Warning: This article mentions childhood sexual abuse, substance abuse, and PTSD.
if you say I would have laughed in your face a few years ago to find myself crying in front of the shrine of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, at the David Lynch Foundation, which is frequented by celebrities. It would be. But here we are.
After 10 years of various forms of self-destruction, in 2018 I was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). It is caused by long-term trauma rather than a single traumatic event. Up until this point, I had suffered from night terrors and had self-medicated with sleeping pills. I was having panic attacks every day, swallowing palmfuls of benzos and erasing them from my mind for weeks. I was looking for a man who would get me high before we had sex. I ran for miles and played video games until my vision blurred and I blacked out. I’m glad I didn’t feel anything. No pain, no memory, no connection to the past.
Past: When I was 14 years old, I received a message from a man online. Although he was older, I met him. He drugged me, raped me, then took naked pictures of me and posted them online to find other older men who would pay him to rape me.
I didn’t talk about what happened for years. One of the reasons was that I didn’t have the language for it. I was very young and had just barely passed high school. While other students went to college, I planned to flee to California as soon as I got far from New York. I felt sick as I approached what happened. The day I graduated, I packed up and moved to San Diego.
If you run away, you have a better chance of survival. I started making plans for the future. I met a man and fell in love with him. We adopted a dog. I took adult education classes, then community college classes, and then transferred to a school in New York. But then I had a mental breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric ward, but even there I refused to tell the doctors why I felt so bad.
Part of me felt that no one cared if men were sexually abused. Literature circulated in psychiatric wards and treatment centers, as well as online, constantly mentioned women being abused by men. The FBI did not include men in its definition of rape until her 2014. We weren’t counting for statistics. I didn’t exist.
In 2018, I enrolled in graduate school at New York University, where I received a referral to the Center for Victims of Crime Treatment. My therapist specializes in male childhood sexual abuse and helped me figure out all the ways I could structure my life so I wouldn’t feel the effects of violence. I spent a lot of time creating patterns of avoidance, whether it was sex, drugs, booze, video games, or exercise. Because if you finally admit how angry, hurt, and sad you were about what happened to you, you’ll explode.
That year, the world conspired to further my healing. New York City plans to pass a law called the Child Victims Act, which would create a one-year look back period for child victims. That’s the inspiration behind my novel, lookback window. This means if you’re like me and the statute of limitations has already passed, she has a year to decide whether to file a civil lawsuit against her abuser. I’ve heard this discussed on the radio, op-ed in newspapers, and law firms advertised online. It felt like everywhere I went there were signs that said, “You have been raped!” Please deal with it!
At this point I was in my second year of therapy and my therapist asked me if I was interested in learning Transcendental Meditation. Transcendental Meditation is a meditation technique in which you stand upright, close your eyes, and repeat a mantra for 20 minutes twice a day. Founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, this technique has been taught to everyone from the 1970s Beatles to coronavirus first responders to sexual assault survivors. When your body enters this state of rest, the health benefits are numerous, including increased alertness, lower blood pressure, and reduced stress. Some people learn it for relaxation, others to expand their creativity, and still others for trauma-related therapy.
“Our reactions to trauma are both mental (ruminating about the traumatic event) and physical (elevated heart rate and flushing and feeling of heat when remembering the trauma). , strategies such as trauma-informed yoga and trauma-informed meditation are influencing psychological practices to provide patients with more options,” says psychiatrist Gregory Scott. Dr. Brown says. men’s health Advisory committee member. (Editor’s note: Dr. Brown is not related to the author.) “And I was encouraged by that.”
The David Lynch Foundation, which teaches this technique to everyone from Martin Scorsese to CEOs to school teachers, reached out to my therapist and offered scholarships to sexual assault survivors like me. He did. The course was for 2 weeks for him, and he was scheduled to check in after a month, and my group consisted of 3 other people, including my girlfriend. I was in the midst of treatment and wanted to do anything to get some relief, and I heard that this technique was helping artists create. It became easier to accept help if it also benefited my art or my body. Choosing treatment solely for your mental health means admitting to yourself how much you needed it, and worse, it also means admitting to yourself how much you wanted it. It means acknowledging what happened. Like many victims, I often felt like I didn’t deserve anything.
of course.
