The sympathetic nervous system, or the fight-or-flight system, is activated by stress. This is the system that gets us ready to run. The counter to this is the parasympathetic nervous system, the resting-and-digesting system. It lowers heart rate and blood pressure, slows breathing, and directly counters the stress response. Meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system.[3] It’s literally the antidote to stress. Plus, it’s what all the evolved, cool girls who look good without makeup are doing, according to social media.
But meditation does not bring me peace. I’ve tried it maybe a dozen times before, and it always goes the same way: I try to clear my head. I close my eyes and try to think about nothing. I want to make my brain a blank slate, but images keep popping up: an idea for a story I should follow up on, the laundry I haven’t done, the shoes I should take to a cobbler. I think about something simple and pure and basic: a block of fresh, soft, white tofu. For twenty seconds, I succeed, imagining a white cube, jiggly and shiny in my mind. Mmm, tofu. What should I eat for dinner? Wait, damn it! Okay, fine. I’ll focus on my breathing instead. In. Out. In. Out. In. Was I able to breathe in as much as I should? Why did it feel like I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs? Why did I feel like I was wheezing? Was I wheezing? Is there something wrong with my lungs? Do I have lung cancer? I must be dying. That’s the only explanation for it. I never had my will notarized. I should probably get it notarized. Am I okay with dying? I never got to scuba dive in a coral reef. Now all the coral reefs are dying because of global warming. If I have lung cancer, there’s no way they’re going to let me scuba dive.
I read later that breathing exercises can actually be more triggering in certain populations. Sounds about right.
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Then there is the more achievable exercise of “grounding.” Grounding sounds like meditation lite—an act of mindfulness but briefer than meditation and more focused on concentrating on small things in the world around you. One of the more helpful C-PTSD resources I found is a website called Beauty After Bruises, which describes grounding this way: “Being grounded refers to a state of mental awareness where you’re fully present with the here and now. You know who and where you are, the current time and year, and what’s happening all around you. It is the opposite of dissociating. The act of ‘getting grounded’ means taking deliberate steps to bring one’s self out of flashbacks, dissociation, and/or other distress…. This is a vital skill for trauma patients.”[4]
I had always thought that having a flashback meant fully hallucinating your past. In the movies, soldiers would be transported back to Afghanistan—they’d see desert sand and automatic rifles in a waking nightmare. But even when I remembered moments of abuse, I knew where I was. I knew I was on the couch. I knew I was not going to die.
But I soon learned that in trauma lingo, people often aren’t talking about the movie version of flashbacks. They’re talking about emotional flashbacks.
For example, before I quit my job, my boss often came into my office to tell me I’d made some minor mistake. If my body and brain were totally in the present, I would have felt embarrassed for messing up but would recognize that it wasn’t a huge deal, acknowledge my faults, and get back to it. Instead, after my boss left, I always felt guilt and anxiety and shame and terror. I’d run downstairs to have a cigarette, text a friend about how I was a moron, and spend half an hour freaking out about how nobody respected me and I’d probably end up fired. Even though consciously I was completely in the present, my emotions were back in 1997, back when I was a little kid and making a mistake on a spelling test could literally be a matter of life and death. This return was an emotional flashback.
Beauty After Bruises claims that the way to fix these emotional flashbacks is to ground yourself. So the next time I found myself in a panicky and depressive state, I read their Grounding 101 tips: Open your eyes. Put your feet solidly on the floor. Look at your hands and feet. Recognize they are adult hands and feet. Name five things you can see and hear and smell.
I put my feet on the floor, stomped them a little, looked around. I looked at my hands. Ew, wrinkly. Definitely not a child’s hands. My nails were dry and peeling. I ripped a jagged edge off. I smelled my shirt. I checked in. I still felt like total shit.
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Maybe there was another way in. Maybe I’d start with an even less cerebral mindfulness exercise. One that wouldn’t just lift my mood but could help me lift my ass, too.
“We’re going to need a blanket, a strap, two small pillows, and one big pillow today,” the instructor said. I followed a spindly older woman into the supply closet and watched as she pulled out a bunch of navy-blue pillows—sturdy ones, like couch cushions; a heavy, gray felt blanket; and what looked like a canvas belt. The class had been listed as “Yin/Restorative Candlelit Yoga,” and I’d picked it because, as the last class of the evening, it was 30 percent off. I wore stretchy pants and an old tank top, ready to sweat, but everyone around me seemed to be wearing their coziest pajama gear—baggy sweats and long cardigans that swept their knees.
The instructor, Jennifer Chang, sat near a pair of dazzling, aquamarine-painted doors at the front of the class. Battery-powered candles were flickering all around the classroom, and she lit some palo santo to get us in the mood. She was Asian, which somehow gave her a legitimacy that put me at ease, plus I liked her round, jolly face.
“Okay, everybody. Give yourself a pat on the back just for showing up. We’re going to start with yin yoga today, which is all about getting deep into your fasciae, the connective tissues in your muscles, and we’re going to do some really deep stretches. Some of these poses might be intense for you, and everyone’s body is different. Listen to your body. This class isn’t about doing the most extreme version of everything. If it hurts a lot, pull it back. We want to be going for 70 percent here, never pushing for 100 percent. If anything is difficult for you, just raise your hand and we’ll figure out an alternative together.” And then she made us get on our backs and stretch out our legs with the strap.
I kept waiting for the challenging part of the class—the part where I’d have to stand on my head, or on one leg, or fold over upside-down. But that part never came. My heart rate didn’t go up, and we spent most of our time lying down or seated—my muscles stretching instead of straining. Twenty minutes in, I figured that yin was not the kind of yoga I’d seen on YouTube. It wasn’t a workout, which at first irritated me—I wanted that good butt, after all—and in my experience, if something wasn’t hard, it didn’t work. Still, I found myself settling in. The mood of the dim room was pleasant enough.