You Are Not Broken

Hi again. It’s me, the voice of compassion and understanding. This is your friendly reminder that YOU are not broken. Yes, it feels like you are. The struggle is real, the journey is frustrating, the confusion and isolation are painful. Your pain makes sense. And I’ll say it over and over again:

You are not broken.

What if I told you that there are 9 known/documented causes of anxiety and depression, and that only TWO of them have biological roots? What if I told you that your genes might pre-dispose you to a condition but they don’t sentence you to one. What if I told you that SEVEN of the nine known causes of anxiety and depression can be attributed to your lifestyle?

To be clear, you are not alone. What I’m talking about is how we are culturally and socially living and working that are at the root of our mental health challenges. But the good news is that a few simple changes sustained over time could change your life dramatically for the better.

In the coming weeks, I’ll share with you little things you can do to introduce sustainable change into your daily life so that you start to feel more happy and free. You were born to thrive! Don’t believe me yet? Keep coming back.

First up!! Loneliness is on the rise, even though we’re more “connected” than ever. We have more access to people than we know what to do with, yet we lack in social support. How many people would be there for you if the shit hit the fan? How many people really know you well? Most people in the U.S. responded with one or fewer when asked these questions. (Ask me for my sources if you want them; I’m happy to provide the info.)

When you ask yourself these questions, how would you answer?

We were born for connection, communication, and collaboration. It’s wired into our survival tendencies to function as a tribe. That whole hunter-gatherer thing makes a lot of sense. “It takes a village to raise a child” is commonly said but uncommonly practiced. We live like we’re alone, and we’re starving for connection.

In light of that, the fact that we’re anxious and depressed more and more every year makes sense. We need each other. We need relationships. It’s human and natural to cultivate togetherness. It keeps us healthy. More on this in another post…

If you think about mental health conditions as symptoms or signals rather than as the cause, you could start to see things differently. There is something underlying the fear, shame, and sadness you’re experiencing. By the way, if we called things what they are, it would make life a lot easier.

Anxiety = Fear

Depression = Shame and Sadness

There we go. Instead of “diagnoses” or “labels” we just have words for feelings. And feelings are signals to pay attention to our underlying needs. I hope that helps. Rather than seeing our experience as the problem, we can start to see it as a journey, a path toward whole living or living whole.

Think about the CHECK ENGINE light in your car. We stop and uncover the root of the signal. Why don’t we treat our emotions like that? They aren’t bad or wrong; they’re just letting us know that we need our own attention. There’s something deeper that’s asking to be recognized.

As we become curious and wonder what it is our mind-body is trying to tell us through these signals (anxiety, depression) we open up space to discover something new. That discovery might be, as it was recently in my case, that we need more human connection. It could be that we need more physical activity. It could be that we need more rest. It could be that we have a dream deep within that we’ve long ago abandoned that wants to be realized.

I don't know what your answers are, but I do know how to help you discover them. That’s the power and magic of yoga as a whole life practice, not just one we do on the mat for an hour but one we live out in our daily lives.

You’re not broken.

Your mental health struggles are not a problem.

They’re unmet needs asking for attention.

What if you started to ask … What do I need?

And then started to move toward giving that to yourself?

DISCLAIMER: If you’re under a clinician’s care, please follow their instructions. Yoga practices can become a part of what you’re already doing and need not replace or take over interventions that are working for you. If you decide to add yoga practices (movement, breath work, meditation, chanting, dietary guidelines, self-inquiry, etc.) to your regimen, I’d love to help you figure out what works for you in that context.