I am almost at the end of my meditation teacher training. I’ve learned to teach 10 different meditations and have 2 more to go. I’ve learned so much on this journey. In particular, not only how ignorant I was to the wide range of meditations there are, but how much I didn’t know about stress. I’m not talking about the feeling of stress. You know, when you’re overwhelmed by the amount of things you have to accomplish by the end of the day. Nor the feeling of being overworked or the pressures put upon you from your job whether that’s a deadline or other people counting on you. No, not that kind of stress. I’m talking about the kind of stress that lives deep, deep without our brains. The kind that effects our health in ways modern medicine is only beginning to understand. Every time we experience a traumatic event or intense feelings (grief, anger, fear) our "fight-flight-freeze" response (stress) gets turned on and when it does our body is flooded with adrenali
Part II In Part I of this series, I talked about a training I participated in at work called the Student Support Network. I discussed how many young adults are suffering from mental illness but now I want to talk about the WHY. Why are young adults struggling so badly these days? Is life really that different than when we were young? The answer to that is YES. In my training, I learned that there isn’t one reason that mental illness in young adults is on the rise. One theory as to why it feels so prevalent is due to the lack of stigma about mental health today in our culture. The shame of being depressed, having anxiety, or a learning disability is gone. Which is great! It means we’ve evolved. We've also gotten better at diagnosing and getting people the treatment they need. Which also begs the question, are more people having mental illness, or are we just better at diagnosing, perhaps even over diagnosing? We may never know. While de-stigmatization and absence