09. Chapter 5: The Root of the Problem

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Transcript

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Chapter 5, The Root of the Problem. Up until very recently, I accepted the Western medical model of mental health. I believed that I was genetically born with bipolar disorder. I believed that there was a chemical imbalance in my brain, and nothing would make it better except pills. I now have a completely different view of mental health. At one point in my life, a Western diagnosis and medication were life-saving, and I recognize that for many people, medications are crucial for their well-being. But I personally no longer believe I have a chemical imbalance in my brain, nor do I believe that medication is required to fix me. I believe that given the trauma I went through and experienced as a child and teenager, and the lack of support and coping skills with which I was equipped, it is absolutely normal that my brain would be functioning in the way it was. Like most children from my generation and the generations before, I was given no education on nutrition and exercise and how it impacts mental health, no therapy, no coaching, no sharing circles, no yoga, and no meditation. According to the mental health statistics that were provided by Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2024, one in four adults suffer from a diagnosable mental health disorder. Moreover, every year, more than 40,000 Americans die from suicide. When you visit a Western medical doctor for illness, you'll be tested, given prescription drugs, and sent on your way. The Western medical model tends to view each organ and system of the body as separate. Eastern medicine, in contrast, looks at everything as interrelated and connected: our body, our mind, and soul. There are a few models within yoga philosophy that look at this interconnectedness, one of which being the chakra system. The chakra system refers to energy centers in the body. There are several chakra models. However, the most widely accepted model is the seven chakras which run along the spine. The chakras start at the root of the spine and move all the way up to the crown. When the chakras are open, balanced, and healed, so are we, open, balanced, and healed. I got accepted to university in Canada for the Concurrent Education Program, the most competitive program in the province. This acceptance meant that instead of applying to a Bachelor of Education degree post-undergrad, I could complete my Bachelor of Arts alongside my Bachelor of Education at the same time. Entrance into this program meant I didn't need to worry about my grades during my time in undergrad because as long as I maintained a minimum average of around 70%, I'd be automatically accepted into the faculty of education in my fifth year at the school. As a teenager in high school, I was a contradiction. I spent every weekend lying to my parents and sneaking off to house parties, yet I maintained a high grade average. I was the editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper. I sang in the choir and organized events like charity week, fundraising car washes, and leadership weekends. I was given the most prestigious award for graduates upon commencement. At age 18, I always needed control, always needed a plan, always needed to know what the next step in life was. I couldn't just go with the flow and see how things unfolded for me. Note, when one of my yoga teacher training graduates, Sarah, was reading this book and editing it prior to publication, she commented, You have changed a lot. And she's right, I am much more comfortable with change and uncertainty 10 years later. This discomfort with spontaneity is why concurrent education appealed. It had a clear professional goal at the end, unlike a more generalized degree. There were only a couple of universities offering this degree within driving distance of the city of Toronto, so I accepted the offer. What I remember about my childhood was that when I was happy, I beamed, and when I was sad, I broke. I lived my life in two extremes. There was no in-between. I was a bright, bubbly blonde girl, taking center stage in musical theater performances. Yet I was also known to be over-dramatic and to over-exaggerate. From age nine or 10, sometimes one comment would send me over the edge, and I would cry uncontrollably, endlessly, seemingly for no reason. I wrote my first suicide note at age 12. When my sister came upon this note when reading my diary and told my mom about it in tears, my mom asked me, You weren't really planning to kill yourself, were you? I passed it off as a creative writing exercise, and we never spoke of it again. Looking back on my teenage years, I can pinpoint what I think was the first time I experienced not just mood swings, but a mild depressive episode over a long period of time. When I was in ninth grade in high school, I wasn't very popular. In this era, we were in the early days of Facebook, and all of my classmates were documenting and posting about all of the parties I wasn't invited to. I spent hours each day signed into Facebook, looking at other people's albums and uploads, feeling like a huge loser. Everything changed when I met an older boy in grade 12 who asked me out on a date. He quickly became my boyfriend, and I suddenly went from being a nobody to being cool. Only two things in my life had changed. I had a boyfriend and I had started going to parties. From then on, I had a subconscious association that partying and having a boyfriend would make me popular. After a year of being together, he broke up with me when he moved to university. At the same time, my sister went away to school, and my parents had begun dealing with legal battles unfolding within my dad's family. I felt very alone, and at times I also felt invisible to my parents as they whispered when I was out of the room in anxious tones about what was going on. My mom also frequently started traveling for business during this time, and my dad stayed at work late at night. So often I would find myself alone at home, which I didn't mind. It was better than the alternative. My depression and partying accelerated. I'd get drunk looking for boys at parties to hook up with, desperate to find a boyfriend to fill the void my ex left and distract me from how invisible I felt to my parents, both of whom were caught up in their own story. I was looking for the light. I was unaware that the light wasn't something I needed to find in the outside world. The light was something I needed to find within myself. The light would come from an internal healing journey, not an external one. What I was going through was hard, but