How I Reclaimed My Life When I Felt Numb and Unhappy

"All appears to change when we change." - Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The biggest life-changing moment in my life would have looked unremarkable to an outsider looking in.

I was at a point in my life (my late twenties) where everything seemed to look good on paper. I had a great job, I was living in downtown Seattle, and I enjoyed the live music scene. Aside from not being in a relationship, I thought I had “arrived.”

The only problem was, I was miserable, and I barely acknowledged it. A part of me knew that I wasn’t happy, but I tried to run away from that feeling by playing guitar, writing, or watching live music as much as I could.

My other avoidance tactics were working long hours at my day job or socially drinking at “hip” bars in the city.

But every time I came home, there I was. Still grappling with my feelings and trying to understand why happiness was so fleeting.

I had also recently broken up with someone that I cared about but knew was not healthy for me. She was a heavy drinker, and because I tended to just blend in with my partners, my drinking had increased substantially when I was with her, and I felt horrible (physically and emotionally).

It was a messy ending, and it left me even more confused. I should be so happy. “Why aren’t I?” This nagging thought haunted me for several months.

Moment of Awareness and Choice

One afternoon, I came home from work and mindlessly went through my routine. Dropped my bag off by the door. Changed into comfort clothes. Went to the refrigerator and opened a beer.

I then plopped on the sofa and turned on the television. This was my routine for several mind-numbing months.

When I reflect back on this moment, I can see that I was absently flipping through every channel available through the cable box. Interested in absolutely nothing. I would take a tug on the beer in one hand without even tasting it while changing channels with the remote in another hand.

I was literally in a trance and not really processing anything. I was running on autopilot, without any conscious awareness, as channel after channel flipped by.

And that’s when it happened. It was like the background noise in one part of my mind suddenly became amplified. I could hear thought after thought running through my mind like a CNN news crawl.

The shocking part, for me, was how negative these thoughts were. “You’re no good. Nobody loves you. You’re a failure. You’ll never find someone who loves you. You’re not worth it.”

I also had the realization that I’d heard these thoughts before but had chosen to stuff them down or mute the volume through distraction.

But here they were. Loud and blaring. I was forced to face them once again.

I was in a state of disbelief for several minutes while some choice expletives escaped my lips.

Once the shock wore off, there was an overwhelming sense that I had reached a huge fork in the road.

One choice led to stuffing these thoughts back down to wherever they came from and going back to sucking down a beer mindlessly watching television.

And then, magically, a second choice came out of nowhere. Stop everything and just sit with these thoughts.

I remember simply saying, “Huh!” out loud. I never realized that I had choices. I was programmed to run and hide.

I became aware that this was a prodigious moment for me. I could feel chills run through my entire body.

The choice was: Go to sleep again or just be present and experience these thoughts.

Something deep within me knew which path to choose. It was the strongest sense of knowing I had ever experienced. I also knew that if I didn’t get on this train right now, I may be lost forever. It almost felt like a life-or-death decision.

It was in that moment of choice that I finally gave in. I stopped resisting and avoiding. I chose to sit in the discomfort and not run away and hide anymore.

The Choice to Pursue “Better”

As soon as I made the choice to stay and be with these negative thoughts, my body jumped into action. As if someone else was not at the controls.

In one long, swooping motion, I turned off the television, went over to the kitchen sink, and dumped out the rest of my beer. I then took a deep breath, walked to my living room, and sat cross-legged on the floor.

I’d never meditated before but had heard of it. I was strongly interested in Buddhism when I was in college but never took the steps to explore what it was all about. I figured there was no better time than now to just try it.

All I know was, in that moment, I made the firm decision that I was just going to sit and be with my thoughts. No matter how intense of a ride it would be or how crazy just sitting in silence seemed to be.

I still remember those first moments of being in silence. It was a bittersweet experience. The bitter side was experiencing all of the mean and nasty thoughts running through my mind at full volume. There didn’t seem to be an end to it. ... read more

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