my journey to yoga, through mental health struggles and an autism diagnosis

I hate to use the word journey, but I suppose it has been a pretty big one over the last 12 years.

12 years ago, I was a severely depressed 26 year old with an eating disorder that had complete control over my life. I had just left medical school, and the life I thought I should be living, to move back home with my parents. It felt like my life was over, finished, that I could never recover from this. I didn’t know it then, but brains have a horrible way of lying to us when we’re depressed. I contemplated, and then attempted, suicide. Not because I wanted to die, but because I couldn’t fathom how my life would go on when it felt so fundamentally over. 

It would be another 4 years until I got my autism diagnosis, and a further 4 after that until I embraced it. Through all the years of therapy, we kept coming back to the same point. I would say that stress was triggering my disordered eating, they would ask me what I was finding stressful, the only answer I could give that felt somewhat true was “life, I just find life stressful.” Round and round we would go.

Once I was well enough to work again I entered the ever fun cycle of “this will be the job for me”, only to end up leaving said employment months later due to stress. I truly believed there was something fundamentally wrong with me, why was I finding life so much harder than everyone else? Or was everyone finding it this hard and we’re all silently pretending we’re not?!?. Burnout became a familiar friend, not that I realised that's what it was. I’m not doing a stressful job so how can I be burnt-out? I’m not even working full time so how can I be burnt-out?? Each job was punctuated with ever increasing periods of time off and work adaptations, none of which helped. I should say that the types of jobs I was drawn to were ultimately my downfall in all of this. They were people facing-phone call making-high levels of interaction jobs. But we live and learn.

I’m actually so grateful to my last full time employer for giving me the hard truths. That no amount of adaptations could be made that would make the job workable for me. Or at least workable in a way that wouldn’t destroy my mental health. They made me face the truth and reality of the situation, that this wasn’t working for either of us and we should part ways. That was the same year I was studying to become a yoga teacher, and the first time I realised I never wanted to go back to a “normal” 9-5. 

My first encounter with yoga was at the gym. I’d joined as that somewhat lost 26 year old hoping to get some structure in my life. I dabbled over the years, going to classes here and there, mainly hoping that at some point I’d look like the super bendy Instagram yogis I followed. I firmly rejected any hint of spiritually and rolled my eyes at discussions I felt were far too “woo-woo” for my liking. I wasn’t interested in the history of yoga and the philosophical texts that form its roots. I couldn’t deny though, that I loved the classes more than any other fitness class I attended. I went on weekend long and then week long retreats. I incorporated mindfulness into my days. My brain started feeling lighter, more spacious. I mean, what’s not to love about a discipline whose goal is to free you from suffering? Sign me up. 

When my autism diagnosis came along, it started the slow (painfully slow) journey of me starting to accept myself. I mean sure, first came the rejection and anger at the diagnosis. I’d wanted to be normal my whole life and here was someone telling me (over several pages of in-depth writing) how I wasn’t. Period. My brain works differently. Maybe this was why life felt so hard, why I felt like I couldn’t cope in the real world.

Over those years of self discovery, I learned that interacting with people all day drained me to the point of collapse, and that maybe there was something to all this yoga philosophy stuff after-all. Ultimately, what yoga was teaching me was to tune in to myself, something I had previously made every effort to avoid. Go inwards, be still, become the observer. When you can get to that part of you that is simply watching, what some call the Self, it really is quite magical. I mean I’ve only experienced it fleetingly, please don’t think I’m an enlightened ethereal presence all day every day. Yoga has made me see the world in a different way, it’s made me grateful for my existence and connected me to life. I’m far more accepting of all things woo-woo than my 26 year old self would be happy with. But she was miserable and giving up on life, so I don’t take her opinions on matters that seriously. 

I started my yoga teacher training and left my last full time employment in the same month. Both of these were the best things I ever did. I’d been conditioned to believe that in order to be successful and happy I had to follow the traditional route of university, good job, more senior good job, more and more senior good job, retirement (or death, whichever was sooner). This was a route I had tried to run down several times, and despite hitting massive brick walls I kept ploughing on. When I stepped back and properly looked, I realised there was a much nicer, freer route that would actually enable me to live, like properly live. Life is short, I didn’t want to spend it in various cycles of burnout.

I’ve found a balance with teaching yoga, it gives me that space and time that my brain needs to recharge. We live in a world now where there are so many different ways to earn money. Slogging it out in the 9-5 doesn’t have to be the only way. I don’t know how long this will be my job for, or how it will grow and evolve, but I do know that I’m never going back to something that drains my soul.