Maybe You Need Therapy

Why we sometimes use spiritual practice to avoid being human.

Sometime in 2006, a few months after my first panic attack, I became obsessed with yoga and meditation.

I had been sick for months. I couldn’t sleep properly. I was anxious most of the time and had no idea what was happening to me. Doctors told me I was fine, which was good news, except that I felt terrible. And very not fine.

Then I found meditation and later yoga. For the first time in months, I could sit inside my own experience without immediately wanting to escape it. I could breathe. I could feel my body again. Sometimes, for twenty minutes, I felt okay.

I became completely obsessed, naturally.

I read everything I could find. Buddhism, meditation, yoga philosophy. Books from Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Chogyum Trungpa, books about monks and mystics and people who had apparently worked out how to be human without finding it quite as difficult as I did.