Hampton - Beat Depression And Anxiety by Changing Your Brain with simple practices that will improve your life

We cannot solve our problems, with the same thinking that we used when we created them.

Albert Einstein

Taking gulps of my favorite, cheap wine right out of the bottle, I quickly swallowed handful after handful of the happy-colored pills. They looked like candy, but there was no sweet taste going down. I knew that I wasnt supposed to mix meds with alcohol, but in this case, it didnt matter.

That should do it, I thought as tears dripped off my chin. I considered making myself throw up. Being bulimic in college, I couldve easily done it, but I didnt.

I felt calm - proud even - for having the guts to actually do it. Once the deed was done, the snarly witch in my mind finally shut up. The non-stop mental movie of the painful past and dreaded future reached the end of the reel at last, and it was eerily quiet inside my head for the first time in a long time.

It was a sunny spring morning in June of 2007, just like any other Wednesday morning, except this was the morning that I decided I wanted to die.

After taking the pills, hours went by before someone found me, and it was hours after that before what Id taken became known. Because too much time had passed, my stomach wasnt pumped, and the drugs went all the way through my body, wreaking destruction. Needless to say, it wasnt a successful suicide attempt, but the overdose did land me in the hospital for two weeks and left me with a serious brain injury.

When I woke up from the coma that Id been in for the past week, my speech was garbled, slurred, without inflection, and like my thinking, s-l-o-w. I had trouble controlling my bladder, couldnt coordinate breathing and swallowing anymore, my hands constantly shook while hanging limply at my sides when I walked, and my balance was off. I was severely mentally impaired and didnt know that my second son had been born, that my brother had died or that I had gotten divorced.

My short and long-term memories were nonexistent at first. I couldnt focus on anything for more than a few seconds, make sense of what I was seeing, or what was happening. It was as if someone had commandeered the remote control and was flipping through the channels inside my head. Before I could figure out what was in front of me, like acts of a play, new props and characters would invade the scene and change everything.

The closest thing I can liken my brain-injured state to is being out-of-your-mind drunk, but this time, I didnt sober up in a couple of hours.

After 43 years of living with pervasive fear, anxiety, self-doubt, and catastrophic and negative thinking, 11 years after taking care of and watching my brother die of AIDs, and three years after the end of my 18-year marriage to my high school sweetheart, I found myself a depressed, divorced, single mother who had no idea who she was or what she was doing here. Id gotten so lost, removed from my own soul, and flat out disgusted and disappointed with life that I decided to end it all.

In the year following the brain injury, I naturally regained some memory, intelligence, physical coordination, speech, and motivation. I then used what wits Id recovered to find out everything I could about healing my brain promising myself, If I have to live, I am not living like this! From the time I got out of bed until I hit the sheets again, my sole focus for years was rebuilding my brain. Little did I know that in the process of fixing my brain, I would also heal my life.

Partly because the brain injury made me a little OCD and partly because Id always had the tendency, I was obsessively determined to recover. In addition to exercising daily to promote brain cell growth, I spent hours every day brain training and doing my own speech, manual dexterity, and other therapies to improve my brain processes. I adopted a brain healthy diet, took supplements, guzzled water, and got lots of sleep.

To overhaul the unhealthy thinking patterns that led to the suicide attempt, I began practicing mindfulness, gratitude, yoga, meditation, visualization, and thought reframing to build new, healthier pathways in my brain. While talk therapy hadnt proven successful for me in the past, I gave CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) a try and found it life changing. It took years, but I did fully recover with a better-than-ever brain and mental and emotional intelligence I hadnt had before.

Although I never thought Id say this when I was in the midst of the nightmare, the brain injury was a blessing in disguise because it forced me to make the changes Id needed to make in my life long before. In rebuilding my brain, I took control of my mind, consciously directed my brain functioning and behavior, and completely turned my life around.

Whereas I used to cling to the bottom rung of the mental health ladder, Ive climbed up to happily stand at the top. I like the view much better from here. Im joyful, calm, optimistic, fulfilled, connected, and engaged in life. I told someone recently, I dont feel like Im searching for anything. Thats a mighty nice feeling.

I know what youre probably thinking, Oh yeah, life got better for her because her circumstances improved. My life is still far from what anyone would consider ideal. As I write this, my kids live in another state with their father who sued me for custody right after the suicide attempt. I have no significant other and havent had a romantic relationship since the brain injury, and my financial future is anything but secure. Although it does sound pretty bad when spelled out like that, Im happy and content.