Meditation and Mindfulness in Recovery

Prior to recovery I had never tried meditation, and I hadn’t even really heard of mindfulness.  Meditation always seemed like a huge waste of time.  I think someone mentioned it to me while I was a practicing attorney and my feeble attempt at it lasted a minute or two at most, mainly because I had no idea what I was doing.  The thought of “emptying my mind” was ridiculous, because there was always something rattling around up there. “How long am I supposed to do this?”  “Am I supposed to feel anything?” “This carpet is filthy; I really need to vacuum.”  The pressure of trying not to think about anything stressed me out.  And that is the complete and unabridged story of my meditation history prior to recovery. 

When I landed myself in rehab, I got my first experience with a guided meditation, and it was a different experience.  Of course, at first I was highly skeptical.  The man who led the meditation looked exactly like a man who would lead a guided meditation in a rehab – he was older, with long hair down his back, spoke quietly and calmly, and I’m pretty sure there was fringe somewhere on his outfit.  If I had to guess, I would say he was probably a huge Willy Nelson fan.  “Oh, here we go,” I thought, having been trained by my ex-husband to have a complete distain for anything even remotely spiritual.  (One of the many toxic traits I have needed to un-learn in recovery.)  The meditation guy (Randy) had one of those Himalayan singing bowls and he rang it to get our attention, which it did.  If you have never heard one, they have a really nice, unique sound and are very pleasant on the ears.  It sounds like a bell, but very even and soothing.  He then led us on a guided meditation, telling us what to envision and what it should feel like.  He had us envision a warm light slowly moving from our heads throughout our whole bodies and had us focus on every detail of how we felt.  It was not what I thought meditation was – there was no mention of “emptying our minds,” just focusing on parts of our bodies and thinking specific things.   It was a lot easier than when I tried it alone, and a lot more effective.  From then on, I only did guided meditations that I found online.   Deepak Chopra has a really good one on “Letting Go” that I use frequently (no affiliation here, I just found this guided meditation to be particularly approachable).   

Mindfulness also took some practice.  At first, I associated the word with fake-sounding douchebags, as I tend to have a distain for “trendy” lingo.  (Please don’t use the word “manifest” around me.)   But enough people I had respect for started talking about it, so I endeavored to learn more about it.  Like meditation, it’s a way of filtering out distractions and refocusing your mind.   When I need a little mindfulness refocus, I like to go outside and just listen to the outside sounds.  Where I live there are often birds, barking dogs, the occasional car.  I close my eyes and focus on how the sun feels on my body, and how my hair starts feeling hot first, and then the rest of my body warms up.  I have a collection of rescue mutts, so my meditation and mindfulness sessions are often interrupted by 75 pounds of at least one wigglebutt trying to get some pets.  Instead of getting frustrated at the interruption, I incorporate it into my thought process.  How does my dog’s fur feel?   What kinds of little noises can I hear?  The main thing I learned in recovery is that overthinking meditation and mindfulness is missing the point completely.  I don’t need an empty house with pan flute music in order to do it properly.   The point is to allow your senses to be completely immersed in your environment, wherever that is, and whatever the conditions are.

It can be difficult to set aside time for these activities, especially with a family.  But I have noticed that when I make the effort to find time for them, I just feel a little calmer overall.  Another benefit for me is that mindfulness has taught me to calm myself when I start getting anxious.  When something upsets me, instead of allowing my neural pathways to continue along catastrophizing and drama-fueled panic routes, I can more easily refocus them onto benign pathways.  Here is an example from everyday life:  I always feel like I’m in a hurry because I tend to think I can accomplish more in a day than I actually can.  So if anything takes longer than what I mentally allotted for the task, I can start to feel anxious.   If I need to get my grocery shopping done in a certain amount of time, and then the little old lady in front of me needs cigarettes from the case and has twenty-four coupons to scan manually, I can start to get a little worked up.  But I have taught myself to refocus my mental energy in situations like this.  Instead of watching the old lady intensely as she tries to scan each coupon, I look away and focus on something else.  I can focus on exactly how my body is feeling and purposely relax each of my muscles in sequence.  Or I can pull up photos on my phone that make me happy, and try to remember exactly how I felt in that moment – how everyone’s laugher sounded, how the birthday cake smelled, etc.   And because I was fully present in those moments, I am able to do so and calm my body’s response to an anxiety-causing situation beyond my control. 

Now you might be wondering what this has to do with recovery, so I will tell you.  People like us are used to trying to control everything, and when that control fails (as it always does), we use it as an excuse for poor behavior.  We need strategies for calming our anxiety and panic responses before we spiral out of control.  If we can train ourselves to accept things exactly as they are in every moment, then our emotions are kept in check.  Both good emotions and bad emotions need to be kept in check, and meditation and mindfulness can help us learn ways of redirecting energy into the only things we have complete control over, which are our thoughts and actions.