Jasmine,

I’m sorry for your suffering, dear sister, and can understand how difficulties can leave us feeling hopeless sometimes. Its great that you’re trying meditation, that can often lead to greater awareness, which is helpful in learning what is happening inside us. From your description, its tough to know what’s going on. Could you explain a little more about what is actually happening? My guess (and its just a guess) is that your mind becomes ensnared by some thought or vision, and as it rests there, produces some difficult emotions, painful emotions. Or, it may go the other way, such as the body being full of an agitating emotion, and the mind blossoms again and again with thoughts that reflect that emotion. Like a balloon filling up with a stinky gas.

Don’t despair though, dear Jasmine, there is always a path to joy. Could you break down your journey of sorrows into a specific event? Such as what is going on in your body today? What are you feeling? What are the thoughts around the feeling? What do you fear?

Meditation can help us develop a strength of will to be able to do other things with our mental energy. But, we still have to figure out how to aim our intention, what to hold close, and what to let go. This is why being a little more specific will help. Consider, telling us who you are is not a sob story, its just laying out what is. If we want to sob alongside you a little, that’s our right. 🙂 Said differently, pouring out the truth of what we’re experiencing is not self indulgent, and don’t be afraid to let it out, no matter what it is.

Finally, consider switching from “meditation” in general to specifically metta meditation. Metta is the feeling of friendly warmth inside our chest area, and is something we can grow. Like a tender seed of happiness, as we sit and think friendly thoughts, imagine our loved ones happy, and wishing for our own happiness, our mind becomes peaceful and smooth over time. This produces a lovely fertile ground inside us, and often will quiet the storms. Sometimes when we become ensnared in pain, we get a “racing mind” that quickly snuffs out our inner light. Metta helps quiet the mind and rekindle that light, which makes us intrepid, stable, and happy. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube if interested.

I can hear in your words just how powerful a being you are, Jasmine, and hope you find some peace of mind soon. Namaste, sister, may your clouds be fluffy and sparse.

With warmth,
Matt

Dear Friend,

Let me see if I can help. I understand what feeling “damaged” feels like.

Let’s look at some other things first.

1. You are 18 and you could be alive another 70 years or longer. That is a long time. You could fall in love and you might have a family. You still have that to look forward to if it appeals to you.
2. This world really needs caring people. I am an environmentalist and I care about the future of the planet and its plants and animals. You could be of great help to people who are less fortunate. You could become a teacher or an artist or a scientist or any of many things. You could have more than one career. The best way to discover these things is just to keep experimenting and trying on new hobbies and jobs you think might appeal. Sometimes, when you push yourself, you will find you enjoy doing something because you did it well. At first is seemed horribly boring.

3. Don’t think you cannot do these things. I have had problems similar to you and I finished graduate school. It is possible. You have more strength in your mind than you know.
4. I am not a doctor so I don’t know what physical challenges you may have but it sounds like you have a loving family so you should be able to benefit from psychological principles like gently pushing yourself to try things until you feel better about yourself and more excited about activities and people. Then something may click for you. Other people your age face the exact same hurdles and probably don’t worry as much about it.

Sincerely,
BB

Hello Jasmine!

I read this thread this morning and wanted to offer another point of view in addition to what others have said.

I know I am generalizing, but women do have the tendency to have less boundaries and be less individualistic in their approach to life. It’s more about the people around you than about you. It’s easy to get lost in other people’s feelings and emotions as well as take on the huge amount of pressure from living up to their expectations. Women constantly give away their power to decide what they want, and it’s so automatic that they don’t even realize that they are doing it.

Getting lost these days is even easier. I know it’s a bit of a cliche to blame the media, but it is so easy to get lost in social media and in what other people appear to be and then compare it to how you feel. I even notice it in myself: the moment I start to use more social media, my focal point changes to somewhere outside of myself, and I start to exist differently. So, just be aware that the Internet can do that to you. It’s as if your mind leaves your body and starts to live in this imaginary world.

Another thing that’s good to acknowledge is that being human isn’t pretty. We have this expectation of what the perfect life would look like and how the perfect person would look like and act like. Yet we all have an “ugly” side. It’s tempting to suppress that side and only accept the lovely things about us. If you keep suppressing one side of yourself and not acknowledging it, you can’t be fully your authentic self. Same goes with pain. If the pain about something is coming, then it’s tempting to try to forcefully push it away, or add to the pain by being anxious about being in pain. Yet, if you would just accept that you feel pain about a certain matter, then it would’ve just come and gone already, instead of lingering in your mind. You said yourself “it feels so good to just be heard”. Yes, it does. It feels very good to be heard and seen.

I’ll interrupt this message to tell you a bit from my own story. I also felt lost and confused most of my life (I am 20 years older than you). I was also very much codependent. I was always very aware of myself and how I presented myself, and also very keen to be pleasing to others. I always picked up on the mood of others, and adjusted myself accordingly. I always felt like nobody saw me or understood me. The real me. I resented other people for that. Now, looking back, I can understand couple of things. One is that people can only see what you present to them. Just because I could pick up on other people’s moods didn’t mean that they can do the same and magically see and feel what I’m seeing and feeling. The other thing, more important one, was that I myself didn’t even acknowledge everything that I was. I was more preoccupied with other people and what I looked like and what I ought to be and feel. I compared myself to others and if the comparison was favorable to me, I accepted it, and if it wasn’t favorable to me, I felt shame and neglected that part of myself. In reality, I never was lost. I was right there, all the time. I had just neglected myself in favor of something I thought I was supposed to be.

Even now, if I ask myself “who am I?” I’m not quite sure what I would answer. But I don’t feel lost. I know that if I encounter something that makes me laugh, then I know that there are things that clearly amuse me. If something bothers me and hurts my soul, I know that it’s not for me. I don’t have to have a list of attributes to know that I am real and an individual. I can accept some adjectives. For example, I know that I am stubborn. But I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to walk around thinking that I am a stubborn person. I’d rather allow the stubbornness to arise when it naturally arises, and just not brand myself as a stubborn individual.

So in conclusion: accept the feelings that arise, don’t try to block them. Accept the all sides of your personality, even the ones you do not like. If you feel like you need to be seen and heard, then you are the one who is the gatekeeper to your true nature. You decide whether other people, or even your own self, can see and hear the real you. I don’t mean that you need to constantly be completely open to everyone around you, but you should be open to yourself, if that makes sense.

You’re not lost. You are right there, but you need to just see yourself and accept what you are seeing, without judgment. Easier said than done, but it can be done.