I took the train to midtown Manhattan and met my instructor, Sarah. Sarah took me into her room and motioned for me to sit in her empty chair. I waited in the quiet room for her to speak, staring at the shrine of a bearded Indian guru in an orange robe. Next to his portrait were candles, incense, and purple and gold flowers. My own cynicism softened as I felt as if I was part of something intimate, as if she was really trying to reveal something to me.
After I finished answering some additional questions, Sarah told me what would happen next. Sarah intended to sing a song to honor and thank the teachers who had taught this meditation technique before us. Afterwards, I was able to arrange flowers at the venue. altar. She was going to teach me a mantra, a single sound to repeat during meditation, but she asked if I could keep it secret to protect her sacred methods. I agreed. She began to sing softly and beautifully in a language I didn’t know, and moved to the altar to light her candles and incense. I put down the flowers and Sarah taught me a mantra. It was a sound, not a word, and I repeated it until I said it correctly. She asked me to repeat it out loud until I said it as quietly as possible. Then close her eyes and repeat only in her head.
The sound vibrated in my chest and then in my heart, creating a space within me. I wasn’t thinking anything. If a thought came up, I didn’t criticize it, I just let it pass through me until it went away. This was the purpose. It’s about clearing your mind without judgment. The process took 10 minutes, but when it was finished I felt like I had just woken up from a deep sleep.
I hadn’t slept well for a long time, but this was the first time in a year that I felt rested without taking medication. I knew I was exhausted, but I didn’t realize how exhausting avoiding my emotions was. I never gave myself time to really feel anything. This meant that my mind, body, and spirit were always functioning, even when I was trying to avoid them. Honestly, this was the hardest lesson to learn in trauma therapy. And I still have to follow this lesson. “If I suppress my emotions, I break down.” If I had just felt bad, or just cried or screamed, I could have avoided major physical and mental damage. Sho. Pretending that you’re okay not only leaves you exhausted, but also makes it difficult to know how you’re really feeling, making it impossible to properly treat your mental health. Ta.
Now I cry almost every day. When I met her husband for the first time in 2022, I cried at every bar we went to, on a walk, and in bed. He joked that he should buy a map of Brooklyn and put thumbtacks in the places where I cried. It was a measure of how honest I was with myself, how safe I felt around my loved ones, and how well I was able to hide years of abuse. I am.
I ended up going back to the program the following week to learn more techniques. I also meditated once at home after I woke up in the morning and once around 4pm, but I found it easier to meditate in a group. Knowing that everyone there was trying to recover from abuse gave it purpose. I used to think of meditation as a useless exercise given by doctors who don’t know how to help you. But the more I learned about Transcendental Meditation, the more I realized that if I didn’t give my body time to recover and heal, it would never be okay.
I found the idea of creating a habit of following your body’s impulses without using judgment. When you are being abused, your abuser doesn’t want you to scream in pain. You quickly adapt and learn how to deny your body what it actually needs. Transcendental Meditation is the opposite. Give your body time to do whatever it wants, even if it just brings up thoughts to the surface that you need to acknowledge and let go of.
The only way to know what’s going on with yourself is to ask yourself questions, so by allowing myself to feel whatever I’m feeling, I’m a better husband. , friend and artist. what are you feeling and how can i help you recover• Through programs like the one I did, people are given the tools to cleanse their minds and reduce traumatic stress at home for the rest of their lives.? That’s what Transcendental Meditation did for me. Even if I am triggered, I have a way to heal myself and that is a lifelong gift.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, RAINN offers free and confidential support 24/7 by calling 800-656-4673.