Blogtember – Page 2 – JMWEBERHILL WRITES

My experience with Headspace (Review)

For a long time, I was very much against the idea of meditation. I didn’t see a purpose for it. I thought that I would immediately fall asleep having someone speak in a calm soft voice to me and be instantly bored. However, when I was in the height of my mental health struggles, I was desperate to try anything to find some sort of relief. I tried a few different apps on my phone as a means to relax and get away from social media. I finally found Headspace and was able to get exactly what I needed to help quell my anxiety and assist with the sleeping issues that comes with Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

Headspace has a detailed meditation library that offers meditation courses, single, live and SOS meditations for your in the moment needs or daily use. Headspace also provides focus/sleep music playlists, focus/sleep soundscapes, sleepcasts, and short videos that are labeled as advice of all kinds to help assist your needs and better your mental health. In my experience, I found the guided meditations the most helpful. I used a variety of meditations centered around calming my body down and breathwork to help my racing mind throughout the day. Some of my favorite guided mediations are Alone Time, the WFH series, Taking a Break, and the Self-Love meditation. Each of these were able to be applied to my exact needs and help me gather my thoughts and feel more grounded throughout the day instead of fixated on worries and the constant need for the control of every thought and sensation that would feel like it would race through my body. All of these meditations are offered by different meditation coaches each providing their own calming cadence and structure to the meditation. I also used sleep mediations to help me fall asleep faster at night. The relaxing voice of the founder Andy Puddicome was able to calm my nerves nightly and get me into a comfortable sleep cycle.

As someone who suffers from an anxiety disorder, I would reccommend this app to anyone who’s looking for a way to calm their bodies and mind. I’ve learned that once both are connected and quieted, it makes life’s daily functions a lot easier and your ability to sleep a lot better.

I LOVE NY

I am born and raised in New York City, I’ve seen I love NY plastered on cups, plastic bags, postcards, just about anything you can put print on. New Yorkers wear our city like a badge of pride. Most of us are very proud to be from here and truly mean it when we say we love NY.

This weekend has me experiencing reflective and grateful emotions. Emotions about 9/12/2001, the day after the towers were hit and how affected I was by what I saw as a child and how proud I was to see the entire world rally behind our state. In our hour of need, I saw so many people do whatever it took to help others and foster very much needed compassion for the horrid moment. I remember how inspired I was by this and took it upon myself to use my confirmation service hours to collect supplies for first responders at the World Trade Center who needed them. New York proved that in the face of tragedy we can come together when it really counts.

I also have a lot of gratitude for my city for the events from this year as well. We all collectively went through hell and are doing our best daily to bounce back. There are so many things I never thought I’d get to do or see again. The NY Pause gave me a lot of perspective for just how much I love NY and all it has to offer. It’s so easy to get caught up in the daily grind of it all and only fixate on all the inconveniences that come with day-to-day life in a city. The saying “You never know what you have until it’s gone” applies here. I found myself missing the commute, the ability to be in the mix of all different types of people, the subway, and the coffee on the go. I was surprisingly sad about all of the loss of all of these things. I was devastated to see Broadway go dark and see Times Square appear abandoned.

A lot of these dramatic retroactively but it’s the perspective I needed and the restart to falling back in love with my beautiful city. We are a place of diversity of all kinds, silent acceptance where it’s not always seen, and a haven for anyone who’s willing to put the work into their dreams. Every activity I get to resume, I resume with gratitude beyond anything I’ve imagined. I am thankful for the little things again and so proud to be a New Yorker.

I’m including an old post explaining some of the things I love about New York. It’s an old unjaded post but I feel like it’s so fun to look back on because it explains some of my favorite reasons why I am so in love with this city. Feel free to check out if you’d like. New York, New York, it’s a helluva town! (No, it really is!)

September 11th – 20 years later

There is always the moment in history that people will retroactively ask you about. Questions like where were you when it happened? What were you doing? How did you feel? September 11, 2001 when the World Trade Center towers fell was my major historical experience. I can remember where I was, what I was doing and how I felt. I was 12 years old on that day, I was supposed to be in school but I had stayed home not feeling well. I slept most of the morning away with cramps but was awoken by Dad after the second tower was hit. He explained to me what had happened and that it was important that I wake up to see all of this. I went into my living room and sat by the TV and watched it all unfold. My mother was already getting my brother from school and I was sitting at home paraylzed by the sight in front of me. I’d never experienced anything like this before. I had only read about events like this in books which led my already anxious mind to a million questions, would there be a war like I had learned about in school books? Would this unknown enemy be here to stay? I was just shy becoming a teenager so my mind couldn’t wrap my head around any of it. I had a lot of questions and very few answers to them were immediate.

