Throughout this process, both counselors I've worked with have said meditation and contemplation will be keys to recovery.
Being head-oriented and not body- or heart-oriented, this has felt a bit to me like spraying magic water on something. It hasn't felt weighty enough, substantive enough, to create any lasting benefit or health.
That was so last year.
The gains are small but powerful. Possibly because of this, it feels very unAmerican, very slow life, slow growth-oriented. I guess it seems more like training for a marathon.
In addition to some breath and Ignatian prayer practices, I've done quite a few packs of exercises on Headspace. The most recent pack I'm doing is on Depression because why not? I don't know anything about what they'd have to say but seemed appropriate.
The first ten exercises in the thirty exercise set deal with the idea of Noting your feelings and thoughts, acknowledging that you're not your feelings and thoughts and learning how to let them come and go while staying anchored in your body.
This second series is on Visualization. Today's exercise had you visualizing being in a very happy, peaceful place you've been to before. Once there, you imagined yourself being flooded with light from above, and watched as your body is slowly filled with light and warmth.
As I went through this exercise, I felt myself grow happy and genuinely at peace. It seemed to bring together many things that often reside separately in my mind: my happy memories, my sense of my body, my sense of God's presence, a sense of peace. Together, they all came together and I felt deep, inner peace and calm, a sense that this could carry me throughout a day.
As that feeling grew slowly, (the exercises are only ten minutes long), a second, strong corresponding feeling also grew and that was the familiar feeling of fear and doubt. The voice and impression very strongly communicated, "This is too good to be true. Remember how comfortable we are being sad and in despair. There is too much sadness in the world to be happy. There are too many people you love who aren't happy. You can't be happy. It is disloyal to the world to be happy, disloyal to people you care about."
And there you have it.
Years of depression and discouragement facing off with a new, more hopeful future as my brain and soul heals. I don't quite know what's coming next, but I know I have that voice of doom in my sights.