*Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and my advice should not be a replacement for speaking with a mental health professional.
I’d like to start by saying mental health has been a theme in my life for as long as I can remember. Whether it was navigating my own mental health or watching family members and friends suffer, I’ve been on a mission my whole life to better understand where this pain comes from and how people can overcome it. Happy to share that by age 26, I feel like I’ve finally cracked the code – without medication. (Although if you are clinically diagnosed with a mental health disorder, there is nothing wrong with being on medication, you can explore mindfulness in your everyday life regardless of if you are on medication or not.)
On my journey to better understand mental health, I didn’t anticipate the way it would completely change my worldview, I just thought it would make me happier, more confident and decisive. I had no idea that learning about spiritual truths and how to regulate my nervous system would seem like the answer to every world problem. Today, I couldn’t be more confident that a spiritual revolution is our only hope as a species (S/o to Rainn Wilson for his book Why We Need A Spiritual Revolution). That being said, if religion and spirituality are not your thing – I totally get it – all I ask is for you to read what I’m sharing with an open mind.
My Experience With Religion
Growing up, I fought my mom tooth and nail to avoid going to church every Sunday. Looking back, I regret how hard I fought her because now that I have my own sense of faith, I understand how my complete disregard of her core beliefs must have made her feel. On the flip side, I’m grateful I can now share a sense of faith with her even if our journey to that faith differed. For her, the traditional church setting worked, but personally, I needed someone who could speak my language, and that was certainly not a traditional priest. I vibe better with the mystics and priestesses all over Instagram these days, and that’s ok! To each their own.
The reason I couldn’t get behind the traditional church was because everytime I went to church, I zoned out and felt like they were just asking for money. I also always questioned “If God forgives and provides unconditional love, why are there all of these strict rules we need to follow?” I didn’t understand why religious groups discriminated against gay people, women and anyone that didn’t follow their interpretation of scripture, it all felt pretty counter-intuitive.
For a really long time religion and spirituality triggered me. If anyone said “God” I thought they were weird, but once I learned about spiritual truths, and read A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, I started to understand the true meaning behind the word.
I do not see God as a man in the sky judging us. I see God/Goddess as the love and presence within us, and this realization has had a major impact on my life. Coming home to the Goddess within me made me feel powerful and truly alive for the first time ever. The world started to feel lighter and I felt guided and protected.
This is not to say I’m always happy, but I am so much kinder to myself and understand how to process my emotions rather than letting them control me. I also have a sense of faith inside of me that I did not have prior to considering myself a spiritual being.
The Difference Between Religion and True Spirituality
The problem I have with religion is that it claims to teach you about morality, but it functions more as a power structure (AKA patriarchy). Religion teaches you that God is outside of you and that you need to worship him. Makes sense, right? Why tell people God is within their own body and that they are powerful just as they are if you want to have control over them?
Religion perpetuates the idea of “power over” while true spirituality perpetuates the idea of “power with.” True spirituality says there is an abundance of room and resources for all of us, not just a select few.
True spirituality teaches you the power has been in you all along and you can access it whenever you choose to. It teaches you that we are ALL connected – regardless of if we look exactly the same, think exactly the same or go to the same place of worship. We are all humans and we are all a part of nature.
True spirituality bridged the gaps I found in traditional religion, because I could never wrap my head around how religion claims to be a place to learn about love and morality, yet it has led to so much discrimination and wars – from the crusades to what seems like never-ending conflict in the middle east.
Do we really think killing someone because they are “different” than us is what “God” would want? To me, it’s completely contradictory.
The problem here is not that people wake up each day and say “I’m going to discriminate and live life selfishly!” The problem is that too many people are living in survival mode for valid reasons. When we are living in survival mode, it’s only natural to err on the side of selfishness and self preservation. However, I know there is another, better, way for us all.
As we are in the middle of such a tumultuous time and horrors erupt around the world, we need to take responsibility for how we are playing into the idea that we are all separate. If we ever hope to see true peace in this world, we must connect back to our hearts and our collective humanity.
The real problem is, society, governments and religion try to keep people in boxes, disconnected from themselves and others. The solution is to unlearn all that society tells you you should do, and start following what you know is right for you.
Isn’t that a beautiful thing? To realize the key to healing the world is to start by healing yourself? I know some people don’t see it that way because they are terrified to look at the pain inside them, and I understand the fear, but if you can work up the courage, you will be so proud and grateful you unpacked it and let it go. The world will thank you too.
Still don’t believe me? Try it for yourself and see the internal shifts you experience when you really commit and immerse yourself. The resources and codes are below – all that you have to do is try, and I’m sure you’ll be glad you did. The world needs your medicine ❤️
Tips for regulating your nervous system
First, if you’re skeptical about the power of internal transformation impacting the external world, I want to ask you: Have you ever said to yourself “when I get XYZ I’ll be happy” but when you got it you were not happy? This is because you are trying to mold your external reality to appease your internal world, but your internal world will never be appeased by external stimuli.
True peace is an inside job. When you look at what’s happening inside your mind and body, you are able to create a peaceful happy life for yourself because you validate yourself. If you constantly look for something outside of you to validate your existence, you’ll be stuck on a never ending hamster wheel.
Next, if you are privileged enough to have access to therapy, I’d recommend somatic therapy over talk therapy, or spiritual / empowerment coaching. I personally found coaching more helpful than therapy, and a big reason for this is because coaching taught me about somatic release and offered me a community of like minded women to heal alongside, however, I know this is not cheap.
If you are planning to self-learn, here are some accessible places to start:
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- Make sure whatever healing modality you choose is right for you. Some people love meditation, some love yoga, some may choose boxing. The medium doesn’t matter as long as it helps you connect to the peace and power within you. It’s also crucial to be grounded in the idea that we are all one and we must treat each other with love and care.
