Sometimes we all just need to slow down and take a breath. However, there’s nothing more annoying than being condescendingly told by someone to “slow down” and “take a breath.” Everyone has moments when he/she feels utterly overwhelmed. We take on more than we can handle, we feel the weight of looming deadlines and we cry into a bowl of Ben & Jerry’s (or maybe that’s just a “me” thing). This past week was one of these stressful times for me.
Since starting college, the crippling anxiety I’ve struggled with throughout my life has become infinitely more manageable. I’ve somehow learned over time to ignore the internal pressures that cause me stress and I’ve become much happier because of it. Despite my progress, there are still plenty of times when I feel overwhelmed, stressed out and even helpless. With the abundance of final exams and papers, the looming stress of having to sort through my pigsty of a dorm room in order to pack and my conflicted feelings towards leaving my life in the city to move back home, my anxiety flared this past week. I suddenly started feelings like I wasn’t quite “myself,” like I was losing control.
Throughout my life I’ve never really found effective ways of dealing with stress. Since I was young, I’ve always sought out things to worry about, sometimes even stressing about not being stressed enough! I’ve always kind of assumed that I was innately just a nervous person and no gimmicky “solution” could help me cope with these challenges more effectively.
When I was in high school, I worked as a receptionist in three different yoga studios and heard a lot about the healing benefits of yoga and meditation. My parents who are both longtime fans of meditation have consistently encouraged me to try the practice to help deal with my anxiety. Despite my exposure to meditation throughout my life, I was extremely skeptical of the legitimacy of the benefits of the practice. As someone with anxiety who lives within her own head all the time, the idea of deleting outside stimulants and forcing myself to live in my head absolutely terrified me. While I saw many people speaking about the benefits of their practice, I immediately wrote it off as something that “wasn’t for me.”
This week, however, something changed within me when I saw my anxiety affecting my work ethic and ability to do things I typically enjoyed. Stress weighed on me heavily and I was having trouble leaving my dorm room to do fun things with my friends. As it was my last full week living in my dorm, I desperately wanted to make the most of my time by spending it with my friends. But stress caused my heart and thoughts to race, which ultimately confined me to my room. Alone in my dorm room, unable to sleep and feeling like the walls were caving in, I decided that it was completely necessary for me to take a moment to slow down. Remembering what I’d heard throughout my life at yoga studios and with my parents, I decided to try meditation for the first time with a completely open mind.
On Spotify, I searched the phrase “guided meditation” and selected the first track that showed up. I listened to a calm, steady voice speaks about the importance of relaxation and breathing over sounds of crashing waves. After a few minutes, I felt my furrowed brow release, my shoulders drop, my pounding heartbeat slow and the pit that had been growing in my stomach dissolve. I began to feel truly relaxed and I finally felt that I understood what it meant to "live in the moment." While my anxious thoughts about deadlines and decisions didn’t completely disappear, they felt less threatening. After about 12 minutes, the track ended and I emerged feeling like a new, refreshed person. I suddenly had a newfound positive perspective on a situation that I had deemed almost hopeless.
I repeated this short, simple exercise several times throughout my week whenever I felt that I was losing control. Sometimes while I was meditating, I would feel my mind drift towards the negative, nagging thoughts. The first few times, this distressed me and I felt like I had failed at meditating correctly. After several times, though, I was able to notice when my mind was drifting without judgment and try to pull my focus towards living in the present moment. Through my practices, I began to feel a sense of autonomy that I had lost while giving into anxious and negative thoughts.
I am so grateful for the power I’ve found in my recent meditative practices. I hope to continue meditating and work to utilize my newfound skills towards centering myself and being mindful. Meditation made my stressful week just a little more manageable and I’m glad that I opened my mind to something I had previously judged negatively.
