First time in a community

[Bellisa]

I have overcome many things in my life now depression have become anxiety attacks. I was traveling and couldn't practice yoga or meditation as a result I had palpitations day and night. I suffer from a heart condition, my mitral valve is narrow. I don't have real problems in life but I can make anybody around me feel uncomfortable with the way I express myself.

[Hidden]

Heya, and welcome.

Sorry to hear you're having duh a struggle. I know from experience just how much meditation can help such things.

Regarding "real problems", I have come to believe everything is relative. Are you familiar with Maslow's "hierarchy of needs"...?

*edit* my spelling sucks

[Bellisa in reply to Hidden]

hi Thomas, just had a look at that hierarchy pyramid and it is interesting to realise the missing steps in my life. The flow can go up or down, really. For example, belonging and love needs where an issue and that affected my physiological needs, like eating and sleep that are basic needs.

Some people said that they had a terrible childhood but they eat so well, love themselves so much that the past is not really affecting them physically, but hating the person who hurt them. In my case, I took it on myself and grow up with an eating disorder.

I'm nearly 60 and a bit childish. 10 years ago I started eating better and during the last year and a half I'm taking supplements to tackle the effects of my malnutrition. I have never been better in my whole life. Hurray! At my age happier than ever and so much in control of my emotions and life.

what a waste of time, not having had the tools and skills to get over before.

[mrsmummy]

Hello and welcome to a great forum.

[Olderal]

Hello Bellisa, sorry to hear about the anxiety. Self help with depression is possible to some extent but for anxiety I believe self help is much more effective and meditation and yoga are likely to help a lot.

I suspect that you are not making those around you feel as uncomfortable as your depressed/anxious mind is telling you. Its a mystery to me as to why our own minds should prove such traitors to our well being when depressed or anxious . One would think as our most important organ they would help us at a time when we desperately need help. I can only imagine that the human brain has evolved to such a degree of complexity (on average 16,000,000,000,000 synaptic connections believe it or not ) that it gets too big for its boots and tries to show its power by taking over.

Olderal

[Bellisa in reply to Olderal]

thank you for that. I do think that late at night you feel more the doom and gloom of life, this morning I picked myself up and dusted myself off the silly thoughts and decided to see things more positively. I have a meditation tomorrow evening with a monk and I'm happy again. I enjoy the little things in life and talk to the tree in the back garden. mornings are full of hope. The true is that achieve all this by following many self help healing techniques that are available free on line. now I found this site and last night I really needed to talk to someone. just to write about helps. God bless.

[CatClaire]

Like Thomas_C problems are all relative I remember when my brother was talking about a friend who had sadly lost his dad and I replied with I don't feel like I have a right to have anxiety because nothing bad has happened in my life, or so I was telling myself, and my brother turned and said to me, right now my friend is battling with the worst thing that has happened to him in his life, right now you are also battling the worst thing that has happened in your life and neither is worse than the other in terms of the fight.

I also find that deep breathing and counting my breaths (1 in, 2 out, 3 in, 4 out etc.) helps calm me down when I have panic attacks and this is something you can do when you're lying in bed, another thing that helps but can be scary to think about is to stop fighting the panic accept it and then let it go and relax your whole body. Both takes a lot of practice but seen as you meditate you'll probably already have a good handle on things but it's all about practice every night even when you aren't panicking.

[Bellisa]

oh, yes! breathing! We forget how important it is. I read somewhere that a trauma in our mind/body is because we skipped a breath during the traumatic experience! Until we get rid of that embedded memory under our skins we will be carrying that burden and their ramifications.

I had so many years of living with the trauma that it took several different treatments to get rid of that.

I'm really good now.