- To understand the benefits of meditation, check out this meditation for beginners. Really listen to what the video says to understand how to actually meditate, rather than expecting to quiet your mind.
- To dive deeper into the benefits of meditation and spiritual healing, read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, any Yung Pueblo book, or A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson. There are plenty of other options as well, but these are some of my favorites.
- Get to know yourself better. Do guided visualizations and let whatever comes up come up. Don’t question yourself, just let yourself be. Afterwards, journal about your experience to better understand your interests and strengths. You Turn is also a great resource. It’s focused on helping you connect to yourself to figure out your career path, but personally it did so much more than that for me. It rocked my world and kick started my spiritual healing journey. It was the first time I really took the time to get to know myself in a way that was meaningful.
- My greatest takeaway from You Turn was to treat emotions as messengers & signals. Just like when a cell isn’t operating properly in the body, it will send messengers to the other cells to bring the body back to homeostasis. If you truly listen to what your emotions are revealing to you, you’ll be better equipped to course correct and pivot when needed.
- Do inner child meditations to give yourself what you needed in the past but did not get. Our mind does not operate in time, so when we go back into these memories in our mind, we can literally rewrite our past.
- You can find a multitude of inner child meditations on YouTube.
- The goal is to envision yourself as a child and to identify the wounds you hold from your past so you can take responsibility for them and release them.
- Start by closing your eyes and seeing what version of yourself comes forward. What did they need? Were you made fun of? Were you hurt? Were you sexually assaulted or harassed? What did you need? Envision your current self giving that to your younger self. Cry it out. Feel what needs to be felt and let it go. Recognize you are here to take care of yourself now. Release the need to be perfect and release the need for validation.
- From this moment forward, you validate yourself. You love yourself and no one can take that love away from you.
- To heal, you need to rewire your brain to believe in yourself and unlearn all of the labels society has placed on you (especially if you are considered a marginalized group). Whatever the label is, it’s not true. Our true self is the love within us. We are all worthy of love exactly as we are.
- Write letters to yourself. Tell yourself you love yourself regularly. If you’re caught up in emotions, grab your journal and let your thoughts flow out onto the paper. Write out affirmations to help you start embodying the version of yourself you want to be.
- Notice how you speak to yourself. Do you say mean things to yourself all day long? Question those thoughts and stop them in their tracks, you are amazing and do not deserve that. It’s time you start being your own best friend.
- Learn about somatic movement. Try out different kinds of yoga. Dance around your home in your pajamas as much as possible. Turn on a song and shake for 3-10 minutes. Move the energy inside of you around.
- Try different breathing techniques. Breathwork is the easiest way to reconnect to your body. It is simple and can ground you into the present moment. I also found holotropic breathwork was an amazing exercise to get me out of my head and release trapped emotions, but some feel a strong resistance to this practice. Be gentle and patient with yourself.
- Learn about body awareness. This comes with meditation, but the truth is emotions are energy in motion and we need to MOVE them through the body. When we recognize that emotions are physical sensations in the body, before we attach mental meaning to them, we can learn how to spot these sensations and stop ourselves from reacting impulsively. For example, if you feel a rush of energy in your chest, you can pause and recognize the sensation and process the emotion in whatever way works for you, rather than immediately attaching mental meaning to it and projecting it outwards.
- Important note: This takes practice. When you’re emotional try to remember to do a body scan to figure out what sensations are attached to which emotions to better prepare you for the future.
- In Yung Pueblo’s book Lighter he explains that when we feel internal tension, our mind tries to make sense of it and blame it on external stimuli. He gave an example of his wife feeling internal tension and telling him “I’m feeling a lot of tension and I’m getting mad at you for no reason.” Think about your own life, I’m sure you have done this too. I know I have.
- When we do not feel ok inside, we look for a reason. Truth is, sometimes there isn’t really a reason. We’re just experiencing a normal human emotion, so we need to learn how to feel the emotion without assigning mental meaning.
- The society we live in tells us to hide our emotions, to push past them, to be strong at all costs. A healthy society would teach us emotional maturity. It would teach us how to process our emotions and let them go so we don’t hurt others. A healthy society would encourage us to look at our diet and lifestyle prior to prescribing drugs for profit.
- Stop labeling emotions as good or bad and accept all emotions for what they are. When we were children, we expressed our emotions freely. If we were angry we screamed, if we were sad we cried and if we were happy we laughed. As we grew older, we learned that the “tough” emotions were bad and we needed to suppress them. This only keeps them trapped in our body. We need to learn to feel and release all emotions, not just the good ones. Ex: If you’re angry, take time to have a sacred tantrum. Scream, kick, punch it out. If you’re sad, allow yourself to cry and feel your feels – it’s ok you’re not weak, you’re just HUMAN.
- Become aware of your triggers. Reparent yourself, Give yourself what you need.
- Also, if you’re a woman, I HIGHLY recommend learning about cycle syncing. This will help you understand your internal world so much more. You’ll be more aware of your mood fluctuations and how to best navigate them and you’ll be able to prevent pregnancy completely naturally. Your period is NOT a curse. Let’s take our power back.
The Light is in You
If everyone took the work I’ve outlined above seriously and we redistributed resources to provide every human being a decent quality of life, we’d have a much healthier global society. The first step to creating this change is teaching children coping mechanisms to thrive and giving them time to play and be creative. Rather than giving them school work that’s too hard for them and leads to self-doubt and a feeling of low worth.
We all need to take responsibility for our trauma, reconnect to the child within us and work together to build a better society for everyone.
Just know, this is all possible. Peace and harmony are possible.
P.S. If what I’ve shared here resonates, I encourage you to watch this Instagram Live: Marianne Williamson & Gabor Maté: Healing Root Causes for Personal and Collective Repair
