomfort, as the one thing we know for sure is that it will always come back, and then pass again.

Tanti baci (lots of kisses),

Julia🌞