mental health>>>
this blogpost was originally published 2/3/2020.
I recently shared with Philly Mag’s Health & Wellness beat about my relationship with my mental health, along with 4 other phenomenal fitness instructors. In this process, a couple things stuck out to me.
Even though I’m a pretty open book irl and often speak online about my mental health journey, there was still some trepidation and uncertainty as I hit send.
The outpouring of gratitude, love, sweetness that came alongside the shares.
The number of folks who [in their own ratio of nervous:ready] wanted to have more real, honest, maybe even a little bit vulnerable *gasp* conversations about this tough stuff.
Since the article wasn’t titled “Just Adriana’s Extremely Verbose Thoughts on Mental Health, Related Tangents, and Straight Up Rabbit Holes”, here’s the bit that I wrote that didn't make the final cut.
Healing isn’t a linear path. Trial and error [fortunately & unfortunately] is a part of it.
Our roads to healing need not [and probs] won’t look the same but if you’re interested, here’s how mine has looked over the past year or so and some last thoughts:
And before I get into them just want to say having a toolkit of 2-3 skills that actually work for you is better than a toolkit of eleventy-seven skills, like dull knives that you never reach for. Rather than continuously collecting tools and skills, put them to use (more than once…), see what works, keep what does, and release what doesn’t.
Yoga has been one of the biggest and most constant tools in the last 10 years of my life. It helped me get engaged with my body and breath after years of dissociating from it and from there the gateways of awareness, engagement, and healing opened.
Movement has always been a resource for me. And what that movement looks like changes day-to-day whether I’m dancing in my living room to feel joyful or going to a hard workout to get out frustration or doing self-massage/self-myofascial work to release stuck tension.
Therapy! I have a really amazing therapist that was referred to me by a friend. I highly suggest folks ask their circle for recommendations for therapists because it’s so important to find a therapist that’s a good fit. One you can connect and be open with! I’ve had more than a few false starts with therapy and at the time I thought it was my fault (cue another spiral of anxiety) when really it was just a round hole, square peg situation from the start.
The breath and grounding.
Sometimes, I just sit and put a count to my breath. Inhaling for the count of 4, taking a pause for 1, exhaling for the count of 6, pausing for 1 then starting over again.
Sometimes when I feel myself on the edge of an anxiety spiral, I do the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique.
Sometimes, I visualize myself wrapped in the center of a ray of golden light when I’m feeling a little woo.
What I like is that all of these options are short and sweet, help me tune into the present moment, and I can easily integrate into my daily life-- waiting in line, during a bathroom break, on a walk, in the doorway before I go teach a class. I appreciate tools that I can do relatively quickly, a few times a day.
Meditation has been a game changer for me. I used to be really resistant to it because I thought it was just sitting in silence for an hour everyday while “trying to clear my mind” while my thoughts were racing and I always left feeling disempowered.Once I learned that mediation is more about witnessing yourself and your thoughts and practicing being less attached to them, meditation became way more valuable in my life.
One of my favorite mediations to practice is a visualization of settling juice. I also use the meditation app Headspace. Though I can practice meditation solo and teach it, when my mind is really racing it’s really helpful for me to be guided.
Gratitude journaling. Ok, so this one took me a looooong to come around to after my therapist suggested it. I was wary of leaning towards toxic positivity. When you’re feeling really low forcing yourself to “grateful” can backfire making you feel worse because look at all these things you *should* be grateful for or can create a feeling of dissonance between your emotions and reality. But once I put in some work in therapy, I was able to see the benefits gratitude can have-- helping me see the good in my life and myself more easily and strengthen those positive neural pathways.
Therapy isn’t financially accessible for all. And There are a lot of resources out there these days for self-education-- from “Therapy Instragram” to books to podcasts. There’s also sliding scale services available.
Community.
Being honest with myself.
One thing I know, I’ve never experienced anything being healed by not acknowledging it, by not talking about, by not bringing it into the light. The light of awareness makes all the difference to me because when we can see ourselves more clearly-- with all our light and shadows, strengths and weakness, freedom and baggage-- then we can really take a step forward towards our hopes and desires and highest sense of self.
And when we act in accordance with what we want to see in the world-- real, honest, maybe a little bit vulnerable, we can see that there are other folks out there doing the same or were just maybe waiting for someone else to be the first….
with love,
a