it wasn't enough to debilitate me. I managed it somehow. My community at high school and my extracurricular activities gave me a sense of purpose and grounded me throughout this experience. I had teachers who were anchors. I kept myself busy, volunteering for every position, every job, every opportunity possible to get me out of the house. My first real depressive episode came two years later, at age 18, when I went away to university. They were on the brink of divorce, and I could feel the tension of that impending separation whenever I was home. University was going to be my getaway. Yet university didn't solve my problems like I thought it would. As the leaves fell, the days got shorter, and the sky got darker, I got more and more down about everything. It wasn't that I wasn't making friends or meeting people. I had a few close friends from high school that came with me to university. I also made good friends with my neighbor in residence, Nick, on the first day I moved in. After moving all my things into my dorm room and getting me set up, somehow my parents and I met and started talking to him. He was likable and friendly. Feeling happy I made a friend so quickly, my parents drove off back to Toronto, leaving me hanging out in Nick's dorm room with his roommate Zach. Nick was also from Toronto and had a great sense of humor. We immediately connected. I wasn't alone, but what was challenging was that I was suddenly a small fish in a big pond. I had been a 10 out of 10 student all my life, but it seemed like at the university I went to, everyone else was too. Most of my classes had over 500 participants. Getting accepted into academic faculties and extracurricular positions were both extremely competitive. I gave 100%, but it was never enough. I tried to find a place for myself, but faced rejection after rejection from committees, teams, and clubs. I eventually lost confidence, feeling like I wasn't worthy of these things, and I shrank back into my shell. I was simply another white blonde girl in a sea of white blonde girls at university. I grew up in the 90s when fast food and microwave meals were the norm. By the time I got to university, education on how nutritious food and exercise would keep your body healthy was becoming mainstream. But I lacked awareness on how deeply these things would keep my mind healthy as well. I didn't realize that what I ate, how I slept, and how much exercise I got could have a trickle effect on my mood. I had no resources for mindfulness or mental health and no vocabulary to describe what was going on with me. Everything was slipping away from me except the party scene, and that was the one place where I fit in. I held on to it like somebody who is shipwrecked holds on to a plank of wood. I spent most nights having cheap vodka shots in dorm rooms and skipped a lot of the orientation week because I was too exhausted for morning events. As the fall semester carried on, I got more and more into partying, and it became harder and harder for me to get out of bed in the morning and make it to class on time. I knew that the university I went to offered four free mental health counseling sessions a year for students, but I was too afraid or ashamed to go. I spent most of my time that fall in my residence room crying. Depression was manageable for me because I never lost control. I was the only person who was affected by my sadness and feelings of hopelessness. My suicidal thoughts didn't hurt anyone else. It was the mania that was really a problem because when I was manic, I'd lose control. When I was manic, I'd make a decision that lacked good judgment. Mania can leave a trail of regret behind you. Hurt feelings, poor judgment, and mistakes that you later have to clean up. I always felt like my depression did not impact others around me, but it was the mania that sent me to seek help. In my second year of university, I was in distress. This was just prior to my parents' decision to get a divorce, and tension was high at their house. I avoided visiting them in Toronto as much as I could. I had the least healthy habits at this point. I was partying a few nights a week, chasing relationships with men, and feeling heartbroken and distraught when they broke up with me. One night I had friends over for a dinner party, which led to the bar, which led to Nick coming back to my house. Ever since I met you, I always knew we had a special connection, he said to me. Our relationship escalated and we started spending more and more time together over the next three or four months. After so many failed relationships, building a relationship with someone I had been close friends with felt different. It felt hopeful. But one day I was standing in the reception of the yoga studio, operating the front desk, when I got a text from him out of nowhere. I'm really busy with schoolwork and it isn't the right time for a girlfriend. I was confused by this message. Where did this come from? What happened to our special connection? I could not stop crying and nothing made it stop. I called my parents, but they had difficulty understanding it. To the outsider, it didn't make sense. It was just a boy, right? Why couldn't I get over it? Why couldn't I let go? Many years later, I am now able to understand that every time I had a breakdown, it was never about the boyfriend who broke my heart. In reality, 18 years of unhealed wounds and trauma was spilling out of me. I'd created a story in my head that my entire self-worth was based on whether or not I had a boyfriend. And since boyfriends were continuously breaking my heart, I believed I was unlovable. Everyone else seemed to be capable of handling life's stressors except me. Every failure, in particular, every failed relationship, defined me. When I spoke on the phone to my sister, she provided me with the empathetic listening ear that I needed. And after gently allowing me to vent for over an hour, she suggested, Alex, you should go to the university counseling office. So I called the counseling office and I decided I'd go. Walking there felt like I was walking through a tunnel. Everyone around me was blurry and the sounds were incoherent. I walked straight through the busy campus and up the stairs into the office without processing the classmates and friends I'd passed along the way. The hour was over in the blink of an eye. I can't remember it being in any way successful. Sixty minutes later, I was just as dispressed, lost, and distressed as I had been an hour before. But I now know that mental health issues, like physical health issues, take time to heal. They're sometimes unsolvable in an hour. But the one suggestion that the counselor had for me was you should try yoga.