Now as a 32 year old woman, I have been working in the Manhattan area for 14 years walking the same path that so many did on that day. Every year I find myself feeling extra somber on the anniversary but always grateful to have never met the same fate. Twenty years is a long time but I know as a New Yorker that I will never forget that day. I will never forget the fear I felt, I will never forget the uncertainty, but I mostly will never forget how New York banded together to help each other anyway they could. How food drives started, how collection of medical supplies began, and how so many people helped each other get home when the city was in chaos. Looking back on that day as an adult and when I share the stories with the generations after, I always moved by the generousity of others in times of tragedy. We were all fearful and afraid and so many had been lost, but hard times created so many kind stories.

To anyone who experienced this first hand, my heart will always be with you.

One hand in the air for the big city
Street lights, big dreams, all lookin' pretty
No place in the world that could compare
- Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z (Ft. Alicia Keys)

Connection for the disconnected: TLP experience.

I wanted to share my guest blog post on The Letter Project blog. The Letter Project is an organization that writes letters to women and girls from ages 5-100 years old to empower them when they need the extra support. Letter bundles are requested by family and friends or the girls/women themselves and sent out in hopes that they will find comfort in the kind word. Check out the entry below that I shared on my experience for this wonderful charity. If you’re interested in getting involved, please visit theletterproject.org.

The year of 2020 was a challenge for me. I was dealing with the “new normal” of a pandemic but I was also forced to confront my lowest point of mental health head-on. I began talk therapy in August 2020 and am still actively going. In therapy, I talk a lot about myself, but my first therapist decided to send me on the journey of talking to others. My anxiety was very severe at that point in my treatment and I needed to be taken out of my own head and find the connection that I was missing so much in a world where social distancing was a safety measure. To fulfill the missing connection, he wanted me to write letters to other people also in need of connection or encouragement. I went to Google and started looking for the right fit of letter writing and how I could embark on a safe and emotionally fulfilling journey, which is how I found The Letter Project. I signed up to become a letter writer and began to read through the requests for bundles from the women and girls on behalf of themselves or the family and friends on the behalf of their loved ones. After reading through the requests and writing my first initial letter, I was hooked.

I loved the idea of sending encouragement out into the world to others who needed it, just like I did and still do sometimes. I loved reading the brave stories of people who solicited help for themselves, but I am also touched by those who solicit help for the loved ones who may not always see themselves as worthy of needed encouragement. I was eventually able to request a bundle for myself, in hopes to have my very own little piece of this beautifully baked pie that this organization had created.

I didn’t really understand the impact of the bundle until over 20 plus letters from all over the world began to filter into my mailbox.

Hand-written, decorated, and beautifully written words of encouragement began to pile up and I was in awe. Let’s face it, 2020 was a challenging year for humanity globally, so the idea that so many people read my story and chose to take time out of their days to lift me up was life-changing. The bundle of letters made me feel seen, loved, and like I had a cheering section from all over the four corners of this beautiful planet.

I wanted to pay it forward in some way and offer a connection of hope, the same connection served to me in a time where I believed in so little of hope myself.

The letters offered me a chance to give myself a break from worry and stress. A chance to sit still and read over and over the importance of small but impactful gestures. Every week became my moment to pause and pray that I would deliver the same feeling to girls and women around the world. I wrote for every letter that I received and then some. A cathartic process that allowed me to realize what I had in me was not just a gift to others, but myself as well.

As I took the time from my day with a message of hope and encouragement via stamps and handwritten letters, I felt an unspoken network grow. We all need little reminders once in a while that we can achieve anything we set our minds to, no matter how big or small. It was to a point that every letter I wrote I felt a piece of myself become stronger knowing that I could make the same impact I had been blessed with. It has been a full circle process and so unexpected, just as the past year has become.

As we begin to transition back to our normal “before” lives, I gained a lasting effect to reach out and not only find the sunshine in the clouds for myself but also provide it to others who are on the same journey I am and may not even know it.

The realization of my people-pleasing.

The term “people-pleaser” is one that I learned in the past year through therapy. It’s a term that feels accusatory but it’s fitting with my anxiety and behavior patterns. This was both alarming but also disheartening to really deep dive into. My need for therapy homework struck again and the therapist suggested the book, The Disease to Please by Dr. Harriet B. Braiker. This book gives a detailed breakdown of habits of a people pleaser, a break down of how it applies in everyday life, and a detailed program created by the author to assist the reader in breaking these habits. I immediately began to overthink things and attempt perfection (which is a whole other beast) in ridding myself of these habits. 32 years of habits aren’t just going to go away over night. I was being driven by shame and anxiety that if I didn’t shake this that I would be further doomed than I was before.

While the anxiety has slowed, I still battle people pleasing. The need to control situations for my own comfort or my need to overprotect loved ones still happens to me. I’d love to sit here and say therapy and a book was the cure all but it’s the application of the tools from therapy and the book that help me with this daily struggle. Finally, realizing why I do some things and that I’m not responsible for the happiness of anyone else but myself is freeing. However, it doesn’t make it any easier when situations come up. I want to help, I want to fix and knowing that I can’t always do that for everyone or even myself with my own emotions is scary to feel. It’s not easy to just let go but I know it’s going to foster better relationships with myself and the people around me.